Pilot

Aria

Imagine being eighteen coming back from a boarding school far away from home, only to be welcomed by the death of your entire family.

The train kept shaking like it was trying to throw me off and every clunk it made was like a countdown to hell. I hadn’t seen them for six years yet here I was, staring at the telegram for six hours without blinking. The paper had began to get soft from my sweaty grip.

Accident…fire… no survivors.

The words hadn't changed, but I kept reading them anyway, as if the next time I looked, they'd say something different. That this was all some terrible mistake. That when I got home, Lira would be waiting at the station with that smirk of hers, ready to tease me about how pale I'd gone at the news.

Outside the window, the landscape slowly faded away. Six years ago, these same fields had been blanketed in snow when I left for school. Lira had pressed her forehead to the train window beside me, her breath fogging the glass. "Dad says this is for the best. I’m gonna miss you." she said. Those were the last words she ever said to me.

The conductor announced my stop in that detached way people do when they don't know they're delivering you to your nightmares. My knees locked. For one cowardly moment, I considered staying on the train, letting it carry me anywhere else.

But I couldn’t. I had to face the music.

I gave the air a whiff the minute I got off the train. I didn’t like it one bit.

I saw my uncle, with his truck parked and ready to take me to home to the funeral.

They burnt them and sent their burning coffins floating down the river in a moat. The pack came, of course. All black coats and lowered gazes. Their pity was as thick as the smoke still clinging to the ruins of our home. I counted them as they came. Uncle Jarek, his jaw clenched tight. Old Mara from the butcher's shop, dabbing at her eyes. But he wasn’t there. Kol. The Alpha. He wasn’t there for his favourite Luna, so I heard.

Lira's coffin was the smallest.

They'd draped it in white linen with her favourite dress tucked inside. The lie made my stomach turn. Lira hated white. She'd once burned a sundress our mother made her wear. "I’m not a ghost!" she'd snapped, ash smearing her cheek. And now she was.

I waited until the others left. Until I could no longer see the smoke burning anymore. Then I jumped into the water, trying to swim as fast as I could, thinking I could catch up to the moat. But who was I kidding?

I swam back to shore. My uncle had been waiting for me there with his truck.

“For heaven’s sakes, Aria, are you trying to get yourself killed?” My uncle asked, almost irritated.

"You knew," I said, my body and hair dripping wet.

Uncle Jarek froze halfway to his truck. His shoulders hunched the way they always did when Father owed him money. "Go home, Aria."

"This was my home, uncle. They were my home." I stood, pointing towards the river. "Tell me why Kol did it."

He turned slowly. His eyes were red-rimmed, but not from crying. From fear. Always fear. "Your father worked with Alpha Kol. He stole from him and made a deal. You don't poke a hornet's nest unless you're ready to get stung."

"What deal?" My voice quivered as I asked.

His jaw twitched. "Leave it."

I stepped closer. The wind carried the stink of gasoline from the burned-out house. "He sold her, didn't he?"

Jarek flinched.

The pieces clicked together then. Lira's letters stopping six months ago. Father's shaky voice whenever Kol's name came up during his visits at my school. Debts, he'd muttered. A business arrangement.

"He sold Lira to Kol," I said. I couldn’t believe my father would stoop so low. "To pay his debts. And when Kol got pissed, he burned the evidence."

"It wasn't like that—"

"Then what was it?”

He grabbed my arm with his fingers digging into the burn blisters I'd gotten pulling Lira's doll from the wreckage. "Your father thought he could cheat Kol. Traded Lira as collateral, swore she'd be... cooperative. But your sister—" He cut himself off, glancing at the trees.

"But Lira fought," I finished.

Of course she did. Lira always bit the hand that hit her.

Jarek's silence said everything.

I yanked my arm free. "So Kol killed them all to clear the debt."

"He's the Alpha. The pack follows, or they fall." Jarek spat into the dirt. "Go back to your school. Forget this place."

"Or what? He'll kill me too?"

"He doesn’t know my brother had twins. He thinks Lira is your father’s only child. Your father made it that way just incase something like this were to happen. The longer you stay here, the more risk you’re putting yourself in. You're not worth the bullet."

“Bullet? From the way their bodies looked, my mum was suffocated to death and then she had her heart plucked out. My dad was beaten and stabbed with silver multiple times. And my sister—“ I trialed off, trying to fight back the tears that threatened to spill.

“Aria, that’s enough.” My uncle said calmly, trying to console me.

“No it’s not.” I sniffed, wiping my tears away. “Lira, was defaced. I couldn’t even recognise my own twin sister. How could he do this to your family and this is the way you react!”

Uncle Jarek climbed into his truck. "Stay, and you'd wish he'd put you in the ground with them."

Then he turned on his engine and drove away.

I knelt by the shore. The locket Lira gave me before I left hung under my shirt— a twin to hers, though hers was probably melted slag in that coffin now. Inside, she'd tucked a note: When the world tries to eat you, bite back.

I pressed my palm to the fresh dirt. "You loved him once, Lira."

What a bittersweet lie.

I thought Lira had met Alpha Kol by chance and they fell in love but after the story my uncle had told me, I realised Lira hadn't loved him. She was forced to and she wanted out. But she wasn’t smart enough.

Well, I wouldn't make that mistake.

Standing, I brushed the wet dirt from my knees.

"I'll make sure he dies loving me."