Chapter Six: Weight of Survival

Tanya’s POV

The bruises faded slower than the stares.

Days had passed since the pit fight, but the other pack members still watched me as if waiting for more proof I’d earned the place Tion had given although his expression said it was a bit grudgingly. Respect wasn’t granted with one victory. Not here. Here, respect bled from skin to dirt, earned inch by painful inch.

Still, something had shifted.

No more sneers. No more spit in my food or sharp “innocent” elbows at my side while they passed. Now, Garrick trained opposite me without protest, though his glare burned hotter than any wound he’d given. Sera didn’t smile when she knocked me down — not because she’d softened, but because cruelty wasted breath now. I was no longer easy prey. That made me… something else.

Not pack yet. Not kin either. Not one of them.

But seen.

Dante watched me closer, too. Not just as Beta. As… what? A wary ally? A teacher who hadn’t expected the student to last this long? But I couldn't decide on what exactly it was just yet.

“You’re healing faster,” he said one evening, tossing me a strip of bandage without ceremony. “Not shifting yet. But closer.”

“My wolf’s still… quiet.”

“She’s watching. Learning. You’re giving her reason to come back.”

I didn’t ask how he knew. I’d learned after watching him for a while that Dante didn’t speak of things without knowing. His own wolf hovered close beneath his skin, calm but ever-present. His control fascinated me — a stillness I envied, even admired.

“Why do you help me?” I asked. “Really?”

“You’re Tion’s project.” A shrug. “That makes you mine to manage.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.” He leaned closer, gaze steady. “But it’s the truth. Projects don’t survive here. Only wolves. You’re proving which you are. That matters more than you think.”

“To you?”

“To him.”

Tion hadn’t spoken to me since the pit. Not directly. But his presence pressed against my skin like a brand every time he watched from shadows or balconies or the edges of training yards. I caught his eyes once — gold burning beneath hooded lids — and something in me stilled.

Fear, but most prominently, recognition.

Alpha.

Not by blood or by choice. But by sheer force of will. He ruled this place not because he’d claimed it but because no one else could hold it. His wolves obeyed because disobedience meant ruin and pain. His enemies feared him because he wore feral as armor, madness as weapon.

And me? I didn’t know yet what I felt.

Only that he saw me now.

And that was more dangerous than any of the beatings I took from Garrick.

Training grew a lot harder.

Dante pushed me beyond my body's limits, beyond exhaustion and pain. My fights began to last longer with my teeth bared and literal claws unsheathed. My body burned with new scars, but I learned faster how to use the pain as fuel.

How to move sharper. Strike smarter, end things before they ended me.

“You’re still holding back,” Dante said after I dropped Sera with a knee to the ribs that earned me a rare nod from the others.

“I’m fighting.”

“You’re surviving.” He stepped in, and forced me to block, parry, and counter his blows without mercy. “Not the same thing.”

“Why do you push me so hard?”

“Because you’ll face worse soon.” His grin showed teeth. “And because I like my debts paid in strength, not weakness.”

“Debts?”

“To Tion. To myself. Doesn’t matter.” He circled. “What matters is what you become when no one’s left to hold you up.”

Nights felt colder after lessons with my sore muscles protesting at the almost bare ground.

I sat alone by the fire outside the barracks, nursing bruises with heat and silence. The others gathered in groups now — not inviting me, but not driving me away either. I existed in between. Not a threat nor kin.

Just somewhere in-between.

“Tired?” Dante asked, dropping beside me with his usual abruptness.

“Alive. That’s enough.”

“For now.”

Silence stretched, comfortable in its weight.

“You’ll never be Moon Stone again,” he said eventually. “Even if you wanted to be.”

“I don’t.”

“Good.” His gaze met mine, steady as always. “Stop mourning ghosts. Start building something meaner.”

“Meaner?”

“Stronger.” He smiled, slow. “Mean is just another word for refusing to die easily.”

I nodded, because I understood. Finally.

Later, Tion found me.

Not with words or with commands. He simply appeared like smoke from the trees,a shadow in moonlight,a predator in every slow step. He sat across from me, silent with his gaze heavy.

“You’re learning,” he said after long minutes of silence spent gazing at the fire. “Not fast enough, but faster than most.”

“I’ll learn faster.”

“You’ll bleed for it.”

I didn’t flinch. “So be it.”

He smiled. It wasn't kind of cruel but approving.

“You could leave,” he said. “Run. Die softer elsewhere.”

“I’m tired of running.”

“Good.” His eyes caught mine, held. “Stay tired. Wolves don’t beg here. They bite.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

Silence again. He let it stretch, testing my patience. Testing everything.

“You remind me of something,” he said at last. “Before I broke.”

“What?”

He rose, taller in shadow than he had any right to be. “Hope.”

He left me with that. A word burning hotter than the fire’s coals.

Hope.

Strange coming from him. Stranger still that it settled somewhere beneath my bruised ribs and stayed.

Not warm. Not soft. But sharp.

Like teeth waiting for skin.

And then the forest shifted.

Not in the soft sound of the breeze ruffling the leaves, but how in a split second, all the pack members went from having light conversations to being at complete alert. Somewhere beyond the treeline, a howl split the still night and sounded too close, but too different to be one of ours.

Dante appeared at the barracks door, his eyes already shifting to gold to indicate his wolf was about to take over.

“Tanya,” he said, voice low and urgent. “Get inside. Now!”