POV: Elara Ashwyn
Run.
That's all my brain screams as I crash through the forest, branches tearing at my skin, my lungs burning with each desperate breath. Behind me, the howling grows louder. Closer. The rogues have caught my scent—a lone female, injured and afraid. Easy prey.
I don't have a wolf to protect me. I don't have weapons. I don't have anything except the primal need to survive.
My foot catches on a root, and I go down hard. Pain explodes through my shoulder. For a moment, just a moment, I lie in the dirt and consider giving up. It would be easier. Faster. Less painful than what they'll do to me.
Then I remember: I'm carrying a child.
Adrenaline floods my veins. I scramble to my feet and keep running, pushing deeper into the forest where the trees grow thicker, where the undergrowth becomes so dense that the rogues' larger forms can't navigate as easily. My small frame is the only advantage I have left.
I run until my legs give out.
Day One
I find a stream just as darkness falls. The water tastes like mud and desperation, but I drink it anyway—long, gulping swallows that make my empty stomach cramp. I haven't eaten since yesterday's mock trial. My hands are shaking, partly from hunger, partly from something else. Something electric and wrong.
That voice in my head. It's still there, lurking at the edges of my consciousness like a predator watching from tall grass.
Hungry, it whispers. We're so hungry.
I press my palms against my temples. "Go away."
Never. We are what you are, little priestess. We are what they tried to kill.
I don't understand. I don't want to understand. Right now, survival is all that matters.
I find berries—red ones that might be poisonous, but I eat them anyway because the alternative is starvation. My stomach revolts. I vomit into the grass, my body convulsing, and I realize with numb horror that something is very wrong.
Day Two
My body has become a traitor.
I'm nauseous constantly. My breasts ache. Every smell makes me want to retch—the wet earth, the rotting leaves, even my own sweat. I'm rationing the berries, drinking only from the stream, and it's not enough. Nothing is enough.
When the rogue pack finds me again, I run. But I'm slower now. Weaker. One of them gets close enough that I feel hot breath on my neck, and I scream—a sound of pure animal terror.
That's when the voice roars.
Not whispered anymore. Full-throated, furious, ancient. It rips out of me like I'm not even human, and the sound is so inhuman that even the rogues hesitate. For one crucial second, they falter.
It's enough. I throw myself into a thicket of thorns and force my way through, ignoring the way they shred my skin. The rogues are larger, more powerful, but they won't follow through the thorns. They circle, frustrated, then eventually slink away to find easier meals.
I collapse on the other side, bleeding, sobbing, and that voice—my voice—laughs.
Good, it purrs. Very good. We're so much stronger than they think.
Day Three
I find a cave in the side of a ravine, and I crawl inside like a wounded animal. The entrance is narrow enough that nothing large can reach me. It's dark enough that I can pretend the outside world doesn't exist.
I collapse on cold stone and stop fighting.
My body is shutting down. I can feel it. The hunger, the exhaustion, the constant nausea has become white noise in my head. I drift in and out of consciousness, not sure anymore if I'm awake or dreaming.
At one point, I'm lucid enough to realize my cycle hasn't come.
It hasn't come since before my Awakening. Since before everything fell apart.
No. No.
I sit up, pressing my hands against my belly, and count back through weeks that feel like years. The slight tenderness. The nausea. The way I threw up yesterday. The emotional fragility I attributed to trauma and betrayal.
Oh gods.
I'm pregnant.
With Darius's child.
The realization hits like a physical blow. Panic floods my chest—crushing, absolute, suffocating. They said my pregnancy was three months along. If that's true, then this baby—Darius's heir—is growing inside me right now. In this darkness. In this death trap.
They would take it. The Moon Court, the pack, everyone—if they knew, they would rip this child from my body and use it as a weapon. They would make it into everything evil, everything my baby doesn't deserve to be.
I press my hand against my belly, and I feel it.
A flutter. Barely there. So small that it might be my imagination.
But it's real.
"Listen to me," I whisper to this impossible child growing inside my broken body. "I don't know who your father is—not really. I thought I knew him, but he's a stranger. But I know you. And I will never let them touch you. Never. Do you understand me?"
My voice cracks.
"I'm sorry I can't give you better than this cave and these berries and a mother who's falling apart. But I can give you one thing: I will survive for you. I will become something so dangerous, so powerful, that nobody will ever dare to take you from me."
I place both hands on my belly, and I make a vow that burns like fire through my veins.
"We will survive this. Both of us. And one day—one day—everyone who did this to us will pay."
The baby kicks. Hard. Like agreement.
That's when I hear it.
Not the howling of rogues.
Something else. Something worse. The sound starts like distant thunder, but it's not thunder. It's the crack of trees splitting, the sound of earth trembling, the noise of absolute darkness moving through the forest.
The rogues outside the cave hear it too. Their howls turn to whimpers of terror. I hear them scattering, fleeing, abandoning the hunt.
Whatever is coming—it's terrifying even to them.
I press myself against the back of the cave, my hand never leaving my belly, and I wait. The shadows outside grow deeper. Darker. They stop looking like shadows and start looking like things—writhing, hungry, alive.
A figure emerges in the cave opening.
At first, I can't see him clearly. He's tall, impossibly tall, and he's surrounded by darkness that moves like it's part of his body. When my eyes finally focus, I see a face—or what's left of it.
A mask. Black as death itself.
And behind that mask, eyes that glow with silver-shadow fire.
"The rogue pack has abandoned you," the masked figure says, and his voice is smoke and steel and everything terrible. "Wise. They recognized a predator above their station."
He steps inside the cave.
"You're dying," he observes, not unkindly. "The child inside you is dying. You have perhaps two days before the infection from those wounds kills you both."
He extends a hand.
"I can save you," he says. "Both of you. I can give you power, protection, vengeance against everyone who did this. But first, you must answer one question."
I look at that outstretched hand. At those glowing eyes. At this impossible being who appeared like a god from shadow.
"What question?" I whisper.
"Are you willing to become something more than human? Something that has never existed before?"
Behind the mask, I sense him smiling.
"Are you willing to become mine?"