Into the Mountains

Chapter 13

 Into the Mountains

POV: Adelina McKenna

The mountains don’t care who you are.

Not your name. Not your title. Not even the blood in your veins.

They’ll either break you.

Or build you.

And sometimes, they do both.

Mama Oya woke me before sunrise the next morning, pulling aside the heavy curtain in the den with a sharp snap that made my entire body flinch.

“No more sleep,” she said. “You’ve been sleeping your whole life.”

I groaned, pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders. My ribs still ached from the fall I’d taken before finding the ruins. My muscles screamed from running two days through the backcountry. I was half-starved and barely able to shift.

She didn’t care.

“Come. Outside. Now.”

I dragged myself to my feet, shoved my arms through the sleeves of my coat, and followed her up the winding stairwell to the ruined cabin above.

The snow had melted under the morning sun, but frost still coated the beams and blackened earth. In the light, I could see the old foundation stones of the coven house, and I swear they hummed under my boots.

Like memory.

Like ghosts.

Mama Oya tossed me a wooden staff.

I caught it awkwardly.

“What’s this?”

“Balance,” she said. “Precision. Control. You’ve been a wolf for ten days and still walk like you’re wearing borrowed skin.”

I bristled. “I didn’t exactly have a pack to train me.”

“Good,” she snapped. “Pack training would’ve dulled you.”

She circled me like a hawk. “Wolves trained in hierarchy learn obedience before instinct. You, however…”

She jabbed the staff at my ribs. I barely deflected it.

“...need to unlearn everything.”

I adjusted my grip, heart already thudding.

“You’re Matron-blooded,” she said. “Our kind doesn’t bow. We don’t wait to be chosen. We remember the moon, and she remembers us.”

Her staff came again this time faster.

I blocked it.

Barely.

“Again.”

By midday, my arms shook from strain.

My thighs burned. My palms blistered. I tasted copper in my throat.

And I was still losing.

Every time I thought I had the rhythm, Oya switched it. Staff to blade. Blade to claw. Word to silence.

This wasn’t training.

It was ritual.

A stripping-down.

A burning-off of everything I thought I was.

“You fight like prey,” she hissed, disarming me for the fourth time.

I snarled.

“Good,” she said. “Finally.”

That was the first time I shifted in front of her.

Not because I meant to.

Because I couldn’t hold it back.

The wolf exploded from my skin with a roar that shook the mountains.

When I came back to myself, I was panting on the ground, naked, steaming in the cold air.

Oya stood nearby, not even winded.

“You see now?” she asked.

I nodded slowly, still gasping. “She’s not gone.”

“No,” she said. “She’s watching.”

I looked down at my hands, still trembling.

“Why didn’t I feel her after the bond broke?”

“Because she was wounded,” Oya said. “You both were.”

She knelt beside me.

“But pain is a door. And now… she’s stepping through.”

The next few days blurred into one long ache.

Oya didn’t let up.

She made me run the ridges barefoot. Hunt with claw instead of trap. Fight without hesitation. She taught me how to listen not just with my ears, but with my bones.

“Every tree here remembers the wolves that bled on its roots,” she said. “Every shadow knows who fled. Who stood. Who died.”

There were no mirrors in the den.

But I didn’t need one.

I could feel the change happening.

Stronger limbs. Sharper senses. A heat beneath my skin that wasn’t just magic it was birthright.

I was beginning to understand who I was.

Not just the rejected mate.

Not just the rogue.

I was something older.

Something rising.

---

And then came the hunters.

Three of them.

Silver Fang wolves, moving fast through the ravine beneath the ridge.

Oya and I watched from the trees, cloaked in the old magic she kept bound around the property.

“They’re getting bolder,” I whispered.

She nodded grimly. “They know you survived.”

“Do they know I’m pregnant?”

“Not yet,” she said. “If they did, they’d be sending killers, not trackers.”

A long silence stretched between us.

“I can’t keep hiding,” I said.

“No,” she agreed.

“But you can keep learning. And when the time comes…”

Her pale eyes met mine.

“You’ll be the one doing the hunting.”

That night, the wind changed.

Warm. Strange.

Carrying a scent I didn’t recognize burnt spice and bitter stone.

I stepped outside alone, letting the mountain speak to me.

Something stirred in the stars above.

And in the flames below.

I closed my eyes, pressed a hand to my belly, and whispered, “I’m not afraid.”

And for the first time…

I meant it.