Chapter 1

Selena POV:

I didn’t stop until I breached the thickest line of the woods. There, I waded through the thick bushes, knowing that none of the men in their wolf forms could venture into the thorny shrubberies and hurt their legs.

I ran until my bones ached and my legs no longer felt like they could carry me. I knew I had run quite a distance because the landscape was slowly changing.

I knew that I shouldn’t stop but I needed to rest. I found a little cave that sheltered me from the weather and slumped down to the ground, allowing my body to sag from the weight of everything that had happened.

Just when I thought life would be okay, something came along to fuck everything up.

I didn’t want to be part of this pack that hated me. I didn’t want a mate. There were plenty of other women in the pack for them to choose from. Why the hell did they choose me? And I wasn’t buying into the nonsense about the moon goddess.

Those were just tall tales they told children to make them believe we all had someone out there looking out for us. If life had taught me one thing, it was that no one was looking out for me. I was the only one who had my own back and that was just how I liked it.

Even the father who had promised to protect me and stay by my side for the rest of my life had run away while I slept, how could I trust others to care for me?

I heard the howls in the distance and sighed.

The ache in my legs had partially decreased but the nagging feeling at the back of my head reminded me that wolves were sensitive to smell. No matter how far I ran, they could follow me and find me.

That meant, I had to throw them off my scent.

I needed an intense scent from the forest to coat the underside of my feet and mask my scent. That was the first course of action. And I happened to know of a tree that could do just that. The pungent scent produced when its bark was rubbed against a hard surface could make wolfs' noses sting.

Werewolves had keen noses, so they would pick up my scent shortly after. They did not lose scent easily. But it would buy me five to ten minutes.

I scrubbed my feet against a tree and sprinted towards what I knew to be the pack border.

But as the minutes passed, I heard the footsteps close behind me. It was a wolf, its yowl letting others know that the prey had been spotted.

My heart sank to my stomach as I increased my speed.

I felt something big hit my back before I heard it. I stumbled forward, falling face-first into the hard rock ground, and groaned. I felt a claw on my back, just grazing on my shoulder as if to prevent me from wriggling out.

I pitied myself at that moment.

The garbled sound from its mouth turned into human language. “You put up a good fight,” I heard Chad’s familiar but menacing voice. “The menthyl bark was a good touch, but it only helped me track you down.” He hissed. “Thanks for hurting my nose, bitch.”

I groaned as he pushed my face into the ground as I tried to push my torso off the ground.

“Don’t try to get away,” he warned but allowed me to roll over. I saw his face towering over me, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.

There was no escape.

His face descended close to my neck and I felt his claws descend from his fingers, digging into the skin of my wrist. Tendrils of fear and rage crawled through me and I thrashed despite the pain. I felt it slice through my wrist and body and I screamed and screamed and screamed until there was nothing but silence.

Confused as to why he had stopped hurting me, I squinted my eyes open. The forest was eerily silent, not even the hoot of the birds could be heard. And Chad was not on top of me.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I looked around the vicinity to find him. What new game was this? Was he playing me so that I was scared enough to die from a heart attack?

As I moved in the darkness, I felt something brush past my skin and I squeaked, moving away from it quickly.

And then I saw him… Chad, laying on the ground.

My eyes watered as I looked closely at him. What I saw, I couldn’t comprehend. What remained of him was something resembling his original form. The skin was taut over his bones, the latter having caved in. He looked like the image of death.

Something had killed him while he was trying to assault me. It had saved me. But what was capable of something so… demonic?

And I suddenly realized something. There would be no escape. Chad was dead. Everyone knew he was hunting me. When they found him dead—and they would when dawn broke, they would say it was me.

I would be a killer.

And someone who killed one from their own pack was a criminal who deserved death.

I was born a crime. But now, I was a criminal.

There were a few things I knew by the time I snapped myself out of the stupor:

One. I would have to run fast and far away so that these people couldn’t catch me.

Two. I had to sneak into the pack’s living space and bring back a few things necessary to live in the wilderness.

Three. I had to become a ghost and never appear in society again.

I made a list of things I needed to take with me to survive.

The cash I had hidden away from my human job. Something to start a fire. A knife. Water. Rain jacket. A change of clothes.

