After the warmth

If I must accept Varyn’s rejection, then I will turn it into hatred that lasts a lifetime.

I wait for the full moon, glued to the window as silver light creeps across the night. When the great orb finally rises, I step into its glow. Moonlight pours over me, the Goddess’s power heavy on my skin. I beg for the usual gift—stamina, speed, strength—to ready myself for the war I plan with Varyn.

I strip bare beneath her gaze, waiting for rage to ignite inside me. But instead, warmth blossoms. Dense. Golden. A shimmer that is not fury. My hand lowers to my stomach. Something answers me there, faint but undeniable—a spark of life. My chest caves. A pup.

I turn from the truth, but a flash on my skin draws me back. Etched across thigh glows the scar of an Alpha. My heart clenches. Varyn has marked me.

Rage steadies my legs as I pull a robe around me and march to Varyn’s house. My chest is tight, breath jagged, every step fueled by betrayal and defiance.

The door swings open. Warmth flickers across his face when his eyes fall on me, a softness I haven’t seen in weeks. For a moment, that warmth disarms me. For a moment, I forget I came here to fight. He is seeing the spark of life in me , or maybe he isn’t.

He draws me in, his touch firm, his lips a fire against mine. The robe falls, and with it, my resolve. We crash together—desire fierce, consuming, and desperate. His hunger matches mine, each kiss a war, each thrust a surrender. For an instant, I allow myself to believe in that warmth again.

But the truth claws its way out of me as his chest heaves against mine. “I’m pregnant.”

The warmth in his eyes shatters. His face hardens to stone. “Not mine. You are no mark.”

The words rip me open. My body trembles, rage flooding every vein. “Liar!”

I strike first. He blocks. We explode into violence—claws and fists, snarls and screams. Every blow returned, every kick mirrored, until fury drives me to hurl him into the mirror. Glass splinters, raining across the floor like ice, louder than our cries.

His right-hand man bursts in, eyes wide, finding us naked, bloodied, raw. He stumbles back, but not before his shock betrays him—he’s already running to the council.

Varyn and I dress in silence, our breaths still ragged, our bodies marked by both passion and war. Together we step into the night, where the elders wait, the pack behind them in tense, watching silence.

My voice breaks, sharp and shaking: “I’m pregnant. And he will not accept it.”

The elders stare. One steps forward. “Where is your mark?”

I clutch my robe tighter, caught between shame and defiance. My lips part, desperate to answer—but Varyn’s voice slices the air first.

“She is no mark.”

The words crush me. Proof burns on my skin, but what is proof when the Alpha himself denies me?

I drop the response that condemns me.

“I don’t have .”

“Throw her out,” the elder commands.

Hands seize me. I am dragged through the dirt and hurled outside like refuse. Pain radiates, but not sharper than the shame. Lyla rushes to my side, her hands pulling me up, her eyes wide with panic. Yet dread coils in me tighter—her concern could turn to condemnation the instant she learns the truth.

Her cry rallies the clan. My mother, the Luna, arrives with the fiercest women at her side. Their fury collides with the Alpha’s pack in a storm of claws and teeth. Flesh tears, blood stains the ground. Bodies lie wounded before a single question stills the chaos:

“Does she deserve it?”

My mother grips my shoulder. “What is it?” she demands.

I cannot answer. The elder answers for me: “She’s pregnant. And not marked.”

My mother falters, then straightens, power flooding her voice. “Let it be known tonight: whoever lays a hand on one under my reign will pay with their life—or a war that claims my own.”

Then she bends close, her words a knife meant only for me.

“You shall leave and never return. A werewolf without a pack. You will roam the earth alone, stripped of every advantage my blood gave you. And when you die, your bones will rest where they fall.”

I fight the tears clawing at my throat—until she cuts me deeper.

“I disown you.”

The pack turns away. The moon burns overhead. I stumble into the wilderness, unmarked, unwanted, carrying a spark I never asked for.

The forest is silent. Too silent.

They lead me through the camp at dawn, their faces unreadable, their silence heavier than chains. I don’t know why I’m being taken, only that the path ends at the largest tent.

Inside, a resounding voice greets me.

“Young lady… who are you?”

The tone alone is enough to rattle me. This is their Wolf-King.

I raise my head—and the sight before me steals my breath. He is radiant, fair, impossibly handsome. My heart breaks twice before I can silence its whispers.

How can a man this striking be an outlaw? How can exile shine so bright?

I once believed Varyn’s beauty unmatched. But this one… he outdoes Varyn in every sense.

For a moment, all I hear are passive voices inside my head — distant, hollow, as if the tent itself whispers them.

Then a sound snaps me back.

Wolf-King: “Young lady… who are you?”

The words act like a switch. They flip me from that thin, drifting place straight into the middle of something terrifying. I bow my head without thinking.

He waits a beat, then adds, steady and calm as stone:

Wolf-King: “You are too fresh to be a wandering wolf… and too elegant to be a common one.”

The line lands like a weight. I lift my chin and meet him.

So—

I don’t let him finish. Fear pushes the words from my lips.

“I’m the fifth daughter of the Luna, of the twentieth generation of the female reign.”

The moment the truth settles, the air shifts. I feel it—the walls closing in, the weight of waiting rage pressing outside the tent. My mother’s cruel reign still breathes here, still stings even beyond her rule.

Then another question cuts through me.

“And the father of the child within you?”

My spirit rebels. No. I will not speak it.

For a heartbeat, I almost believe my mother alone is the villain. But looking around—the men and women together, united by exile, their eyes filled with old scars—I see it clearly.

Varyn is a villain in their story too.