The cellar was damp and cold, its stone walls slick with moisture, its air heavy with the scent of mold and rotting wood. It was not meant for living things — only for storage. Yet it was here, in this forgotten hollow beneath the packhouse, that Lyra often found herself.
The servants whispered that it was fitting. A girl like her belonged in the dark.
Lyra curled into the corner, her knees pulled tight to her chest, her arms wound around them like frail bars of a cage. Her thin dress clung to her skin, still damp from the spilled water earlier, and every breath sent a dull ache through her bruised ribs. Her cheek stung where Kael's strike had landed, the skin already swelling.
But none of that hurt as much as the silence.
She pressed her face into her knees and let the tears come. No sobs, no wails, only the quiet, broken sound of air trembling through her chest. She had long ago learned not to cry too loudly. Loud crying earned beatings. Loud crying was weakness paraded for others to exploit.
So her tears came in silence, dripping down her arms, soaking into the rough fabric of her dress.
*Why am I here?*
The thought repeated endlessly, a cruel litany in her mind. Why had she been born into this family? Why had she been cursed to live among wolves who despised her existence?
Her sister's voice echoed in her head — Leona's whisper from earlier that day, sharp as a blade: "You will never be loved, Lyra. Never be chosen. You will never escape your chains."
The words struck deeper than Kael's blows.
She wanted to believe they weren't true, but every day was proof. Every laugh at her expense, every slap, every command barked at her like she was filth — it carved Leona's prophecy deeper into her bones.
Her chest hitched, but she pressed her lips together, refusing to let the sound escape.
Still, her mind wandered. Back to the nights when she was younger, when she still dared to dream.
She used to sit by her tiny window and watch the wolves run beneath the moonlight. Their howls rose like music, their bodies swift, fierce, unstoppable. She had imagined herself among them — wind in her hair, grass beneath her feet, the moonlight painting her silver as she ran free.
In those dreams, she was not weak. She was not despised. She was not Lyra, the mistake. She was something else. Something more.
But dreams had a cruel way of breaking.
When her twelfth year came, and every young wolf in the pack shifted for the first time, she had waited with bated breath for her turn. She had waited for the pull in her blood, the fire in her bones, the breaking and remaking that would mark her as one of them.
It never came.
The others laughed. Her sister sneered. The Alpha decreed it proof that she was nothing but a useless human, a shame to their bloodline. From that day on, she had been little more than a servant in her own home.
Her dreams of running under the moon had withered, but sometimes — like now — they rose unbidden, cruel reminders of what she would never have.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the image of her imagined self — strong, fast, free. It only made the ache sharper.
"I wish…" Her voice was barely a whisper, muffled against her knees. "I wish I could disappear."
The words slipped out before she could swallow them back.
What good was life, when it was nothing but chains and bruises, silence and scorn?
Her tears blurred the stone floor until it shimmered, the damp streaks catching the dim light of the cellar lantern. For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it would feel like to stop. To stop fighting, to stop breathing, to stop existing in a world that had no place for her.
Her chest tightened at the thought. Her body shivered.
But something deep inside her resisted.
It wasn't loud, wasn't clear, but it was there — a stubborn spark, a whisper in her blood that refused to let her surrender. It was not hope, not exactly. Hope was too bright for a place like this. It was something colder, harder.
*Endure.*
That was all it said.
Lyra drew a shaking breath. Her tears slowed, though they did not stop. She lifted her head just enough to rest her temple against the wall. The stone was cool, grounding.
The cellar was silent, but inside her, that whisper echoed, faint but unyielding.
*Endure.*
Her fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, clutching it tight as though holding herself together.
She did not know why she felt it. She did not know what it meant. She only knew that no matter how much her body longed for release, some deeper force inside her refused to let her die.
She hated it. She wanted to scream at it, to silence it. But in the same breath, she clung to it, because it was the only thing keeping her from crumbling completely.
So she cried silently until the lantern burned low, her body rocking gently with the rhythm of her breath, her mind filled with ghosts of dreams and chains of reality.
When exhaustion finally claimed her, she drifted into uneasy sleep against the cold wall.
And in her dreams, once more, she was running beneath the moon.
But this time, the wolves who chased her were not laughing. They were afraid.
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