Where The Earth Meets The Sky

The tunnel terminated in darkness and desperation.

Anna stared upward at the exit latch, her chest heaving with exertion. Ten feet above her head, maybe more. The vertical shaft mocked her exhaustion, but the faint scent of open air beyond gave her hope—her first real hope in days. Soon they'll discover her absence,and give chase . 

She had no time to find stairs, no time to climb carefully, not if a bloodhound is on her trail . The nascent power of her wolf still flickered beneath her skin, incomplete and unreliable, but it was all she had.

Anna crouched, gathering what remained of her strength, and launched herself upward with everything she had. Her body sailed through the darkness, and she kicked the steel latch with both feet, putting every ounce of desperate force behind the blow.

The metal shrieked. Pain exploded through her legs like lightning striking bone. The latch gave way with a tortured groan, and she crashed through into the world above, biting back a scream as she landed hard on frozen ground.

She lay there gasping, her vision swimming with tears and starbursts of agony. Slowly, the world came into focus.

A farmyard, snow-dusted and silent. Far from the Silverwood estate's manicured grounds.

She recognized it after a moment—the pack's poppy fields, acres of them stretching toward distant tree lines. The flowers were dormant now, winter having claimed them, but come spring they would bloom blood-red. She'd walked these fields before, in another life, when she'd still believed in happiness.

Her legs screamed with pain where they'd connected with the latch. She looked down and saw her shin already purpling with bruises, the bone possibly fractured. But even as she watched, she could feel it—the strange, tickling sensation of accelerated healing, her wolf's gift trying to knit the damage back together.

It wasn't fast enough. It would never be fast enough.

She looked up at the moon, a shy sliver hanging in the vast darkness. The temperature had dropped below freezing, her breath emerging in white clouds, but her body generated enough heat to keep hypothermia at bay. Werewolves were living furnaces, their metabolisms burning hot even in the coldest nights.

Anna pulled herself to her feet, every movement agony. She checked her mental compass, orienting herself by the stars she'd memorized. North. She needed to go north.

The coordinates Aurora had provided pointed to freedom, to sanctuary, to a place beyond Deimon's reach. She just had to get there before her body gave out completely.

With trembling legs and diminishing strength, she began to run.

The world became a blur of pain and motion. Her body felt like it was made of lead, each limb growing heavier with every stride. Numbness crept up from her toes, a dangerous warning sign she couldn't afford to acknowledge. 

But Anna kept running.

She didn't look back at the sprawling Silverwood estate in the distance, at the place she'd once called home. It had never been home, she realized now. It had been a gilded cage, a beautiful prison, and she'd been too blinded by love to see the bars.

This was a prison break. Nothing more, nothing less.

She passed the poppy fields, their dead stalks rattling in the night wind, and plunged into the dark woods beyond.

The forest embraced her with familiar shadows, and with them came a flood of memories she wasn't prepared for. She'd come here before—to hunt pheasants with Deimon, to practice archery, to steal kisses beneath the canopy while laughing like children who believed the world was theirs for the taking.

They'd been happy here. Or she'd thought they were.

Every tree was a monument to her naivety. Every clearing held the ghost of a moment she'd treasured, now revealed as lies or delusions or wishful thinking. The forest was a museum of her pain, and she was forced to run through it, each step a reminder of what she'd lost.

She couldn't cry anymore. Her tears had run dry somewhere in that cell beneath the estate, where she'd wept until there was nothing left inside her but hollow ache.

Anna ran. She tripped on hidden roots and fell hard, her palms scraping against frozen earth. She got up. She continued. Her stamina leaked away with every stumble, every gasp, every moment her body begged her to stop.

But she couldn't stop. Not when she'd come this far. Not when freedom was somewhere ahead in the darkness.

She had no strength left in reserve. Her muscles were burning through the last of their fuel, operating on pure desperation. But the moonlight helped, even that thin sliver of it. It activated something primal in her wolf nature, letting her stride like a wild thing fleeing its pack.

She emerged from the dark woods and faced the open terrain, heaving and panting as she forced her legs to keep moving. Her hair had come completely loose, wild around her face. Her gown was torn and filthy, her body covered in scratches and bruises and the dirt of her escape.

She thought of the pup growing inside her, innocent and unaware of the hell its mother was enduring. Guilt twisted in her chest. She was starving it, dragging it through this nightmare before it had even taken its first breath.

