Alina
“No,” my father’s voice is a low growl. “Absolutely not. The discussion is over.”
“It’s not a discussion,” I say, my voice surprisingly steady. The shock has burned away, leaving a cold, hard resolve in its place. “It’s a decision. Mine.”
“It’s the worst decision you could possibly make,” Liam spits, pacing the room like a caged animal. “You think running away helps? You think we’ll just what, forget? Move on because you’re gone?”
“I think you’ll keep your rank, your home, your honor,” I counter, looking from my brother to my father. “Mason has already drawn the lines, Dad. If I stay, you have to cross them. You’ll be forced to choose between your daughter and your Alpha.”
My mother kneels before me again, her hands gripping my arms. Her touch is desperate. “There is no choice, Alina. Don’t you understand? You are our daughter. Protecting you isn’t a choice, it’s our very nature.”
“Then let me protect you,” I plead, my voice finally cracking. “He called me a weakness to the pack. He was wrong. But I will not be a weakness to my family. I can’t watch him tear you down because of me.”
“We are not so easily torn down,” my father says, his jaw tight with fury. “And you will not survive out there. You are wolf-less, a rogue in a world that hunts our kind. It is a death sentence.”
“I’ve survived being wolf-less my entire life surrounded by wolves,” I say, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. “How much worse can the human world be?”
No one has an answer to that. The silence stretches, thick with their pain and my determination.
“Please,” I whisper, the fight draining out of me. “I’m so tired. Can we just… can we talk more in the morning? I just need to sleep.”
It’s a lie, but it’s the only mercy I can offer them. My mother searches my eyes, and for a terrifying second, I think she sees the truth. But she just nods, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “Alright, my love. In the morning.”
She helps me to my room, tucks me into bed like I’m a child. Liam stands in the doorway, his face a mask of betrayal. “Don’t do anything stupid, Alina.”
“I won’t,” I lie again.
I wait until the sounds of the house settle into the deep, quiet rhythm of sleep. Every creak of the floorboards, every distant howl of the pack on patrol, is a goodbye.
I don’t have much to take. A spare set of clothes, the small pouch of money my parents gave me for my birthday, and a worn wooden wolf Liam carved for me when we were seven. I slip it into my pocket, its smooth edges a painful comfort against my palm.
My hands shake as I write the note. Tears blot the ink, but I get the words out.
*I love you more than my own life. That’s why I have to do this. Don’t come for me. Please. Live your lives. Be happy. That is all I ask. Forgive me.*
I leave it on the pillow where my head should be.
Slipping through the dark house is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. A floorboard groans under my foot and I freeze, my heart hammering against my ribs. From my parents’ room, I hear my father sigh in his sleep. The sound nearly shatters my resolve.
I push open the back door and the cold night air hits my face. The familiar scent of pine, damp earth, and home wraps around me one last time.
I don’t let myself look back. I just run.
For days, I move. I catch a ride with a trucker who smells like stale coffee and doesn’t ask questions. I eat food that comes from plastic wrappers and sleep in forests that feel empty and hostile without a pack’s presence to make them safe.
The loneliness is a physical thing, a crushing weight on my chest. It’s made heavier by the constant, dull ache where the mate bond used to be. It’s a phantom limb of the soul, a ghost of a connection that still throbs with the memory of its own violent end.
I learn to be invisible. I keep my head down, my answers short, my presence small. I cross into human towns and learn their rhythms, their smells, the way they never look each other in the eye.
After weeks of aimless wandering, I find a small, forgotten town nestled in a valley between two unassuming mountains. Northwood. The name sounds safe. Anonymous.
A sign in the window of a dusty diner reads “Gracie’s Eats. Now Hiring.” It feels like a lifeline in a storm. I walk in.
Days bleed into weeks. Weeks into months. The months turn into a year, then two.
Three years is a long time to be a ghost.
My life shrinks to the size of a small apartment above a mechanic’s garage and the four walls of the diner. I serve coffee, wipe down counters, and listen to the meaningless chatter of the town’s human residents. They know me as Ella. Just Ella. The quiet girl who keeps to herself.
The ache in my chest has faded to a scar. It doesn’t scream anymore, it just throbs, a permanent reminder of the girl I was and the life I lost.
I am a survivor. I tell myself this every night as I lock the diner door and walk home under a sky full of stars that feel a million miles away. I survived his rejection. I survived leaving my family. I survived being alone.
But as I catch my reflection in the dark glass of the diner’s window, I see a stranger staring back. Her eyes are harder, her face is thinner, and there is no trace of the hopeful girl who waited for the clock to strike midnight on her eighteenth birthday. Survival, I realize, has a cost.
And I am still paying for it.
