The Trials Of The Moonbound Wolf

Chapter three

I stared at the place where the silver-eyed wolf had stood before; there was nothing, only the trees remained, their branches moving gently in the night wind. My heart beat hard in my chest.

Darius walked closer; his boots made soft sounds on the dry leaves.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

I turned. "Nothing…I …I thought I saw something.”

He looked at my face for a long time, like he was reading a book.

“You should not be out here alone,” he said. “The trials start in two days. You need rest.”

I almost laughed, rest. I could not sleep. Those silver-eyed wolves were still in my head.

“I could not sleep,” I said.

Darius nodded slowly; he looked past me at the trees. His jaw was tight…for a moment, I thought he would say more. But he just turned and walked back to the pack house without another word.

I watched him go.

Then I looked at the trees one more time, and nothing was there.

I went back to my small room and closed the door. I could hear wolves laughing somewhere in the big house and glasses clinking.

I sat on the edge of my bed and put my head in my hands.

Why did the wolf just watch me?

Why did it come back again?

I had no answers, only questions. They kept circling in my mind like wolves in the dark.

I waited until the packhouse was quiet.

At midnight, I put on my coat and slipped out the back door. The moon was low and full above the trees.

I knew where to go.

The Moon Shrine was at the north edge of our land. Built into the bottom of an old hill, no one went there except the elders during full moons. Most wolves thought the old gods had stopped listening long ago.

But I had nowhere else to go.

The path was thick with plant branches that pulled at my sleeves, and the roots almost made me trip, but I kept walking.

The shrine slowly came into view. It was smaller than I remembered.

A stone arch stood over a black altar with strange symbols. Old candles sat around it with hard wax like frozen tears.

I stepped inside.

The air felt heavy; it became harder to breathe.

I dropped to my knees in front of the altar.

“Moon gods,” I whispered. “If you can hear me... I need to know why.”

My voice broke…

“Why did you leave me? Every other wolf changed, every single one…but I stayed human."

The silence was heavy in my ears.

“I did everything right. I trained, I prayed… I bled for this pack, and you gave me nothing.”

Tears ran down my face; I did not wipe them away.

“What did I do wrong? Was I not good enough? Did I not want it enough?

Tell me… Please, just tell me something.”

The candles did not move; the air did not change.

I pressed my forehead against the cold stone and let the tears fall.

Then I heard a whisper.

Not in my ears, but inside my head, like someone standing behind my thoughts and whispering words into them.

“She calls...”

My eyes opened wide.

I lifted my head and looked around; no one was there.

But the whisper came again.

“...but she does not listen.”

My heart hit hard against my ribs. “Who is there?”

“The shadows in the corners looked too dark; they moved even though there was no wind and shifted without making a sound.”

“The moon sees you, little wolf.”

“No one had called me 'little wolf' in years, not since my mother died and my father stopped caring."

“Stop,” I said. My voice shook. “You are not real."

“Touch the stone.”

The whisper turned into many voices talking over each other.

“Touch the stone.”

“Show her.”

I tried to stand, but my legs would not move; they were locked in place like roots grown into the ground.

“Touch the stone, Lyra.”

My name…they knew my name.

I looked at the altar; the black rock looked very old and still. It seemed normal at first, nothing strange.

But my hand reached out before my mind said yes.

My fingers touched the stone and the world suddenly burst into bright silver light.

The shrine began to glow, not the candles or the moon, but the stone itself.

Light poured out like water breaking through a dam.

It filled the walls, even my body.

I screamed…

Not because it hurt, but because I felt something I had never felt before, a presence…

Something very old touched my mind. It wasn’t good or bad. It just knew I was there.

The whispers became a loud roar.

“She is marked.”

“The moon chose her.”

“Before birth she was already chosen.’

“She is marked.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but I could not. The stone held me like a mother holding a child.

Then I saw them.

Behind my closed eyes, I felt a quick flash: a woman with silver hair standing in a field of white flowers and a wolf with fur like starlight falling off a cliff.

Then a baby was crying in the snow while the moon hung directly above, and the baby was me.

The light was gone as I fell onto the stone floor. My ears rang, and my hand burned where I touched the altar. When I looked at my palm, there was a thin silver line across it like a fresh scar.

I crawled backwards until I hit the shrine wall.

The whispers were gone, but the silence felt even worse.

I looked down at my hand again.

The silver mark pulsed twice, then it faded into my skin like it had never been there.

Outside, a wolf howled, not from our pack but from the deep forest.

And it sounded like it was calling my name and for a moment,I stopped breathing…