I took the route that had a group of coyotes patrolling it every so often. The wolves avoided this area at all costs, but as a half-human, I didn’t have an aversion to the creatures.

The route took a little longer, but it avoided any spots guarded by the sentinels or the wolves that pursued the females. The path led up to the edge of the pack lands, at the very back where nobody came. Only the very sick and the untouchables lived there. Including me.

Considering that all the sickly wolves had been disposed of, sneaking in was not a huge problem. I searched wildly, picking out two pairs of freshly washed clothes that could be used for any occasion and a raincoat. Everything else was scattered across my small hut. It took me all but ten minutes to finish the process.

I looked at my shelter for one last time, knowing it would be the last time I see it. I would not miss it.

I would not think about it.

And I certainly wouldn’t allow anyone to drag me back and make me stay in it.

My eyes dropped to the ash from the fire that had burned the night before and I took fistfuls of it on my hand and rubbed it over my body to mask the scent.

I smelled the air and once satisfied, sprinted out of the hut and into the abyss of the wilderness.

I sped into the dangerous lands of the coyote and the bears, knowing it was much safer than the clutches of the White Claw Pack or its members.

In the wilderness, there was little use for the money, but the dreams of a normal life drove me to keep them in my small backpack. When I was hungry, I ate wild fruits and sneaked away to wait for predators to leave before taking the bones. More often than not, I would follow the ants and find a cache of water. I would use it to clean the bones and meat before slowly cooking them. The bone soup and meat went a long way… the vegetables sustained me for the rest.

The ash from the fire would be used generously to mask my scent.

I often collected dew or tied a piece of cloth around my legs and walked through thick brush to collect the moisture from the foliage. I would wring it out into my mouth.

But this was only if there was no source of water near me.

At nights, I never lit fires, scared of being detected. I found fallen trees and piled large branches against them to make a sheltering wall. In the gaps, I shoved in small branches and leaves.

For warmth, I used the thick fox fur I had been lucky to find a few weeks into my hike through the wilderness. The dead fox had taken its last breath and I had received something warm to cover me partially and some food to feed me for a few days.

It was almost negligible, but I survived.

Had I tried going into the human concentrated areas? I had. And then I heard rumors about the White Claw Pack putting a bounty on my head. I quickly went back into the safety of the forest… never to emerge.

I estimate about a year or so passed. I had covered a great distance despite the many stops I had made in the middle, some spanning for a week or so when I found the right conditions to make camp.

No wolf packs. No dangerous predators nearby… tall trees to hide in.

That morning, I was cleaning up my campsite when I heard animals yelping in the distance. I frowned as I squinted into the distance, willing my eyes to see any predator that might be nearby.

I was still perched on a large tree, the little shelter which I had built on top of it had been a good bed for the night. But there was a scarcity of water and edible animals in the location.

I had scented some werewolves a few kilometers away and knew that I couldn’t rashly walk about these lands. Hence, I treaded carefully every day, only picking foods that would keep me inconspicuous. If I killed any animals, I would be found out.

I climbed down the tree and laid low as I searched for some groves full of bugs. My best bet was a frog or snake… less detectable.

With my bag slung over my shoulder, I trudged on.

There was a haunting silence in the woods. I was walking father away from pack lands, but I felt a chill in the air… a kind of danger that I didn’t want to encounter.

In the distance, I saw a brighter spot and froze. Small clearings in the forest always had overgrown grass and a lot of animals and bugs hiding and ready to be feasted on. I sprinted towards its direction and broke into the bright sunlight.

I pressed my hand over my brows to see around me, my eyes still squinting because of the sudden light.

I sucked in some fresh air, finally, the chill and wet forest had given way to sunshine and a little warmth. I pulled out the strip of cloth from my backpack and wound it across my legs, knowing that I had very little water. Not even enough to last me the hour. I snuck through the grassland, my ears perked up for sound.

Nothing.

From the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I turned to it immediately, ducking down into the grass to hide and watch. But the rustling came from all around me. I couldn’t see anything, but the movement was all around me.

And at that moment, I knew that I had been caught.

I could smell the wolves that had surrounded me.

Wolves that were hungry and wanted to eliminate any threat to their food resources.

Damn it.