The forest has teeth. I feel them in the biting wind that tears through the pathetic excuse for a cloak they gave me. I feel them in the jagged branches that claw at my hair and clothes, snagging and pulling as if to hold me in place. The darkness is a living thing, thick and suffocating, swallowing the faint moonlight and leaving me to stumble blind.
Every sound is a threat. The snap of a twig is a rogue wolf stalking me. The rustle of leaves is a hungry predator closing in. The howl of the wind sounds like Damien's voice, whispering the word reject over and over again. My heart, a frantic drum, keeps time with my ragged breaths.
Fear is a constant companion, a cold knot in the pit of my stomach. But it is a distant thing, secondary to the more immediate tyrants: hunger and pain. The half-loaf of bread was gone the first night, a dry, tasteless thing that did little to silence the gnawing ache in my belly. Thirst is a layer of sandpaper in my throat. And the pain in my cheek… it is the metronome of my misery. It pulses with every beat of my heart, a searing, insistent rhythm that refuses to be ignored.
I can feel the heat of it now, a feverish warmth that spreads down my neck and across my forehead. The edges of my vision swim, and the trees seem to lean in, their dark forms twisting into monstrous shapes. My mind, frayed and exhausted, begins to play tricks on me. I see flickers of movement in my periphery—the flash of a Silver Crest patrol, the glint of a warrior's eyes—but there is never anything there. They are just ghosts conjured by fever and a desperate longing for someone, anyone, to find me.
You wanted this, a cruel voice in my head, one that sounds horribly like my sister's, whispers. You wanted a mate. You wanted to be seen. Well, you are seen now. Seen for what you truly are. Nothing.
I stumble over an exposed root, my ankle twisting beneath me. I cry out, a raw, pathetic sound that is immediately swallowed by the indifferent woods, and collapse in a heap of damp leaves and cold mud. I lie there, panting, every muscle in my body screaming in protest. It would be so easy to just stay here. To let the cold seep into my bones, to let the fever consume me. To simply stop.
No. I can't.
I don't know where this stubbornness comes from. The hopeful girl who believed in fated mates would have given up. She would have curled into a ball and wept until the end came. But that girl is dead. She died in the Great Hall, under the cold gaze of her Alpha. I am someone else now. A collection of jagged, broken pieces held together by little more than spite.
And spite is a surprisingly effective fuel.
I will not die out here. I will not give him the satisfaction of knowing his discarded trash simply rotted away in the wilderness.
With a groan that feels like it's being ripped from my very marrow, I force myself back to my feet. I lean against the trunk of a massive, gnarled oak, its bark rough and unforgiving against my back. I tear a strip from the hem of my already ruined dress and wrap it tightly around my protesting ankle. It's a useless gesture, but it's an action. It's a refusal to surrender.
I don't know how long I keep moving. Time has lost all meaning, measured only in the slow transition from the deep black of night to the murky grey of a sunless dawn, and back to black again. My journey has no direction. I am simply moving, putting one foot in front of the other, my entire world reduced to the singular, desperate act of taking the next step.
My thoughts become a feverish, looping dirge. He rejected you. He scarred you. They cast you out. Your family hates you. There is nowhere to go. There is no one. The words spin around and around, a carousel of misery.
The fever is worse now. I'm shivering uncontrollably, even though my skin feels like it's on fire. My cheek throbs with an intensity that makes my vision flicker in and out of focus. At some point, it must have started bleeding again; I can feel the warm, sticky trickle of fluid running down my neck.
Finally, my body gives its final, definitive no. My legs tremble violently and then give out completely. There is no stumbling this time, just a complete and sudden loss of control. I fall, my head hitting the soft, mossy earth with a dull thud. This time, I know I am not getting up.
This is it. The end of the path. I've run as far as my strength will take me.
I lie on my back, my gaze drifting up through the tangled canopy of the ancient trees. The sky above is a canvas of angry, bruised clouds, heavy with unshed rain. A storm is coming. The first few fat, cold drops begin to fall, splattering against my face. Each one feels like a small, icy stone.
My anger, my spite, my desperate will to survive… it all drains away, leaving only a profound and bottomless exhaustion. My eyelids feel impossibly heavy. I'm so tired. I just want the pain to stop. I want the cold to stop. I want the endless, echoing loneliness to finally be silent.
A strange sense of peace settles over me. It's the peace of surrender. I have fought, and I have lost. There is no shame in it anymore. I am just a girl who dreamed of the wrong thing.
The storm, which had been gathering with such menace, suddenly breaks with a fury. The heavens open up, and a deluge of rain comes sheeting down, soaking my thin clothes in seconds and stealing the last vestiges of warmth from my body. It feels fitting. A final, violent cleansing. My last memory will be of the sky weeping for the fool I was.
I close my eyes. I welcome the encroaching darkness, the soft, quiet fade to black. The throbbing in my cheek seems to be getting more distant, the cold less sharp. Let it be over.
But the world is not finished with me yet.
Through the roar of the wind and rain, I sense a change. A sudden shift in the light. The heavy clouds, which had been a solid blanket of grey, tear apart for a single, improbable moment.
A ray of pure, unfiltered moonlight, as bright and sharp as a silver sword, lances down through the storm, cutting a perfect circle of light in the forest clearing. It passes through the thrashing canopy and falls directly, impossibly, onto my face.
It should feel cold, this light. As cold as the moon itself. But it's not. It's warm. A gentle, liquid warmth that sinks into my skin, into the very bones of my skull. It feels like the first rays of dawn after a long, bitter winter. It feels… like a welcome.
I am too weak to open my eyes, but I can feel its touch. The warmth pools in the wound on my cheek, in the deep, angry gashes that Damien carved into my flesh. I brace myself for a new wave of agony, expecting the light to sear the infected wound.
But there is no pain.
As I lie on the brink of death, the moonlight hits my face. The "cursed" silver scar left by Damien's claws does not hurt. Instead, it begins to pulse with a soft, gentle, internal silver light, completely independent of my will.