TWO

AVERY

I didn’t go back to my mother’s home right away.

Instead, I walked the pack grounds slowly, as if I were already saying goodbye. The clinic door closed behind me with a soft click, and the sounds of the pack rushed in to fill the space it left. Training rings were busy despite the early hour. Wolves sparred in human form, laughter sharp and easy as it carried across the clearing. Someone called out a joke. Someone else answered. Life moved forward in front of me, seamless and intact.

No one looked at me.

‘They feel distant,’ Lila murmured inside my head. ‘Not unkind. Observant.’

‘I know,’ I answered. ‘It still hurts.’

That admission settled heavier than I expected. I had once belonged to this place. I had once imagined raising pups here, teaching them the boundaries of the territory, watching them run beneath the same trees I had grown up under. I had seen that future so clearly that losing it felt like having a limb cut away. My hand drifted to my stomach before I could stop myself.

A pup.

‘Our pup,’ Lila corrected softly.

‘Yes,’ I thought. ‘Ours.’

The healer’s words echoed in my mind. Rejection severs the bond going forward. It doesn’t undo what was already completed. He had taken what he wanted from me, from us, and then walked away, leaving me to carry the consequences alone.

‘If we stay,’ Lila said, low and uneasy, ‘he will circle.’

‘I know.’

‘He will try to claim what he denied.’

The thought tightened my chest. Staying would mean whispers. Questions. The slow tightening of pack rules around my body and my choices. Even without rank, he was still pack, still close enough to exert pressure, still able to twist the story until I became reckless, unstable, unfit. The pack would not protect me from that. They would call it neutrality. Balance. Order.

I reached the edge of the training grounds and stopped, watching a group of younger wolves practice shifts under a patrol leader’s watchful eye. One of them stumbled and laughed, helped back to their feet by another. The ease of it made my chest ache.

‘We deserve that,’ Lila said quietly.

‘I know.’

I turned away.

By the time I reached my mother’s home, my decision had already settled into something solid and unmoving inside me. She wasn’t home, which made things easier. I packed quickly, choosing only what I could carry. Clothes. A few personal items. The small knife my father had given me before he’d died. Everything else I left behind. The house felt emptier with every item I removed, like it was exhaling me.

I paused once, staring at the bed where I had cried myself to sleep after the rejection. Where I had told myself I would endure. That I would survive quietly, the way the pack expected.

‘We endured enough,’ Lila said. Her presence pressed close, protective.

‘Yes,’ I thought. ‘We did.’

At the edge of the territory, the air shifted. The scent markers that defined pack land pressed against my senses, familiar and heavy. Crossing without permission wasn’t exile, not exactly, but it was close enough that the consequences could still follow me. Lila paced beneath my skin now, alert and ready.

‘Are you afraid?’ I asked her.

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But not enough to stay.’

“I know,” I whispered aloud. “I know it’s dangerous.”

But staying was worse.

I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, grounding myself. “I choose you,” I murmured. “No matter what it costs.” Lila surged warmly at the words, and then I stepped forward.

The boundary line passed through me like a chill, sharp and unmistakable. Lila flinched, then steadied, anchoring me as the pack’s hold faded with each step I took away from it. The forest felt quieter. Wilder. Less claimed. I didn’t stop running until my lungs burned.

When I finally slowed, the world felt different. Open. Unforgiving. Free.

Submitting to another pack without release would mean starting over completely. No status. No protection. Every movement watched. Every choice judged. We would have to prove ourselves from nothing. But it would be our choice, and no one would ever have the right to take that from us again.

I lifted my head and scented the air, searching for signs of another territory. Another chance. Somewhere ahead, a pack existed that didn’t know my name or my past. Somewhere ahead, Lila and I could build a future that belonged to us.

‘We will survive,’ Lila said with quiet certainty.

I squared my shoulders and started walking.

Toward uncertainty. Toward danger. Toward a life our rejection would never define.