Chapter 2 the night that broke me
The forest is quieter than ever tonight.
But the silence is a lie.
Beneath the stillness, beneath the black velvet of the sky, a storm rages inside me.
It started long ago—one night, burned into memory with all the sharpness of broken glass.
That night changed everything.
I still remember the way the moon hung low, swollen and red like a bleeding wound.
The air was thick and heavy, scenting the earth with the bitter tang of smoke and sorrow. The world smelled like grief.
I was thirteen, but I felt smaller than ever, swallowed whole by a nightmare that had nothing to do with the darkness outside.
When the rogues came—wild, ruthless—I thought it was a battle like any other.
But it wasn’t.
Not for me.
In the weeks that followed, the pack’s whispered blame found its way to me.
Why hadn’t I screamed louder? Why hadn’t I run faster?
Why was I the only one left standing?
Their eyes held questions edged with suspicion.
I was no longer the beta’s daughter.
I was a scapegoat.
A shadow.
At first, I didn’t understand.
I couldn’t.
I was still drowning in the ache of loss—the absence of my parents, the shattered remnants of my childhood.
I replayed that night over and over.
The crackle of flames.
The ragged breaths of my mother, weak but fighting.
My father’s roar, a desperate charge that ended in silence.
The cold steel against my throat.
The sick taste of fear.
But others saw something else.
Whispers that I should have fought harder.
That I should have warned the pack.
That my blood was tainted.
I tried to hold on.
To prove I wasn’t the broken thing they painted me as.
But every glance was a blade.
Every word a cut.
Every touch an accusation.
The nights grew colder.
The forest, once a place of comfort, became a cage.
The wolf inside me snarled in frustration and loneliness.
I didn’t howl for help.
I howled in anger.
I trained harder.
Pushed my body beyond limits.
Sharpened my claws until they bled.
But the rage I carried wasn’t just from loss.
It was from betrayal.
From the pack that turned its back.
From the silence that screamed louder than any voice.
My temper became a shield.
Quick to flare, quicker to bite.
I learned to hide the cracks beneath a mask of fury.
But the thirst for vengeance burned hotter.
Not just for the rogues who tore my family apart.
But for the pack that let me fall.
Exile came like a slow poison.
Not a single moment of confrontation.
Just a quiet, collective turning away.
I was told I was a danger—unstable, reckless, too wild to trust.
A risk to the pack’s fragile peace.
I remember the day I left.
The sky was heavy with rain.
Drops like tears hammered the earth as I walked away from everything I’d ever known.
No goodbyes.
No mercy.
Just the weight of a future I had to carve out alone.
The first weeks were the hardest.
Cold nights without shelter.
Hungry mornings without the comfort of pack.
Silent days filled only with the echo of my own thoughts.
I felt the wolf slipping beneath the surface, hungry for release.
But I held it back.
Because to give in was to lose control.
Yet the darkness followed.
In my dreams.
In the woods.
In the shadows of my own mind.
I saw my parents’ faces twisted in pain.
Heard the rogues’ laughter mixing with the voices of those who cast me out.
Trust became a forgotten word.
I learned to move without leaving a scent.
To listen without revealing myself.
To survive by being unseen.
But the thirst for vengeance never faded.
It simmered beneath my skin.
A fire fueled by every whispered insult, every cold shoulder, every bite of loneliness.
I vowed to find the rogues.
To make them pay.
To reclaim the honor stolen from my blood.
Yet, even as I planned, a small part of me wondered if the real enemy wasn’t the rogues.
If the true betrayal was the pack itself.
One cold morning, as frost kissed the leaves, I found myself at the edge of the Hollowdeep woods.
The place where the old magic lingered.
Where secrets breathed beneath moss and stone.
I knelt, tracing my fingers over the soft earth.
Whispering a prayer to the ancestors I barely remembered.
I was no longer the little girl who hid behind her parents.
I was something else.
Something darker.
The wolf inside me stirred, restless and raw.
It ached to run.
To hunt.
To fight.
To scream into the night and be heard.
But I held it back.
I had to.
Because the path ahead was one I had to walk alone.
And yet, in the stillness, I felt a flicker of something else.
A spark of hope.
That maybe, one day, I could find my way back.
Not to the pack that exiled me.
But to myself.
The forest whispered secrets then—soft, like a lullaby and sharp as a blade.
I listened.
And for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to dream.
That was the night that broke me.
And the night that began the slow burn of everything I would become.