Chapter 4 The Wilderness Doesn't Show Mercy

The forest was no place for the broken - yet that's exactly what I was.

Bleeding. Weak. Lost.

Old Nara's cloak was my only warmth, but it failed to comfort the sharp pain in my shoulder where a thorny branch had torn through my skin last night. My ankle throbbed from a badly taken fall, and my stomach growled with emptiness.

Still, I walked on.

I breathed shallowly, my limbs heavy with fatigue, but the fire in my heart - the one that rejection and banishment had kindled - kept me going.

I would not die here. Not like this.

Sunlight filtered through the canopy in golden beams, creating a illusion of loveliness, but I wasn't fooled. These woods weren't secure. Feral wolves - rogues - prowled here. And they didn't play by pack rules. They didn't care who you were or what you'd suffered.

I found a small cave hidden beneath a heap of moss-covered rock. It was nothing, but it would protect me from the winds - and from predators. I crawled inside, biting my teeth with every movement, and curled up like a frightened pup.

The silence was louder than shrieks.

And in the silence, my wolf whimpered.

She was still there - still with me - but barely. Rejection tears at a wolf's soul. Pushing her from the pack weakened her connection to the earth, to the spirits. She was fading. And so was I.

But we clung to each other.

"We survive," I whispered to her. "No matter what."

The next day, I made a crude bandage from a ripped piece of my skirt and tied it around my shoulder wound. It felt like fire, but the bleeding slowed. I found berries by a stream - tiny and tart, but enough to keep me going. I gulped greedily, ignoring the cramp in my stomach that told me it wasn't enough.

The robbers caught up with me on the third night.

It started with the scent - awful and musky, like rot and blood. Then the snarls. Low. Threatening.

I woke up to a crack in the cave, heart pounding.

There were three of them. Big. Snarling. Their eyes glowed yellow in the dark, and their coats were defined by ripped fur and open sores. They weren't pack wolves. These were scavengers, the kind that fed on the weak. The kind that thrived on fear.

And I... I was exactly what they were searching for.

"There she is," one of them grated in a voice like stones. "Heard she was a looker. Rejected little mate. Alone and ripe for the picking."

My blood went cold.

I crawled backward, hitting the stone wall behind me.

"Please," I whispered, knowing it would do no good. "I have nothing. Leave me alone."

One of them laughed - an ugly, cruel sound. "Oh, darling, you have everything. That scent? You're special. The Alpha didn't catch it, but we do."

They attacked.

I shifted without thinking - my wolf shrieked in agony as my form changed, torn between her dwindling strength and the will to live.

The pain was worse than anything I had ever known. My body twisted and stretched, bones cracking, fur tearing through torn skin. But when I was on all fours, I felt her - my wolf - rising from the ashes like a fire that would not be quenched.

I ran.

Branches slapped my face, my paws tore earth, and breath struggled in my lungs. I could hear their snarls behind me, the thudding of paws chasing mine. I was smaller, slower, weaker - but I had something they didn't.

Desperation.

I raced through thick underbrush, splashed through shallow creeks, and jumped over fallen logs. One of them clipped my hind leg, and a wave of pain burned through me. I yelped and stumbled, but I didn't stop. I couldn't.

Not now. Not ever.

I smashed through a thicket and leaped over a steep ridge - tumbling down in a fall into a rocky brook below. The icy water shocked the breath from my lungs and the fall knocked the wind from me, but I did not drown.

When I looked back, the rogues were at the ridge, snarling down at me - but they did not follow.

Maybe they were afraid of the river. Or maybe something else scared them off.

I didn't know. I pulled myself to the riverbank, soaked and bleeding, and collapsed under a tree.

Alive. Barely. But alive.

When I woke up, morning had come again.

Soft light glinted on the water. My fur was matted, and my leg hurt, but the rogues were gone.

I forced myself to shift back into human form, tears of pain running down my face as my bones rearranged themselves. I was bruised and scratched, my clothes in tatters, but I was alive.

A girl without a home.

A wolf without a pack.

And yet...

Still standing.

I tore a strip of bark from a tree and, with a jagged rock, cut a single word into it:

Survive.

Because that's what I would have done.

Not for Darius. Not for the pack that had rejected me. But for me.

For the girl who had once been cast aside.

For the wolf who still had something greater to believe in.

And for the woman I was becoming - the one who had no idea that fate was preparing to place a crown upon her head.