Chapter Two – Dirt and Dust

I pressed the cloth to the altar stone until it came away crimson.

The sting in my hands was a constant ache by now. Not from wounds of my own making, but from scouring away the evidence of others. The trials weren’t sacred to me, and they weren’t holy. They were brutal and beautiful in that sharp, ugly way only wolves can understand. The holy altar was the heart of the Hollow, a slab of ancient granite hewn by hands long lost to time. It bore the marks of countless trials, countless victories, countless defeats.

My knees sank into moss and dried blood as I worked. The air was damp tonight. The mist rolled down from the dark spine of the mountains and settled low, brushing the edge of the courtyard like a beast pacing its cage. Somewhere beyond the perimeter, I could hear the faint crack of a branch — one more reminder that nothing in this place was truly safe.

I ignored it.

I ignored most things.

That was how you survived in the Hollow. You kept your head down. You worked until your hands bled. You spoke when spoken to, if at all.

That was my world.

I was Ilia. Not a daughter. Not a sister. Not even a name that lingered long in a wolf’s thoughts. I was one of the half-breeds, a servant pressed into the cracks between the Hollow’s glory and its ruin. My mother had been a whisper. My father had been a ghost. All I had was the Hollow — and its indifference.

As I scrubbed, the air changed.

A shift — slight, electric, sharp enough to raise the fine hair at the base of my neck. Not like mist. Not like the cold breath of the mountains.

Something else. Someone.

I sank closer to the altar and refused, refused to raise my head.

It didn’t matter. The courtyard felt suddenly too quiet. Too still.

A sound. A boot scraping stone. Murmurs falling silent.

Then… silence.

It pressed down like a hand to the back of my neck. The soundless space where every wolf knew the predator had arrived.

My breath froze.

I refused to move, refused to flinch. My fingers tightened on the rag until the threads started to snap. Not because I feared him. Not even because I knew him. But because every wolf in this place had learned one thing long ago:

The Alpha’s presence doesn’t ask permission. It takes it.

Through the mist rising from the altar, I felt the shift in the courtyard as he entered. The sound of footfalls came closer — slow, measured, deliberate. The mist surged and fell like a living thing, brushing across the surface of the altar and across the edges of my knees. I kept my gaze down, fixed on the dried blood staining the rag clenched in my hands.

Closer.

Closer still.

Then… silence.

A silence that spoke.

A silence that said, Look up.

A silence that promised, I already see you.

My heart refused the order. My body refused it. Yet some part of me — the part buried deep and long silenced — refused to obey anymore. Slowly, I drew a breath, set the rag down, and lifted my chin.

And found myself staring into the burning gold of the Alpha’s gaze.

He was closer than I’d thought. Not across the courtyard, not perched atop the rise where the trials were announced, not flanked by guards and betas and noise. No. He was there. Just a few paces from the altar where I knelt. The mist wrapped itself around him like it knew to stay a breath from the edges of that monstrous form.

Tall. Too tall, too broad. Shoulders built for war. Skin the color of sun-warmed copper, framed by hair as dark as midnight. And those eyes — gods help me — those eyes felt like burning brands pressed to every place I kept hidden.

I had been taught to drop my gaze. To make myself invisible. To be as quiet and forgettable as a shadow.

But tonight? Tonight, I refused.

My spine stiffened as I met that molten stare. My breath shook, but it refused to break.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t dare. The only sound was the faint whisper of mist brushing stone and the low, unmistakable growl that rose from deep within him. Not a sound meant for others to witness, but one meant for me. A sound that sank low in the space between my ribs and refused to leave.

My fingers clenched harder on the rag. My knees pressed harder into the moss. And still, I refused to lower my gaze. Refused to give him the obedience he commanded from every wolf in the Hollow.

For a moment — for a breath too long — the world narrowed to that space between us. To the burning amber of his stare and the faint quiver deep in my chest that refused to be fear. Not tonight.

Then he tilted his head — slight, sharp, as if trying to fit some piece of a puzzle he hadn’t yet named. The mist surged closer, brushing the edges of his boots, brushing the bare skin of my knees, as if the gods themselves were leaning closer to witness this moment.

Then, like mist itself, he was gone. The sound of his footfalls drew away from the altar, swallowing the silence until only the beating of my heart remained.

I sank down slowly, pressed my palm to the altar, and drew a breath that shook from the inside out. Not in terror. Not in obedience.

But in knowing.

Knowing that for the first time in my life, for the first time in this brutal place… I had been seen.

And that changed everything.