Chapter Three: The Road Out

I walked for a long time before I let myself think.

That was the only way I knew how to manage it. Keep moving. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and do not let your mind settle on any one thing for too long or it will pull you under. I had learned that about myself a long time ago. Stillness was dangerous when everything hurt.

The pack lands ended at the old stone bridge on the east road. I had crossed it a hundred times before but always coming back. Never leaving for good. I stopped in the middle of it and looked down at the water moving below and I stayed there for a moment just breathing.

Then I crossed to the other side and kept walking.

The east road was quiet. It wound through thick forest for the first several miles before opening out into the wider territory that sat between Mooncrest and the nearest human town. I had no plan beyond that. I knew I could not stay in wolf territory, not any territory connected to Mooncrest anyway, because word traveled fast among packs and the last thing I needed was to show up somewhere new and have people already know my name and what had been said about me.

I would figure it out as I went.

The afternoon was cool and the trees on either side of the road were tall and close together and for a while it was almost peaceful. Just the sound of wind and birds and my own footsteps on the dirt. My wolf was still quiet inside me but she was paying attention now, her senses reaching out around me the way they always did when we were far from familiar ground.

I was about two hours out when I heard them behind me.

Footsteps. More than one set. Moving too quietly to be human.

I did not stop walking. I did not speed up either. I just shifted the bag on my shoulder and kept my breathing even and used my senses to count them without turning around.

Three. Maybe four.

Wolves.

My stomach tightened.

I told myself it was nothing. Wolves traveled these roads all the time. It did not have to mean anything. But the footsteps were matching my pace and staying just far enough back to feel deliberate and my wolf was no longer quiet, she was pressing forward inside me, low and alert.

I turned off the main road onto a narrower path that cut through the trees.

They followed.

Okay, I thought. Okay.

I set my bag down against a tree and turned around.

There were four of them. Young men, wolves, none of them older than me. I did not recognize their faces but I recognized the look on them. That particular kind of confidence that comes from moving in a group and having already decided how something is going to go.

The one in front smiled. It was not a friendly smile.

"Aria Nightshade," he said. Like my name was a joke.

"I do not know you," I said.

"No," he agreed. "But we know you. Everybody knows you now." He looked at his friends and they laughed. "The wolf so worthless her own mate did not want her."

I said nothing.

"Where are you running to?" he asked, taking a step closer. "There is nowhere to go. You have nothing. You are nothing. Kael made that pretty clear last night."

My hands were steady at my sides.

My wolf was not steady. She was furious, clawing at the inside of me, wanting out. I held her back. Shifting here, outnumbered, on an empty road with no one around was not a fight I could win and I knew it.

"Move out of my way," I said quietly.

He laughed. "Or what?"

He reached out and shoved my shoulder. Not hard enough to knock me down, just hard enough to make a point. Just hard enough to show me that he could.

Something snapped inside me.

I did not think. I just moved.

I grabbed his wrist as he pulled his hand back and twisted, using the momentum he had already created, and put him on the ground before he had time to react. It was a basic move. Something I had learned years ago from watching the pack warriors train when they did not know I was watching. I had practiced it alone in the woods more times than I could count because some quiet part of me had always known I would need it one day.

He hit the dirt hard.

His friends went still.

I let go of his wrist and stepped back and looked at all of them.

"Move out of my way," I said again. Same tone. Same volume.

Nobody laughed this time.

The one on the ground got up slowly, his face red, and for a moment I thought he was going to come at me properly and then everything would fall apart. But he just brushed the dirt off his jacket and looked at me with something that was almost respect, or at least the closest thing to it that someone like him was capable of.

"Freak," he muttered.

Then he turned and walked back toward the main road and the others followed him and just like that they were gone.

I stood in the trees for a moment after they left. My heart was going fast but my hands were still steady. I picked up my bag and put it back on my shoulder.

My wolf settled.

Good girl, she seemed to say. Or maybe that was just me.

I walked until it started getting dark and then I found a small roadside shelter, the kind that had been built years ago for travelers caught out in bad weather. It was nothing more than four walls and a roof and a wooden bench along one side but it was dry and hidden enough from the road that I felt safe stopping.

I sat down and ate the small amount of food I had packed and drank some water and let myself be still for the first time all day.

The ache in my chest was still there. Of course it was. It was going to be there for a long time, I knew that. The rejection bond did not just dissolve because you decided to be strong. It sat with you. It reminded you. Sometimes it felt like a dull pressure and sometimes, in quiet moments like this one, it felt sharp enough to take your breath away.

I pressed my hand against my chest and breathed through it.

I thought about my mother folding that envelope. My father in the hallway with his arms open. The photograph I had tucked into the front pocket of my bag.

I thought about Kael's face. That cold, steady look. Like rejecting me had cost him nothing at all.

I stopped thinking about Kael.

I lay down on the wooden bench and used my bag as a pillow and looked up at the ceiling of the little shelter and listened to the night sounds outside.

Tomorrow I would find a town. I would find work or a room or both. I would figure out the next thing and then the thing after that.

That was all I could do.

One thing at a time.

I closed my eyes.

And for the first time since the night before, I slept.