THE EXILE DOOR

CHAPTER 2

They didn’t chase me right away.

That was the cruelest part.

If they’d chased me, it would have meant I mattered.

Instead, the pack let me walk through the trees alone, like my existence was a nuisance finally leaving the room.

The forest swallowed sound. Snow crunched under my boots. My breath came out in sharp white ghosts.

My wolf paced under my skin, restless.

Wounded.

Angry.

Not at Kieran—not only.

At the whole pack. At the system. At the way my fate had been spoken aloud like a sentence, not a gift.

At the way the Moonwater turned black like it was mourning.

I reached the healer’s cabin at the edge of territory and found my mother already there.

She’d beaten me home.

Of course she had.

She stood by the door with a bundle in her arms—my bag, already packed.

Her eyes were wet but her expression was iron.

“You have to leave,” she said.

My chest cracked. “Leave? For how long?”

“For good.” Her voice broke on the last word. She steadied it. “They’ll blame you. They’ll call you a curse. And the elders—Aria, they saw the water. They saw what you are.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

“I do.” She swallowed hard. “And I prayed you’d never have to.”

She pushed the bundle into my hands. Inside were dried herbs, a small knife, a worn notebook, and a pendant I’d never seen before—black stone set in silver, warm against my palm.

“What is this?” I whispered.

My mother’s hand covered mine. “A key.”

“To what?”

“To somewhere you can survive.”

A knock hit the door.

Three sharp strikes.

Authority.

My mother stiffened. “Don’t open it.”

Another knock.

Harder.

“Aria Marrow,” a man called—one of Alpha Rowan’s guards. “By order of the council, you are to present yourself for evaluation.”

Evaluation.

That was what they called it when they wanted to decide if you were safe enough to keep alive.

My wolf snarled silently.

My mother stepped closer, voice low. “Go out the back. Take the ravine trail. Don’t stop until you hit the old stone marker.”

“What about you?” I whispered.

Her smile was small. Devastated. “I’ll be fine.”

We both knew that was a lie.

Another knock—impatient now.

My mother shoved me toward the back door. “Aria. Listen. If anyone asks, I didn’t help you.”

I hesitated.

Then she kissed my forehead, the way she did when I was sick.

“Run,” she breathed.

So I did.

The back door opened onto freezing wind. I slipped into the tree line, heart hammering, bag slung over my shoulder.

I didn’t cry.

Not yet.

Because something inside me was changing—like the black water had cracked open a part of my wolf I’d never touched.

The ravine trail was steep, treacherous. Ice glazed the stones. I nearly fell twice.

Then, in the distance, I heard it—

A howl.

Not a pack call.

A hunting cry.

They’d decided I wasn’t worth chasing until they thought I might get away.

My lungs burned. My legs screamed.

I ran harder.

And when the old stone marker appeared—half buried in snow, carved with a symbol that looked like a crescent moon split by a line—I stopped long enough to press my mother’s pendant against it.

The stone warmed.

The symbol flared faintly, like embers waking.

And the air in front of me… shifted.

A seam in the world opened.

A doorway without a door.

I stared, shaking.

Then the forest behind me exploded with sound—footsteps, shouting, wolves in pursuit.

I stepped through.

The world folded.

Cold became warm. Snow became ash. Pine became smoke.

And I stumbled into a new forest under a different sky—one where the moon looked… wrong.

Not broken.

Eclipsed.