CHAPTER 5: into The Veil Forest

Nerissa POV

The doors of the pack house slammed behind me.

My feet hit the wet ground and I just ran without direction.

The rain started heavily before I even reached the tree line.

The forest swallowed me fast. Trees closing in on every side, branches slapping my face and arms, roots catching my bare feet in the dark.

The ground turned to mud almost immediately. It became cold and thick, sucking at every step, slowing me down when all I wanted was to move faster.

My dress soaked through within seconds and my wolf whimpered inside me.

She had barely made a sound in nineteen years but tonight she cried at the back of my mind like she understood exactly what had happened.

I kept running until my lungs burned, then I stopped.

I grabbed a tree trunk with both hands and bent over and just breathed. Rain hammered my back,mud squeezed between my toes. The sounds of the pack house were completely gone now, swallowed by the storm and the distance.

I didn't want to hear any of it ever again.

I prayed for a mate my whole life. Through every beating,every night sleeping on the floor beside the storage room.

Every morning scrubbing floors while pack members stepped over me like I was part of the furniture.

I told myself it would come,that the Moon Goddess was watching. Somewhere out there was one person who would look at me and not see a curse or a burden or something to be endured.

Rowan looked at me and made a decision in under a second.

The applause that followed was the worst part.

The sound of an entire pack celebrating the moment my last hope died.

I pressed my forehead against the wet tree bark and let my tears come because there was nobody out here.

Then my mother's voice came inside my head.

‘Get up, Nerissa. You don't stay down.’

She died getting up. She threw herself in front of a rogue wolf for me when I was six years old.

My father died searching through a snowstorm for medicine when I got sick. My brother followed him and neither of them came back.

The pack decided that meant I was cursed.

I kept walking deeper into the forest aimlessly because going back was not something I was capable of tonight.

A growl stopped me somewhere in the dark to my right. My wolf stopped crying and went completely silent inside me.

Three pairs of yellow eyes glowed between the trees. My stomach dropped so fast it took my breath with it.

“Rogues.” I whispered shakily.

They came out of the dark one at a time. Their fur soaked and matted.

The first had a jagged scar running from its ear all the way down its muzzle. The second dragged a back leg but watched me with eyes that were anything but weak. The third was the biggest and it didn't rush,neither did it snarl.

"Stay back." My voice came out as almost nothing.

The scarred one snarled and I ran.

The impact hit me from behind like a wall falling.

My body left the ground and then the ground came back and everything went white when I hit the mud face first.

The air drove out of my lungs,claws raked down my back and the pain that came with them was so sudden it turned my vision sideways.

The rogue pinned me down with its full weight.

I twisted under it. Clawing at the mud and trying to find anything to push against.

My wolf tried to rise and she couldn't. The rogue's bloodlust pressed down on her like a boot on something already broken.

Its jaws snapped near my ear.

I shoved with everything I had and managed to roll halfway before it slammed me back down.

My cheek hit the mud hard.

The other two circled slowly in my blurring vision.

The big one made a low rumbling sound in its chest like it was in no hurry because it already knew how this ended.

My arms gave out and I stopped fighting.

The rogue above me lowered its head slowly toward my throat.

Rain drummed against the mud around my face.

I thought about how the pack wouldn't even notice I was missing until morning when the floors needed scrubbing and there was nobody left to do it.

‘I'm sorry, Mama. I tried.’ I whispered in agony.

Something exploded through the forest.

The rogue on top of me froze,every muscle locked like something had reached inside it and grabbed it.

The weight on me disappeared.

I gasped,rolled over and pressed my back against the nearest tree with my shoulder screaming and my vision swimming so badly the forest tilted in every direction at once.

The rogues were no longer looking at me,all three had turned.

The scarred one took a step backward and something came through the trees.

I couldn't see clearly. Blood and rain and the darkness turned everything beyond a few feet into blur and shadow. But I heard footsteps moving through the underbrush without any urgency at all like three rogue wolves in a dark forest at night was simply not something worth adjusting pace for.

The big rogue snarled then the fighting started and it was nothing like anything I had ever seen.

The stranger moved through those three. The scarred rogue lunged first and was on the ground before I fully registered the movement, pinned with a force that made the earth shake under my palms.

The second came from the left and met something worse, its throat was ripped apart,a sound cracked through the rain. The rogue hit a tree and did not get up.

The third, the big patient one, lasted longest.

It was the scarred one, limping backward now that broke first.

A whimper came out of it,the big one looked at the stranger for one more second in disbelief and ran

The stranger turned toward me.

He walked closer and I tried to push myself upright against the tree.

My arms lasted three seconds before my shoulder collapsed them entirely and I slid back down the bark with my teeth locked.

He crouched in front of me.

The rain was heavy in my eyes.

My vision kept sliding in and out, darkening at the edges.

I could see his shape. Broad shoulders,dark hair soaked flat. Scars across both hands.

He said something but I couldn't hold onto the words properly.

I tried to see his face,something about the line of his jaw,the way he held himself in a storm like the rain was under his notice.

Something was familiar but I couldn't reach it,I couldn't pull it close enough to name before the darkness pushed in harder.

His arms came around me,lifted me like I weighed nothing at all.

I tried to hold on to the familiar thing. I tried to pull it forward.

His gray eyes were fixed on my face with an expression I was too far gone to read.

"You're safe." His voice came out low and the forest disappeared.