The Wolf Within Her: Heir of the Lost Bloodline

The alarm buzzed at exactly six-thirty, just as it had every morning for the past six years. Elowyn Maeloria didn't need it. Her eyes were already wide open, fixed on the sterile ceiling of her one-bedroom apartment, searching for cracks that simply weren't there. The silence in her room was absolute, so complete that every subtle creak of the old walls felt deafening.

She sat up slowly, her chestnut hair falling around her shoulders. With a practiced gesture, she brushed it behind her ears before reaching for her soft, worn robe. Her bare feet padded across the wooden floor, cool and smooth beneath her soles. The routine was ingrained now, a second nature she performed without thought: stretch, bathroom, wash her face, toast two slices of bread, eat them dry with lukewarm coffee, dress for class, and finally, walk.

Every action was measured, predictable, purposeful.

Elowyn didn't keep close friends, not because she was shy or unkind. It was simpler than that: she just didn't have the capacity for warmth anymore. People arrived with questions, with distracting noise, with burdensome expectations. She preferred the shadows, preferred blending seamlessly into the background. It was far easier to hide that way.

Especially when you were living with a 'curse'.

Her phone vibrated once on the kitchen counter, a soft tremor that broke the quiet. A calendar reminder. She didn't need it. She already knew today was her birthday. Her twenty-second. The day her mother used to call her miracle baby.

Now, no one called at all.

She stared at the screen, the blinking reminder mocking her with its cheerfulness. There were no messages from her family, no belated greetings, not even a single spam call. With a quiet sigh, she muted the phone, shoved it deep into her bag, and grabbed her coat.

The streets of Aeriton were as polished as always. An early morning rain had left everything slick and shining, reflecting the cool, grey light. High-rise buildings loomed above her, sheer glass and sharp silver edges. Beneath them, people flowed like a river, rushing through their own routines: women in impeccably tailored coats, men in dark, unreadable sunglasses. Cars, too expensive to bother naming, slid past without a sound, their tires whispering on the wet asphalt.

Elowyn slipped between them, a quiet ghost in the vibrant city.

She took the long route to campus, her gaze fixed on the cracked patterns of the sidewalk. Her hood was pulled up, earbuds nestled in her ears, though no music played. It was her shield. People, she'd learned, respected silence more when they believed you were already occupied.

Classes passed in a blur. Literature, then Sociology, then the dreary lab. Her professors, predictably, didn't know her name. Her classmates probably thought she was mute. When the final bell rang, she didn't linger.

Instead of walking straight home, she turned towards a small convenience store, tucked cozily between a florist bursting with color and a dusty antique shop. The air inside always smelled faintly of cinnamon and lemon cleaning spray – a familiar, oddly comforting blend.

She browsed the bakery shelf, choosing a single red velvet cupcake with a generous swirl of cream cheese frosting. It was the fanciest one they had. Then she wandered to the party aisle and found a tiny pack of birthday candles, simple blue and white.

There were only three other people in the store, but one of them made her stomach knot with sudden dread. She didn't need to look twice to know who it was.

Maedra.

Her cousin...once family. Now a stranger, cold and sharp.

Maedra Maeloria was everything Elowyn wasn't. Blonde, her movements effortlessly graceful, her posture radiating an innate elegance. She wore a long, cream-colored coat over a designer dress, her heels clicking against the tiled floor with a confident, almost arrogant rhythm. Maedra had always been so polished, even as a child. And she had always looked at Elowyn as if she were nothing more than dirt beneath her expensive shoes.

Elowyn ducked swiftly, hiding herself behind a tall shelf crammed with greeting cards. Her fingers trembled as she clutched the single cupcake. A confrontation was the last thing she needed. Not here. Not today. Not when the only thing she truly desired was to eat a small piece of sugar and whisper a solitary wish into a flickering flame.

Thankfully, Maedra didn't see her. She was laughing softly into her phone, the same cruel, tinkling sound Elowyn remembered from their teenage years. Then, as quickly as she'd appeared, Maedra was gone, her heels clicking sharply against the wet concrete outside.

Elowyn paid for her meager purchases and left minutes later, still feeling the tremor in her hands.

By the time she reached her apartment, the city was already sinking into the soft embrace of dusk. She lit two small, soft-glow lamps in the living room, bathing the space in a warm, inviting light. She sat cross-legged on the wooden floor beside her coffee table. The solitary cupcake sat in the center, a tiny, defiant beacon. The single candle stood upright within its frosting, a fragile tower of hope.

She struck a match.

The flame flickered alive, a soft, dancing golden light.

She closed her eyes.

If anyone had been there, they might have laughed at the sheer seriousness etched on her face. A grown woman kneeling before a cupcake as if it were a sacred shrine. But it wasn't about the cake...or the candle.

It was about the only tradition she had left.

She inhaled deeply, held her breath, and whispered, the words barely a breath against the quiet room: "Please. Just let me be normal. Let them never find me. Let me have peace."

Her throat tightened. Her chest burned with a familiar ache, with words she didn't dare speak aloud.

'I'm tired of hiding.'

'I'm tired of being forgotten.'

'I'm tired of waiting for something that will never come.'

She blew the candle out.

The room fell into silence once more. A heavy kind of quiet that pressed in on her ribs, making it hard to breathe. She didn't cry. Elowyn hadn't cried in years.

But something 'shifted' in the air.

She felt it the moment she stood and walked towards the bathroom. The mirror fogged slightly, even though the water wasn't running. A sharp, icy prickling sensation crawled up her spine, like an invisible hand brushing her skin.

She dismissed it. Probably just the old radiator kicking on or the faint, lingering scent of candle smoke.

She showered quickly, brushed her teeth with practiced efficiency, pulled on her favorite soft cotton nightgown, and curled up beneath her weighted blanket. Sleep didn't come easily, as usual, but eventually, she drifted into a restless slumber.

And that was when the 'burning' started.

At first, she thought it was just a dream, a common nightmare where her body felt impossibly heavy, her limbs frozen in place. Then the heat spread, sharp and searing, racing from her collarbone down her chest, wrapping around her waist like a tightening coil of fire.

She gasped, a choked sound caught in her throat.

Her eyes flew open, wide and terrified.

The burning intensified, an agonizing warmth that felt like her skin was being etched from the inside out. She tore the blanket off, her breath shallow, heart hammering against her ribs. Her nightgown clung to her, suddenly feeling like a second skin, suffocating.

She stumbled out of bed, blindly reaching for the cool porcelain of the sink.

That's when she saw it.

Something glowing beneath her skin. A mark.

A perfect, shimmering silver crescent, curling just beneath her collarbone, as if branded there by some invisible, ancient hand.

Her knees buckled.

She clawed at the skin, but there was no pain from the action itself. It wasn't a wound. It was a mark.

A claiming.

She scrambled backward from the mirror, shaking uncontrollably, her mind screaming in disbelief.

'No.'

'It couldn't be.'

'Not her.'

She was human. Cast out. Rejected. The Maeloria blood, the magic, the legacy, it had skipped her. That was why they had left her behind. That was why her mother had died alone. That was why Maedra had always called her a curse.

This shouldn't be happening.

Unless the curse was breaking.

Unless someone had found her.

And then, from deep within her bones, something ancient stirred.

Not a voice she could hear with her ears.

A call, a primal summons.

She collapsed onto the cold bathroom floor, gasping for air, clutching her chest as the silver mark pulsed again, a vibrant, terrifying glow against her skin.

And in the deepest shadows outside her window, something watched her.

Waiting.