Regret and obsession

The forest no longer feared me.

It responded.

I realized it one dusk when I stepped into a clearing and the wind shifted instantly, carrying my scent away from unseen eyes. My heartbeat remained steady, my breathing calm, even as I sensed movement at the edges of my awareness.

Hunters.

Pack-trained. Skilled. Sent with purpose.

I didn’t panic.

That alone told me how much I had changed.

I moved before they closed in, feet gliding over roots and fallen leaves without sound. My body knew where to go, when to turn, when to leap. Branches bent instead of snapping. Shadows swallowed me whole as if the forest itself was conspiring to keep me hidden.

This wasn’t running anymore.

This was evasion.

I paused behind a thick oak, eyes closed, listening. I could hear them now, three heartbeats, uneven breathing, the faint clink of weapons. They were close. Too close.

I lifted my hand slowly, grounding myself like instinct had taught me.

The warmth stirred.

Not violently. Not explosively.

Subtle.

The air around me shimmered faintly, bending light just enough to blur my outline. When I opened my eyes, my hands looked… wrong. As if they weren’t entirely solid.

I swallowed.

Control. Always control.

The hunters passed by, confused, muttering to one another about lost trails and strange winds. One of them stopped, sniffed the air, frowned.

“She was here,” he said. “I swear it.”

But he didn’t see me.

Didn’t sense me.

Didn’t even realize I was standing less than five steps away, watching him with calm, unreadable eyes.

When they were gone, I released the breath I’d been holding. The shimmer faded. The warmth settled.

I didn’t smile.

Power wasn’t something to celebrate.

It was something to respect.

Far away, in the heart of the pack territory, Kael jolted awake.

His chest tightened painfully, breath coming fast as his wolf surged restlessly beneath his skin. The bond, broken, rejected, buried, pulled sharply, as if reminding him of something he’d tried too hard to forget.

Elara.

Her name echoed in his mind uninvited, unwelcome, relentless.

He rose from the bed he shared with Lyra, ignoring the way she stirred and reached for him in her sleep. The night air was cool against his bare skin as he stepped onto the balcony, fists clenched at his sides.

Something was wrong.

No, something had been wrong since the night he rejected her.

He had convinced himself it was necessary. Logical. Elara was an omega, quiet, unremarkable, too soft for the role fate demanded of him. Lyra had been the better choice, strong, strategic, admired.

That was what he’d told himself.

But now, the pack felt… unbalanced.

The warriors were restless. The elders questioned his decisions more openly. Even his wolf, once obedient, now paced endlessly in his mind, growling at shadows Kael couldn’t see.

“She’s gone,” he muttered aloud. “She doesn’t matter.”

His wolf snarled in response.

Lies.

The hunters returned at dawn.

They knelt before him, heads bowed, unease etched clearly across their faces.

“We lost her trail, Alpha.”

Kael’s jaw tightened. “Again?”

“Yes, Alpha. It’s like she disappears. No scent. No sound. Almost like..." The hunter hesitated.

“Like what?” Kael snapped.

“Like the forest hides her.”

Silence fell heavy in the council chamber.

Kael dismissed them quickly, his mind racing. That wasn’t possible. Elara had been weak, hesitant, unsure, always shrinking into herself. She shouldn’t have survived this long. She shouldn’t be evading trained trackers.

Unless…

The thought struck him like a blade to the ribs.

Unless I was wrong.

Across the territory, Lyra watched the shift with sharp eyes and a tighter smile.

The whispers had started.

Quiet at first. Uncertain. Warriors questioning why the rejected omega still haunted the Alpha’s focus. Elders murmuring about balance and fate. Even the servants spoke Elara’s name with something dangerously close to curiosity.

Lyra corrected them swiftly.

“She was fragile,” she said lightly. “Delusional. Kael did her a kindness by letting her go.”

But the words didn’t carry the same weight anymore.

Kael barely looked at her during meals. He trained longer, harder, his temper unpredictable. And at night, when he thought Lyra slept, he whispered another woman’s name into the darkness.

Elara.

The bond tugged again, faint, but undeniable.

Lyra felt it too.

Fear coiled in her stomach, sharp and unwelcome.

Back in the wild, I stood atop a ridge, watching smoke rise faintly from the pack lands in the distance. I felt them now, not just Kael, but the territory itself. The invisible threads that bound wolves to land, power to lineage.

I didn’t understand it fully.

But I understood enough.

Kael’s presence brushed against my awareness again, restless, searching. This time, I didn’t pull away completely. I let the connection linger just long enough for him to feel me.

Alive.

Unbroken.

Unreachable.

His reaction was immediate.

A sharp spike of emotion, shock, relief, regret, flooded through the bond before I closed it again.

I exhaled slowly.

Let that sit with you.

Kael’s obsession took root from that moment.

He ordered more patrols. Asked questions he should have asked long ago. Replayed memories of Elara in his mind, noticing details he had once dismissed, the way she listened more than she spoke, the quiet strength in her gaze, the way the bond had felt different with her.

Deeper.

Truer.

Lyra noticed everything.

Her influence slipped like sand through her fingers as doubt crept into the pack. The more she pushed her narrative, the more resistance she faced. People remembered now, how Elara had endured cruelty without complaint, how she’d never sought attention or power.

“She was nothing,” Lyra snapped one night when Kael questioned her too closely.

Kael turned to her slowly, eyes cold.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “And I should have seen it sooner.”

The words shattered something between them.

In the forest, I trained beneath the moon, power humming quietly beneath my skin. I didn’t crave revenge, not yet.

But I felt something else growing alongside my strength.

Purpose.

The hunters would keep coming.

Kael would keep searching.

Lyra would keep scheming.

And one day soon, they would all realize the same truth:

Exile hadn’t broken me.

It had awakened me.

And when I finally stepped out of the shadows, it wouldn’t be as the omega they discarded…

…but as the force they should have feared from the very beginning.