"I'm sorry," 

she whispered to her belly. "I'm so sorry."

The twin lakes appeared ahead, their surfaces frozen into dark mirrors. Her throat ached with thirst, parched from exertion and fear, but she had no time to stop for water. No time for anything but forward motion.

Shecrossed the frozen lakes carefully, testing each step, terrified the ice would crack and swallow her whole. Her reflection stared up at her from beneath—a haggard creature she barely recognized. When had she become this broken thing?

Beyond the lakes rose the hills that marked the border between Ashworth territory and the lands held by the Nomadic packs. The Nomads were allies to the Ashworths, bound by treaties and mutual profit. If they caught her, they would drag her back to Deimon without hesitation.

Anna scrambled up the hillside, her fingers numb and clumsy. Every breath burned in her lungs. She kept low, moving like a shadow, praying they wouldn't spot her or catch her scent.

But she was in no condition to hide properly. Her scent should have been unmistakable, should have drawn every tracker in range straight to her.

Yet nothing stirred. No alarms raised. No hunting parties emerged from the Nomadic settlement she could see in the valley below, its fires burning warm and bright.

Perhaps luck was finally on her side. Or perhaps she was so covered in mud and blood and filth that even a bloodhound would struggle to identify her.

She crested the hill and descended the other side, leaving Ashworth territory behind. She was in the borderlands now, the contested spaces between packs. Freedom was close. She could feel it.

She navigated by the stars—Ursa Minor, Aurora Borealis shimmering faintly in the northern sky, the guidance Aurora had made her memorize. The North Star hung steady and true, a beacon promising salvation.

She was on the right path. She was going to make it.

And then her body betrayed her.

Anna's legs simply stopped working. One moment she was running, and the next she was falling, her face crashing into snow-covered ground. She lay there stunned, her lungs heaving, her heart hammering against her ribs.

She tried to stand. Her body refused. It was done. It had carried her as far as it could.

A wet cough wracked her frame. Something warm and wrong splattered into the snow—blood. Thick, dark, almost black in the moonlight.

Horror crawled through her veins. She'd seen blood like this before, in her medical training as a healer's apprentice. This was poisoned blood.

The silver. The silver chains, the silver-edged manacles, the silver dust they'd thrown into her cell to weaken her. It had entered her system through her wounds, through her abraded skin, through days of constant exposure.

Silver poisoning was killing her.

She coughed again, and more blood came up, curdling in the cold air. Her body temperature was dropping despite her wolf nature. Her limbs had gone from numb to nonexistent. The healing that should have been automatic, instinctive, had slowed to almost nothing.

Without treatment, she would die soon.

Anna couldn't continue. The realization settled over her like a blanket of snow, cold and final. She turned her face toward the sky, toward the stars she'd followed so faithfully.

At least she'd made it out of Silverwood territory. At least she was beyond Ashworth's immediate reach. He wouldn't dare attack her on another Alpha's land—it would spark a territorial war he couldn't afford.

But whose territory was this?

Her mind was foggy, thoughts slipping away like water through her fingers. She was far from her hometown, far from everything familiar. She thought she might be at the Rifts, or near them. Yes. The ridges here folded into themselves, creating the natural boundary known as the Rifts.

It was no man's land. Neutral ground. No Alpha or pack dared claim the Rifts as their own. The territory was used for parleys, for settling blood debts, for meetings that required absolute neutrality.

She was in the safest place she could be, given the circumstances.

Or the most dangerous, if she died here alone.

Was this the end? After everything, after all the pain and struggle, would she simply die here in the snow?

Anna's vision blurred, darkness creeping in from the edges. Her breathing grew shallow, each inhalation harder than the last.

She was innocent. The thought arose unbidden, desperate. She'd done nothing wrong. Falling in love wasn't a crime. She hadn't deserved any of this—the accusations, the imprisonment, the torture, the betrayal.

She'd just wanted a normal life. Even if she hadn't become an Alpha's Luna, even if she'd been nothing more than a simple pack member, she would have been content. She would have been happy.

But love had destroyed her.

"Love is a curse," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the wind. "A disease. We don't all see it... because we're blinded by it..."

Her eyes drifted closed. The cold didn't feel so bad anymore. The pain was fading into something distant and manageable.

This was the end of the road.

Anna's consciousness flickered like a candle in the wind, and then—

    Darkness.