Chapter 8

• Eliana POV
• “Mama!” I called out.
• She turned.
• And my heart stopped.
• It was her.
• Her face. Her eyes. Her—
• But then, a wagon passed between us.
• And she was gone.
• ---
• And then I was standing there on the cobblestones panting, seeking urgently. Again my hands shook, but not this time with strength.
• I did not know how long I stood there, locked-out, hard-hearted.
• But the weight of what just happened clung to my shoulders like ash.
• Alexander would find out. The pack would talk. The rumors would grow.
• And me?
• I would keep running.
• Because that’s what people like me did.
• People born of flame.
• People were too wild to belong.
• People who could burn down the world…
• ...just by wanting to belong in it.
• ---
• The pines whispered like old friends.
• Their voices were soft in the wind, brushing past me as I slipped between trunks worn by age and memory. Each step felt like a resurrection of a life that I had killed. A wet moss soaked my boots, the sinking sun rayed little openings between gnarled branches entering the forest and turning gilded crannies upon the earth below.
• Then I saw it.
• The clearing.
• It was covered with thick greenery and a moon-shaped pile of rocks, but it was in the right place, it was unchanged, it was untouched. The place where my mother would give me emotional lessons on how to name the plants and the secrets of silence.
• I stepped into the light.
• She was already there.
• Sitting on the large flat rock at the center, cloak pulled tight around her small frame. Her head turned slowly—eyes locking on mine.
• And for a moment, we just stood there.
• Two women suspended in a space that time had tried and failed to erase.
• “...Mama,” I whispered.
• “Eliana.”
• She stood, breath catching.
• Then she was across the clearing in a second, pulling me into her arms.
• She smelled like pine and earth and ash. She stood trembling with me clutched in her arms. I shut my eyes, and laid my face in the bend of her neck.
• I was a child again a moment.
• However, things were to change.
• She drew herself abruptly together, and clasped both hands on my face. “What happened to you? You disappeared. I searched everywhere. I felt it—something changed. Something woke inside you.”
• I nodded, throat dry. “It did.”
• “Tell me. All of it. Now.”
• So I did.
• I told her about the attack on the border trail. How I would have died without Alexander having found me and taken me to his pack. She fixed her expression into a hard line at the sound of his name, and said nothing yet.
• I explained to her how my chest was burning, how my eyes glowed like that of an irradiated cat unable to stop with glowing, how I felt energy that went beyond the capacity of breaking windows with pressure and bending light around me. The dreams. The ancient voice. Scarlet—the wolf—rising from within me, forming more and more with each passing day.
• And then I hesitated.
• Because the last part wasn’t just strange—it was terrifying.
• “I’ve been seeing someone,” I said slowly. “Not in real life. In dreams. Visions. She’s beautiful… tall. Silver hair, glowing skin, eyes like opals. She calls to me.”
• Diana was silent.
• “She told me something,” I continued. “She said, ‘You are not one. You are many.’”
• My mother’s breath hitched.
• Just a slight tremor. But I noticed.
• And I wasn’t imagining the way her fingers curled around the fabric of her cloak, like she was gripping something beneath it.
• “Who is she?” I asked. “Why do I feel like she knows me?”
• My mother turned away, pacing a few steps before stopping near a tree trunk. “You’ve been through a lot,” she said quietly. “Trauma can create illusions. Minds fabricate what they don’t understand.”
• I blinked. “You think I imagined her?”
• “She’s not real, Eliana.”
• I stared. “You’re lying.”
• Her shoulders tensed.
• “You’re hiding something.”
• She faced me again, expression unreadable. “You need to forget the dreams. Forget the voice. Don’t let it pull you further in.”
• My jaw tightened. “You said you felt something change. That you knew it. Don’t act like this is normal. Nothing about me is normal anymore.”
• She said nothing.
• “When I said Scarlet’s name,” I pressed, “you flinched. And when I mentioned Alexander, your face—Mama, what is it?”
• She took a slow breath.
• Then: “You should never have gone with him.”
• “What?”
• “You don’t know what he’s part of. What his pack carries in its blood.”
• “Alexander saved me,” I said, voice rising. “He didn’t hurt me. He’s the reason I’m alive.”
• Diana’s face darkened. “Sometimes saving is just the first step to owning. You think you’re safe, but you don’t know what they want from you. Why they’ve kept you this long.”
• I stepped back, heart pounding. “So you think I’m a prisoner?”
• “I think you’re something they didn’t expect. Something they’ll eventually try to contain.”
• Silence stretched between us.
• The wind rustled the trees again.
• I took a shaky breath. “Then tell me what I am. What you’ve always known and never said.”
• “I told you once,” she said, barely audible. “You are powerful. More than I ever imagined. But I never thought it would wake this soon.”
• “What is it?” I whispered.
• Diana’s eyes flicked up to meet mine. There was something in them now—fear wrapped in sorrow. But not fear of me.
• Fear for me.
• “You were born under the Red Moon,” she said. “But it wasn’t just that. You carry something older. Something that doesn’t belong to this generation of wolves.”
• I went still.
• “A fragment,” she said slowly, “of something long broken. The woman in your dreams—she might be real. Or a memory from before time began. I hoped it would stay buried.”
• “Why?”
• “Because you’re not meant to hold all of it. Not alone.”
• I shook my head. “What do you mean by many?”
• “I don’t know. But if she said it, then she knows more than we do. And that terrifies me.”