PACK DIRT

POV: ARAYA

The first thing Araya ever learned was how to survive pain.

Not the kind that left bruises.

Not the kind anyone apologised for.

The kind that lived in silence, growing sharp teeth inside her chest.

She learned it in winter.

She was barely a day old. Left at the edge of Blackthorn territory — naked, silent, and alone. Hidden beneath the frost-laced roots of an old birch tree that had long since stopped blooming. Her lips were blue by dawn. Her breath barely stirred the cold.

The patrol that found her didn’t sound relieved. Their growls were quiet, cautious.

> “She smells like rogue blood.”

“Or a witch,” someone muttered.

“Her eyes — look at those eyes.”

> “The Alpha won’t like this,” one said. “If she’s a witch, best we kill her now.”

But another voice cut in — colder.

> “She could be useful.”

And when the Alpha was told, he didn’t ask who she was.

He said,

> “Keep it. Raise it. She might serve a purpose.”

Not loved.

Not claimed.

Just… kept.

That was how Araya survived her first trial.

Not through mercy.

But through utility.

She wasn't welcomed. She was stored.

Not loved. Not safe. Just tolerated — like a crack in the wall no one bothered to seal.

> She’s cursed.

Her mother must’ve been some hunter. Why else would she leave her to die?

Only a scarf — soft, dusk-blue and silver — wrapped around her tiny form, and stitched into its thread, a single word in delicate needlework:

Araya.

That’s how they knew what her name was.

No one in the Blackthorn Pack knew who had left her.

Some whispered she was the spawn of a rogue woman from a foreign land.

Others claimed she reeked of sorcery — of something that didn’t belong beneath Selene’s moon.

They called her many things in those early years:

> “The ghost baby.”

“The witch-born.”

“The pack’s mistake.”

No one called her daughter.

No one kissed her forehead.

No one asked if she had nightmares.

The scarf with her name — the only proof someone had once wanted her — was tossed in a storage box with moth-eaten linens and forgotten relics. She was told about it but had never seen it. Never held it. Never touched the thread that once whispered her name.

She slept in a corner of the kennels, wrapped in burlap and wolf stench. Her lullaby was growls and gnawed bones.

If she ate, it was after the wolves.

If she cried, no one came.

---

By the time she was five, she knew better than to speak unless spoken to.

By the time she was seven, she knew how to dress wounds and scrub blood from stone.

By the time she was ten, she’d stopped asking why no one looked at her with warmth.

She was the silence between doorways.

The hands that cleaned up vomit after ceremonies.

The shadow that carried pots and piss buckets.

And when the moon rose high and the pack feasted above — she was below, scraping the sacred floors clean of ash, blood, and entrails.

No one thanked her.

But they never forgot to remind her:

> “Dirt doesn’t speak.”

“You were born from rot.”

“You should’ve died under that tree.”

The priestesses were no gentler.

One, half-drunk on divine incense, once called her:

> “A sacred absence… the Moon’s rejection made flesh.”

It sounded poetic.

It meant cruelty disguised as faith.

Let her carry our sins, they said.

So we don’t have to.

---

By thirteen, Araya could skin a deer, stitch flesh, set a bone, and survive on crumbs.

Her wolf?

Silent.

Always silent.

They said she was wolfless. That her soul had been denied the sacred gift of shifting. That even the Moon had refused to claim her.

> “If I were you,” a warrior once muttered, “I’d walk into the Hollow and never come back.”

She didn’t answer.

She was too busy dragging buckets of blood down temple stairs, too numb to scream when her hands cracked open from frost.

The priestesses left her the filth no omega would touch — the straw soaked in birthing fluids, the scraps from stillborn litters, the half-alive wolves who never shifted back and whose howls sounded like broken stars.

She cleaned them. Fed them.

Buried them.

No one noticed when she bled.

No one asked if her back still hurt from sleeping on straw.

---

Once, a priestess spilt sacred oil on Araya’s hands.

It sizzled.

Not like water on skin — but like fire meeting its rival.

Araya told no one.

But later, she swore she saw steam rise from her palms.

And it smelled — faintly — of smoke.

---

The mad priestess with the burnt veil once wandered too close to Araya in the kitchens.

She looked at her — really looked — and dropped her bowl of blood-soaked herbs.

> “It sleeps inside her,” she whispered, eyes glassy with visions. “The fire that forgets mercy.”

They beat her for the outburst.

But afterwards, the priestess never entered the kitchens again.

---

Now, at eighteen, Araya stands barefoot in the back kitchen, dress clinging wet to her skin. Her hands ache from boiling pots. Her knuckles are raw.

The air reeks of smoke, old meat, and sweat. Laughter echoes down the halls — warriors boasting of hunts, mates whispering of moon ceremonies.

Araya moves like a shadow.

Always just out of the way.

She mouths words to herself sometimes — imaginary conversations with no one, ghosts of kindness she invented just to keep her sanity.

That had always been enough.

Until Marra.

Luna Adira’s cousin.

Sharp-tongued. Beautiful. Vicious.

Today, she’s hunting prey.

> “Out of my way, fleabag.”

The pot sloshes. Araya flinches — too late.

Marra sneers, knocking a tray of raw meat from her arms.

> “Didn’t hear me, dog?”

Araya kneels silently, hands trembling.

Marra leans in, voice venom-slick.

> “Oh wait. You’re not even a dog.”

“You don’t have a wolf.”

Laughter erupts behind her.

> “Not even a mutt would claim you.”

“The Alpha’s only keeping you out of pity.”

“If I were you,” someone whispers, “I’d slit my own throat.”

Araya straightens, shoulders stiff. Not because it hurts — but because it doesn’t anymore.

A bucket of dishwater soaks her leg.

She doesn’t move.

Doesn’t speak.

Marra circles like a bored lioness.

> “You think this pack is your home?”

Araya says nothing.

Marra spits at her feet.

> “Even the Moon turned her back on you.”

---

Araya once dared to ask a priestess if her wolf might be late.

> “Some don’t shift until sixteen,” she’d whispered.

The priestess had laughed until tears spilt from her painted eyes.

> “You weren’t born,” she said.

“You were discarded. The Moon gives nothing to trash.”

She never asked again.

Now, they call her:

> Araya the Empty.

The Pack’s Dirt.

The Mutt.

The Mistake.

She wears the names like armour.

If she cries, it is in silence.

If she bleeds, it is in secret.

---

She is used as a training dummy.

New blades were tested on her skin.

Boiling water poured across her arms to see if wolfless flesh burns like theirs.

It does.

They laugh.

Araya doesn’t scream.

---

But beneath it all — the bruises, the ash, the silence — she stores every memory like coal.

> Not to forget.

But to remember.

Because one day, they will bow.

And when they do—

> She will not forgive them.