Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Aneira

The days passed quietly after the dinner, and I made a deliberate effort to avoid the Alpha whenever possible, especially after what he had said that night.

I counted the days as they passed. Quietly, not peacefully. There was a difference.

Peace suggested comfort, and Ashfang had never once felt comfortable to me. But eventually even unfamiliar places developed patterns if you stayed in them long enough. The estate had rhythms to it; kitchens that grew crowded before sunrise, corridors servants avoided during council hours, guards who rotated posts at nearly identical times each day.

I learned all of it.

Mostly because I needed to.

The less attention I drew to myself, the easier it became to move through the estate unnoticed. And unnoticed people survived longer.

So I worked.

I carried trays through halls lined with silver lanterns and dark stone. I scrubbed floors in rooms large enough to fit entire homes from the outer territories and washed blood from hunting leathers after patrols returned from the northern forests.

And slowly, coin by coin, I saved.

More than the work itself, that became my real routine.

Every few nights, after everyone else had settled into sleep, I would sit cross-legged on the narrow bed in my room and empty the small cloth pouch hidden beneath the loose floorboard under my dresser.

Copper. Silver. Two gold marks.

I counted each piece carefully every single time despite already knowing the total.

Then I counted again.

Enough for travel rations. Enough for passage beyond the eastern ridge. Enough to pay the rest of my debt to the collector.

The thought still felt unreal.

For years, the debt had followed me like a shadow tied to my heels. Every job I took, every decision I made eventually circled back to it. The collector never forgot what he was owed. Wolves like him survived because they knew desperation eventually cornered everyone.

But now, now I finally had enough. It wasn’t comfort. It was just enough to leave.

And that was more than I had possessed in a very long time.

The strange thing was how easy it became to settle into routine afterward. The days blurred together in the same predictable order: waking before dawn, working until exhaustion settled into my bones, avoiding attention wherever possible, and saving every spare coin I could manage.

It should have felt simple.

Instead, it felt temporary.

Avoiding the Alpha became part of that routine faster than I cared to admit.

At first, I told myself it was common sense. Servants avoided him constantly. Entire corridors emptied when word spread he was approaching. Conversations died the moment his footsteps sounded nearby. Wolves lowered their eyes instinctively around him in ways I still wasn’t fully used to seeing.

So naturally, I avoided him too.

Only I became far too aware of how often I needed to.

Sometimes I heard him before I saw him; steady footsteps against stone, deep voices lowering around him, silence moving through the estate before he even appeared.

Every single time, my body reacted before my thoughts did. A tightening in my chest. A pulse that shifted strangely beneath my ribs.

The instinctive urge to leave before he noticed me there.

One morning before dawn, while crossing the grounds on my way back from the kitchens, I heard movement near the training field.

I should have ignored it.

Instead, I slowed.

The sound came again, sharp and controlled. Wood cracking against force.

Curiosity was a dangerous habit, but exhaustion weakened judgment in strange ways. Before I could convince myself to keep walking, my feet had already carried me closer to the edge of the training grounds.

And then I saw him.

The Alpha stood alone in the center of the training field, driving repeated blows into a reinforced wooden post hard enough to splinter the thick surface beneath the force of each strike. Sweat glistened across bronzed skin beneath the pale light of dawn, every movement controlled and effortlessly powerful.

I should have left immediately.

Instead, I found myself sitting on one of the benches at the edge of the training grounds, watching him.

He was not beautiful in any soft or delicate sense of the word. He was the kind of man built to command attention without asking for it.

And he was shirtless.

Which suddenly felt like a personal offense against my concentration.

The first light of dawn caught against the sharp lines of his body, tracing muscle and scar beneath his golden skin with almost cruel precision.

I looked away immediately afterward, irritated by the direction of my own thoughts.

Gods.

I had clearly spent too much time reading foolish romance stories when I was younger.

For one deeply humiliating moment, I imagined what it would feel like to have those arms around me.

“Snap out of it, Aneira,” I muttered under my breath, staring firmly at the grass beneath my feet.

There was no world where someone like him would ever look twice at someone like me.

A shadow fell across the ground in front of me.

I froze.

Slowly, I looked up.

The Alpha stood directly before me.

“Gods,” I muttered, immediately pushing myself to my feet and putting distance between us.

His silver eyes moved over me once, unreadable.

“Don’t you have work to do?” he asked.

“Yes, Alpha,” I answered automatically, only to regret how uncertain it sounded.

His gaze narrowed slightly.

“Omega,” he said, voice lower now, “you answer properly when addressed.”

Heat rushed into my face.

“Yes, Alpha.”

For a moment, he simply looked at me.

Then his expression hardened.

“I am not running a charity here,” he said evenly. “If you expect to be paid, you will not spend your mornings sitting around the estate doing nothing.”

My spine straightened instinctively beneath the reprimand.

“You are not different or special from anyone else here,” he continued. “Remember that.”

“Yes, Alpha,” I said quietly.

His gaze lingered for one brief second longer before he turned and walked away.

