Chapter Four
1240 Words
JOVANI’S POV
I stood just outside the stone hall, the last light of dusk fading behind the pines. The wind carried the scent of the Moonshade girl…no, the woman. Ellie. Beneath blood and soot, there was something older in her scent. Something my wolf hadn’t recognized in years.
Dane stepped out from the shadows.
“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” he said without preamble.
“She’s here,” I replied flatly. “That’s all that matters.”
Dane folded his arms. “The deal was for peace. We already had them cornered. We could’ve taken more.”
I turned to him slowly. “And started a war?”
He scoffed. “So instead, we take their scapegoat? Their cursed girl? That’s a trade?”
“She’s not cursed.”
“You don’t even know what she is.” He frowned.
I didn’t blink. “Not yet.”
Dane stared at me like he wanted to say more, but my voice came low and final.
“No one harms her.”
His jaw clenched. “Alpha Jovani…”
“No one I repeat. Not with words, not with hands, not even in passing.”
Silence stretched between us.
“She’s important,” I said finally, and for the first time, I let a thread of doubt in. “I don’t know how. But there’s something about her. Something I felt the moment I saw her.”
Dane didn’t argue again. He just nodded once, sharply, and turned away.
Inside, the fire burned low. I didn’t check on her. Not yet. She needed time to eat, to rest, to breathe in silence. Something told me she hadn’t done that in years.
ELLIE’S POV
I tossed in the unfamiliar bed, the warmth of furs foreign against my bruised skin. My fingers curled tight around my mother’s scarf, now a fraying reminder of a life stolen.
Sleep came in fragments. And then it hit like a wave of cold flame through my bones.
I was no longer in the room.
I stood in a forest of silver mist, trees stretching to a moonless sky. My breath came fast, shallow, as fog clung to my skin.
And then I heard it.
A howl.
Not from beyond but within.
Low, ancient, aching.
My wolf screaming. Pounding against walls I could not see.
I clutched my chest. My knees hit the earth.
The voice came. Not words, but a sound like thunder through blood.
“You are mine.”
Then another voice, sharp and cruel, rising over it:
“You’ll never shift. You’re nothing. You’re mine to control.”
I recognized Wesley’s voice.
A memory and a spell.
The night he bound me.
I remembered the ritual. His fingers smeared with ash. My back to the altar. The words he chanted as I cried and begged. I had only been a girl.
And when it was done, my wolf was gone and silenced.
Until now.
Now it clawed, scratched, screamed to be free.
My eyes opened wide to the room. The stone. The fire.
But my skin burned. My pulse thundered. I gasped, curling forward, teeth clenched.
The bindings were weakening.
My wolf wasn’t gone.
It was waiting.
JOVANI’S POV
“She won’t look me in the eye,” I said flatly, my voice low as I leaned against the doorway of the healer’s hut.
Lira didn’t turn from the herbs she was sorting, but I caught the slight pause in her hands.
“She looked at me,” she replied casually.
I narrowed my eyes. “With you, she looks up. With me, she looks past or down.”
“Maybe because I’m not the one who dragged her across a border,” she muttered, voice low but not without bite.
I ignored that.
“She doesn’t see me as a threat,” Lira continued, measuring dried roots into a bowl. “You, on the other hand, you’re an Alpha. And you dragged her across a border she didn’t choose to cross.”
“She was a peace offering,” I muttered, jaw tight.
“She was a girl,” she snapped, finally looking up, “and she still is.”
I pushed off the doorframe and stepped further in. “She ate last night.”
Lira nodded. “I left the tray in her room. Most of it was gone by morning.”
Maela the healer then stepped forward. Older, sharper, eyes honed like a hawk’s. “She’s not malnourished, but she’s worn thin. Fresh scars on her back and old ones too. The lash marks weren’t meant to discipline, they were meant to silence.”
I nodded slightly. “I assumed as much.”
“She flinches at everything. Even when I just reached for the bandages.” Lira added quickly.
“She’s scared of wolves,” Maela muttered. “And we both know that’s not something a pup is born with. It’s taught.
My eyes flickered, and for a long moment, I said nothing. Then, “And her wolf?”
Maela and Lira exchanged a glance.
“She’s bound,” Maela said. “Not just blocked by trauma. Someone used a spell, some old, cruel work. It’s holding her wolf in place like a cage.”
Lira looked up at me. “I’ve only seen one binding like that before. It doesn’t just suppress, it severs instincts. No wonder she’s afraid of everything. She’s been living half-dead.”
My brows drew together, but I kept my voice calm. “Can it be undone?”
Maela sighed. “Eventually maybe. But it’ll take more than just herbs and time.”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck, feeling the weight of it all settle in deeper.
————————————————————————————
A little later, at the hallway outside Ellie’s room, I stood outside the door, hand raised halfway to knock, then lowered it again.
What was I even going to say?
“Good morning”?
“Sorry for the kidnapping”?
I drew a breath and knocked softly.
No answer.
I waited a beat, then opened the door a crack. She was sitting by the far wall, legs pulled close, arms wrapped around her knees. The empty tray sat beside her.
She barely looked up, and then immediately dropped her gaze.
“Ellie,” I said gently.
She didn’t move, she didn’t flinch either.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.” I said
Still no reply.
“You don’t have to talk,” I added quickly. “I know this isn’t easy.”
Her hands tightened slightly around her knees.
“I’ll leave you alone,” I said, stepping back.
But just before I pulled the door closed, I heard her voice, soft, rough and quiet.
“Why… me?”
I froze.
I turned back slowly. She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were locked on the floor, but her voice had cracked something open.
I answered honestly.
“Because you’re not what they said you were. And I think you’ve always known that.”
She didn’t speak again.
But as I left, I heard a breath just beneath the silence.
Deep. Measured. The kind someone takes when they’ve just started to feel something they haven’t felt in years. Perhaps hope.
- Writer
