Chapter 3 When the World Forgot Me

Six months.

One hundred and eighty-two days since the night her future slipped through her fingers like grains of salt between trembling hands.

Aria woke with the sun as she always did,not because she wanted to, but because habit was all she had left. There was no purpose waiting for her anymore. No training sessions, no Luna lessons, no healing work, no pack duties.

Just... space.

And silence.

The kind that wraps around your soul and makes you forget what your voice used to sound like.

She tied her hair into a messy braid, not bothering with ribbons like she used to. Her clothes were worn thin at the elbows now, her boots scuffed. She no longer had a seat at the Alpha house table. That space had long been reallocated.

To Selena.

Of course.

The New "Normal"

The village was already alive with morning chatter when Aria stepped outside, a satchel slung across her shoulder. She still helped at the greenhouse just beyond the eastern edge of the pack,plucking herbs, replanting seeds, hauling buckets of water. It was the only task no one had fought her for.

No wolf, no connection to the land. No threat.

The elders had once called her presence there "a temporary kindness." They didn't say it anymore. Now, they just didn't say anything at all.

Her footsteps crunched along the dirt path. As she passed, conversations dimmed. A child's laughter stopped. A few of the young warriors glanced at her, sneering.

"There goes the Hollow Girl."

"She looks thinner."

"She should've left by now."

Aria kept walking, keeping her gaze trained on the horizon like she was searching for something that might save her.

She wasn't sure what anymore.

The Bullies Bloom Boldly

It started subtly. Whispers behind her back. Scraped-out roots in the greenhouse she'd just planted. A ruined lunch left for her in the river.

But lately, they had grown bolder.

Selena, now with a small following of girls who mimicked her every word and gesture, seemed to make it a personal sport.

"Oh, look," she called once during market duty, her voice high and sweet. "The poor little pup without a howl."

Aria had ignored her. That was the rule. Don't feed the fire.

But Selena thrived on silence.

"Maybe she's not even a wolf," another girl giggled. "Maybe she's a cursed deer. That would explain the staring."

And Kael? He was always nearby, always watching,but never speaking.

He never stopped it.

And that hurt more than any insult could.

Lila's Torn Heart

Lila still visited her sometimes,mostly in secret, in the garden when no one was looking.

She brought her bruised fruit, whispered news of the pack, smiled like nothing had changed,but it had.

Lila now wore the blue and silver crest of the Luna's Guard. She was training directly under Selene, preparing to be a senior advisor when Selena eventually took the title.

"I didn't ask for this," she told Aria once, guilt staining her every word. "They didn't even let me choose. I swear I didn't want it this way."

Aria didn't blame her. Not really.

Lila had a gift with herbs and strategy. Even as children, she could out-plan every boy in their class. She was meant for something great.

But it still stung when she had to leave early for "training" or couldn't be seen walking beside Aria in the village anymore.

Sometimes, Aria wanted to scream at her.

Other times, she wanted to hold her and cry into her shoulder the way they used to when dreams still felt reachable.

But mostly, she just smiled and let her go.

Kael's Shadow

He never spoke to her again.

Not really.

Sometimes she'd catch his eyes across a crowd. There was always something there,regret, maybe. Or memory. But it never reached his lips. Never turned into words.

He walked with Selena now. Not lovingly, not joyfully,but publicly. Their bond had not been made official yet, but everyone knew. Selena was already referred to as the "Future Luna."

The role Aria once trained for. Dreamed of.

Was born for, she used to think.

Now, it belonged to someone else. Someone with a wolf.

And Kael? He seemed older now. Hardened. Like the weight of leadership had crushed what was left of the boy who once made her laugh in the rain.

She sometimes wondered if he thought of her when he lay in bed at night.

But then again, maybe he didn't have that luxury.

Little Deaths

Every day brought a new kind of silence.

A new rejection.

A new sliver of her identity peeled away.

When Aria spoke to her parents at dinner, they answered with tired eyes and distracted nods. They didn't say it aloud, but she could feel it,the shame of raising a daughter the moon had overlooked.

She once caught her mother crying softly in the kitchen.

That broke something in her she didn't know could still be broken.

A Flicker of Rebellion

That evening, Aria sat beneath the old moon tree,the sacred oak where young wolves prayed for strength before their first shift. The bark was carved with hundreds of names, each a mark of a successful shift.

Her name was not there.

But she sat anyway, her hands pressed to the cool earth, her eyes searching the sky.

"I'm still here," she whispered to the stars. "Even if you won't speak to me... I'm still here."

And maybe, for the first time in a long time, something stirred deep inside her.

Not a voice. Not a shift.

But a promise.