I remained standing there long after he disappeared from sight, annoyed at myself for reasons I could not properly explain.

Being noticed by the Alpha had already proven itself to be a mistake I did not intend to repeat.

So I avoided him carefully.

And eventually, he seemed to return the favor.

Weeks passed without another conversation.

When our paths crossed, his attention moved over me as though I were no different from the dozens of servants passing through the estate every day. No lingering looks. No strange comments spoken quietly. Nothing.

At first, the relief felt immediate.

Then strangely irritating.

Not because I wanted his attention.

Gods, no.

But because some traitorous part of me had become used to expecting it. I hated that realization enough to ignore it entirely.

Instead, I focused on leaving.

The full moon was tomorrow night. After that, Ashfang would no longer be my problem.

I folded the coins back into the pouch carefully and slid it beneath the floorboard again.

The timing had not been accidental.

Full moon celebrations in Ashfang lasted deep into the night. Patrol routes changed. The estate grew distracted. Wolves gathered in the lower territories to drink, fight, celebrate the Moon Goddess, and shift beneath open skies like they were answering some ancient instinct stitched into bone.

It was the easiest night to disappear.

Most wolves loved the full moon.

Even weakened as I was, I still felt it approaching.

The pull had started days ago, settling beneath my skin like restless energy with nowhere to go. Stronger senses. Sharper hearing. Too much awareness. At night, the air itself felt charged with something old and living.

My wolf responded instinctively.

She always did.

She simply never answered and I had stopped trying to force her years ago.

A soft knock sounded against my door before I could think further.

I looked up immediately.

“Aneira?”

Lyra.

I crossed the room quickly and opened the door just enough for her to slip inside.

She took one look around my room before narrowing her eyes slightly. The blankets had been folded neatly and the few clothes I owned were stacked carefully beside the bed.

Nothing sat out of place.

I realized my mistake immediately.

“You’re cleaning,” she said slowly.

“Yes. I always clean.”

“Not like this.” I shrugged lightly, forcing myself to sound casual. “The full moon celebrations are tomorrow. I’d rather not come back to a disorganized space.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Lyra admitted.

I relaxed slightly at that.

Lyra walked farther into the room before stopping beside the dresser. Her eyes lingered briefly on the small travel bundle sitting near the bed.

When she looked back at me, something sharper had entered her expression.

“You’re leaving.”

My stomach tightened immediately. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Aneira.”

I said nothing.

Lyra crossed her arms slowly. “You hate Ashfang. You save every spare coin. You ask questions about the eastern roads when you think no one notices, and now your room looks like you’re trying not to leave traces behind.”

That was… unfortunately accurate.

“You’re leaving,” she repeated quietly.

I exhaled once through my nose before sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

Her brows lifted slightly. “So it’s true.”

“I’m serious, Lyra.”

For a moment, she only stared at me. Then her expression shifted into something more complicated than surprise.

“When?”

“After tomorrow night.”

“The full moon.” I nodded once.

The room stayed quiet for a while after that.

“You were actually planning it,” Lyra murmured eventually.

“What did you think I was doing with the money?”

“I thought maybe you just wanted security.” She paused. “Most people stop talking about leaving after a while.”

“I never talked about it.”

“No,” she admitted. “You just never stopped looking like someone who already had one foot outside the gates.”

I looked away first.

The truth was, staying here had always felt temporary no matter how much easier survival had become. The food was regular. The rooms were warm. Wages arrived on time. No one here except the twins treated me kindly exactly, but Marla at least treated usefulness like currency.

Still, none of it belonged to me.

People became careless when they started mistaking temporary arrangements for permanence.

I refused to make that mistake again.

“The collector gets paid first,” I said quietly. “After that, I leave.”

Lyra leaned back slightly against the dresser, watching me carefully.

“You know the roads outside Ashfang get worse during full moons.”

“I know.”

“Rogue packs move through the lower passes this time of year.”

“I know that too.”

“You could wait another few months. Save more.”

“No.”

The answer came too quickly.

Her gaze sharpened slightly at that.

“You hate it here that much?”

I looked toward the window. Far beyond the estate walls, the mountains stretched endlessly beneath the dark sky. Somewhere past them were villages crowded enough not to ask questions, roads untouched by Ashfang authority, places where no one knew my debt or my history or my failures.

Freedom existed somewhere beyond those mountains.

Even if it was difficult and probably dangerous, it would still belong to me.

“Yes,” I said finally.

Lyra was quiet after that. Then she sighed softly.

“I won’t tell anyone.”

Relief loosened the tightness in my chest. “Thank you.”

“But,” she added immediately, pointing a finger at me, “if you disappear and end up dead somewhere beyond the cliffs after all this effort, I’m going to be extremely offended.”

Despite myself, a laugh escaped me quietly.

“There it is,” Lyra said at once. “That almost looked like happiness. Horrifying.”

“You imagined it.”

“I definitely didn’t.”

The room settled into quieter silence after that.

Tomorrow night.

One more shift.

One more count of coins.

One more evening inside Ashfang.

Then I would leave before this place could convince me that surviving here was enough.