The Old Growth

I turned my back on him. I didn’t wait for a reply, or for the Beta or guards to recover enough to speak. I walked out of Moonstone Hall with my head high, my dress swishing at my legs like a battle flag.

The doors closed behind me with a sound like a gavel.

The night air hit me, cold and sharp, cutting through the leftover heat. For one perfect heartbeat, I felt invincible, my skin tingling and my pulse racing. Then the world tilted, the adrenaline faded, and I staggered ten steps past the archway before my knees buckled.

I hit the grass hard, my palms sinking into the cold, wet earth. The power drained out of me like a tide going out, leaving only the hollow ache of a body pushed too far. My vision blurred at the edges. My heart still roared. The woods pressed in, dark and thick, watching. The fear I hadn’t let myself feel in the Hall came rushing back all at once.

Hands grabbed my shoulders, rough and sudden. For a terrifying second, I thought Kael was coming after me. I started to snarl, the heat rising again, but then a familiar voice broke through the haze.

“Hey, hey, hey! It’s me. It’s Jax. Breathe, Lil.”

I blinked, and the world came back into focus. Jax. My only real friend in Thornridge, an omega who worked in the kitchens and knew better than most what it felt like to be the pack’s favorite target. Right now, he looked like he’d seen a ghost, or maybe become one. His face was pale, his eyes wide with a mix of awe and fear.

“What in the moon’s name was that?” he hissed, half-dragging me toward the tree line before anyone could come out of those doors behind me. “Lil, I felt it in the larder. The whole Hall just......everyone dropped. I thought it was a curse. I thought the building was coming down. Then I saw you walk out like you’d just burned the whole place down and didn’t care.”

“I think I did,” “I think I did,” I breathed, my voice trembling. Whatever strength I’d gathered in the Hall was gone. Now I shook, my words breaking loose like shards. “Jax, there was something inside me, and I was terrified and alive at the same time.” A wolf,” Jax said, his eyes flicking back toward the Hall where the lights were flickering, and voices had started rising into shouts. “I’ve seen Alphas shift. I’ve watched Elders put whole rooms on the ground. That was something different, Lil. Something older. And you made Kael Thornridge look like a frightened pup.”

“He rejected me, Jax. In front of everyone. He chose Serena.”

Jax swore, saying things that would have gotten him lashed if an Elder had heard. “The idiot. The absolute, arrogant idiot. He has no idea what he just did, does he?”

“He thinks he can, “He thinks he can throw me away,” I said, swallowing my anger as I forced myself upright, pressing into the rough bark. My shaking faded, replaced by a cold, hard focus. It was a calm born from something set free and relentless. “He thinks calling me weak erases me. That bonds break on command. He believes his rejection is power, but I’m beyond what he knows.”

“He’s wrong.”

“So what now?” Jax “So what now?” Jax asked quietly. “They’re not going to let you walk away from that. The Council will be screaming for your head by morning. You’re a threat now, Lil. A real one,” looking toward the dark ridge of mountains at the edge of Thornridge territory. “Then I stop playing by their rules.”

In the distance, a howl tore through the night. Long, commanding, furious. Not a howl of celebration. A call to hunt.

Kael was coming. He wanted to know what I was. He wanted to put me back in the box he'd built for me.

“If I stay,” I said to Jax, “they'll lock me in the cells beneath the mountain for my own protection, until they find a way to drain whatever this is out of me.”

“Where are we going?”

I thought about every story I’d ever read about girls who ran, who left their packs, their bonds, and their names behind to build something new in the human world. It always sounded like surrender. But I didn’t want a human life. I wanted the life I’d been promised. I wanted the throne I’d been denied. And I wasn’t going to claim it as Kael’s mate. I was going to take it as his replacement.

“We’re going to the Old Growth,” I said.

Jax gasped. “The Forbidden Woods? Lil, nobody goes there. That’s where the Exiled live. The monsters.”

“Perfect,” I said, a sharp smile spreading across my face. “Because after tonight, I’m pretty sure I’m the biggest monster here.”

We slipped into the brush just as the Hall's doors slammed open behind us, golden-eyed guards spilling out onto the lawn with their heads raised, scenting the air. They would find our trail eventually. Wolves always did.

But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t the prey. I was what the prey should fear.