Chapter 11

Chapter 11
Chapters Awakening

The chill had long since subsided. My thoughts were dispersed like ash in the wind, and my body felt numb. When I stopped crawling, it wastery to me. I only know that I was completely engulfed by the jungle.

Branches scratched my flesh. My nails were covered in dirt. My wolf is quiet. I breathed shallowly. My heart is barely surviving.

In the darkness, something changed.

Not a voice, no sound. Just the distinct feeling of being noticed.

eyeEyesyesrving. judginJudgingng a choice.

Next, heat. Not fire. Not the comforting embrace. But the kind of heat that seems like it's being forced back into your body raw, primordial heat. A shock. A breeze.

I let out a gasp.

He was also present.

He remained silent. didn'tDidn'tcontact with me. simplySimplyred before me as if he had been carved out of the wilderness. Crazy. scarreScarredrbly strong without apology. I ought to have been afraid of him, but I wasn't. The way he gazed at me made me feel... conclusive. As though I had just been given over to something inevitable by the universe.

He lifted me without my resistance.

The world became hazy. Trees were bleeding into one another. My awareness wavered in and out. I sensed his strength, though, even in the fog. Not onNotbodily. Something else was present. There was something old about his gait. As if he were exempt from the same regulations as everyone else.

I was lying beside a fire when I opened my eyes once more.

They had taken care of my wounds. I changed into new clothes. I ought to have been suspicious and terrified. However, I felt tied instead.

He had a little camp. Keep quiet. No pack smell. No other people in sight. Only him. Only me. Additionally, I had a nagging suspicion that I wasn't the same person who had passed out in the forest.

I sat up, my hands shaking. Not out of weakness.

Based Based feelings.

It throbbed under my flesh.

Strength.

Something had burst inside of me, and it wasn't only wolf; the hat was spilling out. It was older. darkerDarkerame back as though my thoughts had called him. His gaze met mine. Not surprisingly. Just consciousness.

He didn't ask me my name. He was aware already. Or perhaps he didn't give a damn.

But what dad diDadare about was who I was growing into.

His face was unreadable as he made one full round around me. Then he came to a halt. And siAndy gazed.

Nothing to say. Something much more personal than discussion, just a quiet exchange.

He saw the desire for retribution.

He noticed me.

Not the shattered girl her pack abandoned.

Not the partner who was cast aside in public.

Not the unimportant daughter.

But behind my eyes, a storm was building.

He gave one nod. Slow. Intentional.

And I got it.

This was not a rescue.

It was a rebirth.

The days blended into one another. I wasn't sleeping, though. I was getting up. He pulled me painfully and slowly through the brink of death and back into life.

I became sharper from the pain.

I was shaped by the silence.

And his presence served as a reminder of who I could become since he never showed me sympathy or coddling.

I didn't require rescue.

I had to be let loose.

The key was him.

He was much more than Smore, implying a renegade Alpha, though. When the forest itself hunched over him, that much became evident. When whens screamed far away without coming near. When I asked him hypothetical questions, he appeared to know the answers before I had a chance to consider them through more than that.

And it drew me in like a war blade.

I stood one night while the moon bled scarlet and the fire crackled low. I was no longer shaky. My steps were steady now. I examined my scarred, more resilient hands. In a neighboring pool, my reflection revealed eyes that had stopped crying.

He observed from afar. Never stops observing.

But he came over that night.

Not in words.

With iWithtion.

Something he pressed into my hand. Chilly chilly. writteWrittenintelligible runes. I didn't have to, though. I understood what it meant.

A decision.

To abandon everything.

To accept everything else.

I encircled it with my fingertips.

And beneath me, the ground shook.

It wasn't a metaphor. The earth actually moved. Trees moaned. The wind screamed through the clearing.

My eyes also burnt.

Not while crying.

With initiation.

Dark Imagination

He didn't recoil.

Because he had been waiting for this.

Not only my awakening.

My rise.

But I saw it in that instant, right before my legs failed, right before the wind stopped, and right before his arms re-ensnared me.

An idea.

Jake.

bleediBleedingling.

pleadiPleadingme... standing over him, my armor-like shadow circling my limbs.

However, I wasn't grinning.

I was in tears.

Because of the face next to him the one that's having trouble breathing 

was mine.

Then there was darkness.

I was broken by the vision.

Not due to Jake.

Not even Selena's fault.

However, I had witnessed my own death. But I had been the one standing, too. Tall. Tallng.

What was meant by it?

With the odd rune stone still in my fingers, burning hot now, my body trembled. Breath caught in my throat like thorns as I collapsed to my knees. My inner wolf growled not in rebellion, but in surrender.

And there was another response.

Not the rooted draw of nature, not the comforting warmth of pack.

