Chapter 9

Clarissa's POV 

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I woke to the scent of sage and candle smoke.

Not the usual lavender Tessy diffused in my room. This was heavier, older- like the forest after rain, like something ancient curling around my lungs.

I stirred. The blanket slipped from my shoulder as I sat up.

“You’re awake,” a voice said.

Feminine. Calm. Weighted with something I couldn’t name.

I turned toward the sound. “Yes,” I whispered.

There was a pause.

Then soft footsteps crossed the room, followed by the whisper of robes and the faint sound of wood creaking as someone sat.

“I’m Camelia,” she said. “I’m the Elder Seer of the Riverside Pack.”

I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know what to say.

She didn’t seem to need me to.

“You had your first vision two days ago,” she said gently. “And it nearly broke you.”

I looked down at my hands. They still trembled sometimes, when I remembered the flashes-images so bright and fast they left echoes behind my eyes.

“I didn’t know what was happening,” I said finally.

She didn’t scold me. She didn’t coddle me either.

“Of course not. No one ever does. It always begins with pain. That’s how the gift wakes.”

I swallowed.

So it was a gift.

And not… a curse.

Camelia stood and moved closer. I could feel her presence like warmth in the air, like a flame that didn’t burn.

“I’ve seen many Seers bloom,” she said. “Each one different. Each one marked.”

“Marked?” I asked.

“By loss. By silence. By something the world tried to strip from them. And still, they rise.”

Her words hit something raw in me.

All the years of being told I was weak, broken… useless. All the times I swallowed back the lump in my throat while they mocked me. All the nights I cried silently into a pillow too thin to muffle it.

“Why me?” I whispered. “Why now?”

Camelia didn’t hesitate.

“Because the goddess waits for the quiet ones,” she said. “The world forgets you. But she doesn’t.”

That morning marked the beginning of my training.

It didn’t look like I thought it would.

There was no magic. No chanting. No mystical rituals under moonlight.

Camelia simply sat with me. Talked to me. Asked questions that made me dig deeper than I wanted.

“Tell me how the vision felt,” she said.

“Sharp,” I answered. “Like… like a glass shattering in my mind. And then light. Too much of it.”

“What did you see?”

I hesitated. “Wolves. But not like ours. They were bleeding. Fighting. I saw fire. A girl screaming-her voice wasn’t hers. And Drey was… different.”

Her silence stretched long after that.

“You’re not just seeing futures,” she said at last. “You’re seeing truths. Things wrapped in shadow. That’s why it hurt.”

I turned my face away. “I don’t want it.”

“I know,” she said softly. “But it chose you anyway.”

………………………………………………

We met every morning before dawn.

She made me hold stones, plants, things I couldn’t see but could feel. She told me to speak what came, without judgment.

Some days, nothing did.

Other days… it poured out of me like a flood. Words I didn’t understand. Names I’d never heard. Places I couldn’t pronounce.

Camelia never looked surprised.

“You are remembering,” she told me. “Your blood knows what your mind doesn’t yet.”

That scared me more than the visions.

Because if this was remembering, it meant something in me had always known.

Had always been this.

And no one-not Derek, not the ones who mocked me-had ever known what I was hiding beneath all their cruelty.

Tessy started walking with me to our sessions.

She never asked what we talked about. Never pushed. Just held my arm and told me funny stories about the pack on the way there.

“I heard someone saw you with Camelia,” she said one morning. “Word’s getting around.”

I stopped walking. “Are they talking?”

“Some,” she admitted. “But not the way you think.”

I waited.

“They’re curious,” she said. “They want to understand you. Not fear you.”

That felt strange.

Being seen without being stared at.

Being known without being hated.

It made my chest feel tight in a way that wasn’t painful… just new.

……………………………………………..

One evening, Camelia guided my hands to a bowl of water and said, “Breathe into it.”

I did.

Nothing happened.

Then everything did.

The water pulsed warm beneath my fingers. My breath hitched. My heart stuttered. And behind my eyelids, I saw.

I saw a forest-dark, whispering secrets.

A figure running-barefoot, desperate.

A man screaming.

And Tessy-kneeling in the dirt, her hands red with something I didn’t want to name.

I jerked back, the bowl sloshing.

Camelia’s hand steadied me.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You saw what was meant for you.”

I wanted to deny it.

But I couldn’t.

Because I had.

And I would see more.

I already knew.

I couldn’t sleep that night.

I sat by the window, the moonlight curling across my legs, and listened to the world outside.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel completely lost.

I was still blind. Still marked by pain.

But I saw.

I saw more than they ever thought I could.

And maybe… just maybe… I was no longer the girl they could throw away.

I was Clarissa.

I was a Seer.

And my story was only just beginning.