Chapter 3 What fear leaves behind

They no longer whispered behind my back.

Now, they smiled.

Tight-lipped. Too polite. Eyes that didn't quite meet mine.

It should have felt like an improvement. I used to be invisible...the tall, too-full girl with the wild red hair and no wolf. No one cared where I walked or what I did. They'd barely acknowledged me at all.

Now?

They gave me space in the hallway. Let me pass through the doors first. Averted their eyes, then glanced back when they thought I wasn't looking.

It wasn't kindness.

It was fear.

And it burned worse than rejection ever had.

The days passed in a strange rhythm ,quiet but never still. I kept to the edges of Hollowshade, returning to old habits just to feel normal again.

I helped the elderly grind dried herbs in the healer's tent. I swept the front steps of the training barracks. I walked the creek path twice a day, memorizing every twist in the trees.

I did all the things a cursed girl was not expected to do.

And still, the whispers followed.

They said I was marked. That the Moon Goddess had turned her face from me. That the wilds had changed me into something not quite wolf and not quite witch.

They weren't wrong.

The crescent on my shoulder never faded.

Some mornings it shimmered faintly beneath my skin ...like silver ink etched into bone. At the center, the dark initial pulsed quietly, never clear enough to read but always there.

When I touched it, I felt heat.

When I ignored it, it tingled like a thought trying to be remembered.

I heard his voice more clearly now.

Not every minute. Not even every hour.

But enough that I stopped mistaking it for my imagination.

"You see clearer in the dark."

Sometimes it came when I stood still for too long. Sometimes in dreams.

Once, it murmured as I passed a group of Hollowshade soldiers, standing too close, pretending not to stare.

"You don't need their fear."

It was always calm. Always quiet.

And always right.

I didn't tell anyone about it.

I barely admitted it to myself.

One afternoon, while organizing dried roots near the back of the healer's storage room, I slipped on a broken tile and sliced my palm on a shard of stone.

It wasn't deep, but the pain was immediate.

I hissed and stumbled back, holding my hand tight.

Blood rose fast. Warm. Red.

Then stopped.

Right before my eyes, the skin sealed itself and the gash closing like water over stone. Not even a scar remained.

I stared.

Fingers trembling.

I didn't tell the healer.

That night, I sat by the riverbank with my boots off, legs in the freezing water, just to feel something that wouldn't change me.

The sky stretched heavy above me ,all stars and silence.

"Sey..."

The voice was gentler this time. Like wind through pine.

I didn't answer. But my chest ached with something I couldn't name.

The next day, a boy tripped while carrying firewood near the barracks.

I helped him gather the scattered logs without thinking.

His mother pulled him away before I could stand.

She didn't thank me.

She didn't speak.

She just clutched him and stared at the mark on my shoulder like it was a loaded weapon.

I went home and didn't leave my room for two days.

On the third day, I snapped.

It wasn't loud.

It wasn't violent.

But I stood in the old training yard where I'd once tried so hard to shift like the others, and I struck the center post with my fist.

The wood split straight through, cracking like thunder.

My knuckles didn't even bruise.

I stared down at my hand, heart racing.

"You are waking."

This time, I answered aloud:

"Waking into what?"

No response.

Just the wind curling around me like a second skin.

Later that week, an elder named Wren , one of the only wolves who ever treated me with decency - stopped me outside the supply den.

She was short and wrinkled, her hair gray and her stare sharp.

"You look brighter," she said.

I didn't respond.

She tilted her head.

"And heavier. Not in weight, but in presence. You feel like something growing, Seris. And people fear what grows when it shouldn't."

"What am I becoming?" I asked before I could stop myself.

She smiled. But not kindly.

"That's not the question you should be asking."

"Then what is?"

She leaned in closer, her voice a breath of mist.

"What will you do when you find out?"

A week later, I found him.

I hadn't meant to go that far into the woods.

It was stormy that morning, clouds bloated with rain, thunder growling just beyond the ridge.

I liked storms. They silenced the world. They made the air feel honest.

I followed the southern trail, deeper than I'd ever gone, past the perimeter that marked Hollowshade's edge.

That's where I found him.

Or rather where he crashed through the trees, bleeding and barely breathing.

He was tall but not like Hollowshade wolves. Broader. His coat was torn, blood soaking his left side. There was a scar running from his cheek to his neck, and the way he moved... even injured said he'd been trained by something cruel and old.

I crouched beside him.

His eyes fluttered open.

Not golden. Not glowing.

Green, rimmed with shadow.

"You're not... Hollowshade," he rasped.

My heart thundered. "You know my pack?"

He gave a weak, crooked grin.

"Only a fool would come here dressed in those colors."

"Who are you?"

He didn't answer.

He passed out.

I don't know what made me do it.

Instinct, maybe.

Desperation.

I pressed my hands to his ribs over the deepest wound and willed him not to die.

My skin burned.

Light flared beneath my palms...faint, white-blue, like morning frost.

His breathing evened.

The gash stopped bleeding.

He didn't wake but the pain left his face.

I stumbled back, breath caught in my throat.

What had I done?

What did that mean?

I ran before he could open his eyes.

Later that night, back in my room, I stared at my hands for hours.

They didn't glow.

They didn't burn.

They looked like mine.

But they weren't.

Somewhere deep in my head, I heard the voice again.

"You're almost ready."