No.

It was chilly. Never-ending. whispeWhisperingdarkness that had started to seep into me in the Shadowfang territory has stopped doing so. Flooding was occurring.

I wasn't drowning, though.

I was taking it in.

I refrained from screaming. I felt invisible threads stitching my throat shut. It was the unraveling, not the pain, that caused my vision to blur.

Like a ghost from the forest, the man who was the renegade Alpha materialized next to me. I wasn't touched by him. Just gazed, head cocked, eyes glimmering dimly in the bone-white moonlight.

"I saw myself," I murmured in a harsh, hardly human voice. "I had two glimpses of myself. One is dying, and the other is alive.

His eyes narrowed, but he did not respond.

"I don't get it."

Silence, however.

Then he knelt in front of me rather than next to me.

refusiRefusingsist.

expresExpressingtude.

It was then that I realized. He hadn't come to my aid to cure me.

He was aware of what I was becoming into, therefore he had saved me.

And he wanted me to keep in mind that for some organisms, death is not the end but rather the beginning.

particParticularly like me.

Once, twice, the rune stone pulsed in my palm before breaking apart and turning into fine dust that coiled around my fingers and absorbed into my skin.

As it spread like wildfire through my veins, I let out a cry. I arched back, my hands grabbing the floor with strength rather than pain. Raw, scorching, changing who I am.

At last, the renegade Alpha's voice was low, ancient, and infused with power despite being cracked in parts like shattered glass.

"You perished in the forest," he remarked in a solemn, solemn tone.

"And now you rise," he added. They will be afraid of her, not the girl they turned down.

The pain vanished in an instant.

My body froze.

Behind me, the fire blazed.

And a heart that no longer belonged to a mere werewolf pounded in my chest.

I got up.

Although they were different, my limbs were mine. Increasingly interconnected. More powerful.

It felt like the air parted around me as well.

The outlaw took a step back, his face unreadable. "It starts right now."

"What starts?" My voice was more steady than it should have been as I asked.

He didn't respond, though.

Instead, his body tense, he turned toward the forest.

He responded, "I have something to show you," and disappeared into the darkness.

I did the same.

Not because I had faith in him.

But I was already on this route, whatever it was.

Even the stars seemed far away as we moved deeper into the woods in quiet. Here the trees grew crooked, their trunks darkened, their leaves whispering in the absence of breeze. My instinct told me to go back.

But I continued.

We arrived at a round, ancient clearing. The inscriptions on the stones lining it were identical to the one that had melted into me. Nothing, not even the moon, was reflected by the black pool of water in the center.

His voice was now softer as he stated, "This is where your kind are made." "Those who are forgotten." those are those who are not constrained by the moon or pack.

Even before I got close, I sensed it.

A presence.

Alive.Delivering.

His words, "Your wolf is dead," made my heart skip a beat as I turned to face him.

"What?"

"The old you perished with her. It's not a wolf that now inhabits you. No more.

My breath caught.

"She is more than that. Something linked to an alternative lineage. Shadowborn.

Attracted like gravity, I took a step toward the water.

"What if I get in contact with it?" I inquired.

He didn't respond.

Naturally, he didn't.

Since Sincesired that I do so.

After a moment of hesitation, I stabbed in.

There was no ripple in the pool.

It ate.

The shadows drew not just my hand but also me inside, causing my breath to be torn out of me.

I saw it all in the dark.

My early years.

The denial.

The shame.

The suffering.

Then I saw a new vision that I had never seen before.

Standing amid an ash battlefield is a woman with obsidian eyes.

Wolves bowing to a throne of bones in a palace shrouded in darkness.

And me, above everything.

Not damaged.

Not scared.

Shadow-crowned.

Then I felt a hand grasp hold of me.

Take me away.

I gasped as I landed hard.

A glimmer of relief crossed the rogue's features as he towered over me.

He remarked, "You weren't supposed to see the last part."

I shuddered and sat up. "Why?"

"Because it isn't a vision," he stated in a chilly tone.

"It is a prophecy."

The trees surrounding us howled with a warning rather than wind as the words took hold.

The boundary had been crossed by a hunter.

I sensed it from a great distance.

This cursed wood had been entered by someone from my past.

Not Jake.

Selena.

She was also trying to find me.

However, she wouldn't discover the same Lily.

She would track down the Shadowborn.

I would also be waiting.

I saw a flash of silver at the rogue's back as he turned to disappear once more into the forest.

A mark.

No scar.

A brand.

Selena's father had worn the identical one.

The identical Shadowfang Alpha line crest.

And all of a sudden, I understood

He was more than a rogue.

He was one of them once.

Among the traitors.

And I had simply put all my trust in him