Chapter 5 Dramen's Request

Mira

I overheard his name minutes later while passing the refreshment table.

"Evan Draven", someone whispered. "Soon to be Alpha of the Dramen pack."

Dramen. That name sent a chill down my spine.

The Brutal pack.

Every firstborn son of the alpha was doomed. I didn't know much about it, just the rumour-whispers of madness, violence, and early death. of wolves who burnt bright then fell into ruin.

He was Evan?

Why was he looking at me?

I swallowed hard and moved to the next table. I tried to disappear into my role.

But throughout the event, I felt it again and again-his eyes always finding me. Not always directly. Sometimes just in my peripheral vision. Sometimes when I turned away, but I felt it.

I didn't know what he saw in me or what he wanted.

But when I turned to the staff room at the end of the night, one of the organisers handed me a folded paper.

"Someone from the Dramen pack asked this to be sent to your home," she said casually, not even looking up.

I opened it later, in the privacy of the school restroom stall.

It wasn't a note.

It was a receipt.

My name.

A transfer order.

Signed with the Dramen crest.

I wasn't being invited; I was being bought.

That night, I sat in silence at the dinner table. Not that anyone cared.

Sia was busy texting. My stepmother was halfway through a glass of red wine. My dad sat stiffly at the end, expression unreadable.

Then he cleared his throat.

"Mira." He said without looking up. "An opportunity has come. The Dramen Pack saw your... appearance at the event, and they have made an offer."

I said nothing.

He continued, "It's good money; you'll be provided for. They're offering housing, employment-"

"You mean ownership," I said quietly.

"You're selling your daughter away for money. Is that all you care about? Housing? You know about the Dramen, the Alpha who requested me. You've heard of him, haven't you?" I said. "And you're still talking about the good money they're offering. You don't care what happens to me, do you? Once you have the money, it's all good."

My stepmother cut in before he could respond, "Don't be ungrateful; you should be honoured if someone even noticed you. And not just someone. The soon-to-be Alpha of the Dramen,"

Sia snickered. "Maybe they're building a zoo or something."

I pushed back my chair.

"Mira", my father barked, "don't walk away!"

But I already had.

Because if I stayed a second longer, I was going to scream.

I had never talked back to my dad before, but he doesn't seem to care at all about me.

That night I lay awake again.

I stared at the ceiling until my eyes blurred, then turned to the window. Outside, the moon was thin - a mere silver in the sky.

Almost anew.

Almost nothing.

Just like me.

I rolled up my sleeve and looked at the faint crescent mark on my wrist.

It shimmered only for a second.

And I whispered I'd been choking on since I saw him.

"What did you want from me?"

The mark didn't answer.

But deep inside, something cracked open.

And I knew.

My life was no longer mine.

There are parts of me I stopped talking about a long time ago.

Not because I forgot them.

But because they've become...quieter. Like bruises that never healed but stopped hurting just enough for me to pretend they didn't exist.

But the moon has a way of pulling things back.

Even memories.

It was the first day at my new school.

I was nine.

The walls smell like chalk and bleach. Everything was too bright, too clean. Like they were trying to sterilise the fact that kids could be cruel in a way adults would never understand.

My backpack was twice my size. My curls were frizzled from the heat. I had a hole in my left shoe and a mother who had vanished into thin air only six months earlier.

I'd barely said my name before the first boy asked, "Are you the weird girl whose mom ran off with the cult?"

I still remember the teacher's union silence.

I remember the way she didn't correct him.

That first year I stopped talking in class.

My father had enrolled me in Westbridge Academy, a school that cost more than our house. He said it would give me a better start. But he never asked if I wanted to be surrounded by cold brick hallways and kids who called me "Cald-freak".

They used to hide my drawings. Tear pages out of my sketchbooks. Whisper about how I talked to myself at recess. I didn't. I was whispering to the wind.

I used to sit on the swings and trace the moon with the death in my shoes.

They laughed at that too.

"You smell funny," Olivia, the ringleader, said one day, "like pennies and wet grass."

"Like a dog." Another added, giggling.

I didn't understand it then; I just stood there, fist clenched, jaw locked. My ears burnt, my skin tingled.

The next thing I knew, the swing chain beside me snapped too.

No one touched it.

It just broke-split clean at the metal.

They screamed and ran.

I stood still, staring at the chain in my hand like I'd pulled it back without meaning to.

I still don't know what I did, but after that, the stories got worse.

At home things weren't better; Talia didn't believe in therapy. "Waste of money," she used to say. "What you need is structure."

Her vision of structure was silence.

I learnt early that I was the ghost in the house. Meals passed without my name being called. Conversations continued like I didn't exist; I was allowed to eat, sleep, and breathe-as long as I didn't do it too loudly.

Sia once told her friends I was "the leftover".

I overheard. She didn't care.

The worst part?

I didn't even blame her.

Because I didn't know who I was either.

I used to dream about my mother.

My dreams were violent. Her voice called me through the flame. Her face was covered in blood. Her hand was outstretched, but I could never reach her.

Sometimes wolves circled her in the dark.

Sometimes she's the wolf.

And always-always-there was that voice echoing in the background.

"Solen."

I didn't know what it meant. I asked my dad once. He froze. "Where did you hear that?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe from Mom-before..."

He stood up, left the room and never brought it up again.

I learnt not to ask again.

My mother.

Same dark curls. Moonmark between her brows-except I'd never actually seen it. I just knew it was there.

That night she disappeared.

We were eating cinnamon toast in the kitchen. I remember but not vividly.

She had turned to me, eyes glowing.

"Mira", she said, brushing my hair behind my ear. "If anything happens to me, you run. You hear me?"

"Why? Where would I go? And what would happen to you?" I asked.

"To the moon, to the stars. To the moon. You're stronger than they'll let you believe."

I asked three questions, and she only answered one.

"What did you mean?"

She never answered.

That night I woke up to screaming.

Not mine.

Hers.

And when I ran downstairs, she was gone.

No signs of break-in.

No scent.

Just cinnamon on the table... and blood on the floor.

I didn't realise I was crying until my tears hit the paper.

If she were alive, would he want this kind of life for me? To be sold like goods?

I dropped the pencil.

My hands were shaking.