Rowena's POV
We kept moving.
There was no destination I could have named—only a direction Selene felt. Sometimes I tried to remember where we had begun, but the images blurred. It was as if the world I'd left behind were slowly losing its shape. Faces faded, names wore thin, and after a while I wasn't sure whether what I missed was a place… or a person.
At times I thought I heard Derek's voice in the wind. Not words—just the tone. That sharp, impatient edge that had always made me flinch. Whenever it happened, Selene would slow deliberately, as if to say: it can't reach you anymore. But thoughts are more stubborn than bodies.
I couldn't have said how many days had passed since we left the world that had once been mine. Steps lost their meaning; nights folded into one another; rivers lingered only as cold impressions in my memory. Selene carried us forward—steady, unquestioning—as if the land weren't an obstacle, but a memory she'd learned to read long ago.
I wasn't behind her.
Not beside her.
I was inside her.
In her movement, her breath, the way she adjusted her weight to the ground. Every step was a lesson. Not with words. Not with commands—with presence. This is how you survive. This is how you move. This is how you live.
And yet…
Something in me refused to quiet.
A thought that didn't hurt, but persisted. Like a splinter under the skin I'd ignored for too long.
Selene? I finally asked.
Her stride didn't break, but I felt her attention turn toward me. She always knew when I was about to speak something I'd carried for a long time.
"I understand why Derek despised me," I said softly. "I understand the man—his fear, his anger, the way he couldn't face what I am… what we are."
But his wolf?
The thought tightened in me.
"Why did he turn away?"
Selene slowed—not stopping, just easing enough for me to feel the weight of the question.
"I don't know, Rowena," she said at last. Honestly. Without circling it. "I tried to reach him. More than once. He doesn't answer."
There was no anger in her voice.
No accusation.
Only confusion.
"He withdrew," she continued. "As if he folded inward. That isn't hatred. But… it isn't indifference either."
I stayed quiet. Her words didn't comfort me. They did the opposite.
Because I knew what I hadn't wanted to say.
"Silence is a decision," I said finally.
Speaking it felt freeing—and devastating. As long as I could believe the quiet was a misunderstanding, I didn't have to face the truth: that perhaps I was never truly a choice. That he was everything to me, while I was only a possibility to him—one he decided was too heavy to carry.
That was what hurt most. Not the rejection, but the absence of a fight. No struggle. No question. Just withdrawal. A wolf who stayed silent when I needed him most. He chose the quiet.
The air tightened around us. Wind ran through the canopy, as if the forest itself were listening. That's when Selene stopped completely.
So abruptly my instincts leapt like startled birds.
"What is it?" I asked.
Her ears snapped forward, muscles coiled, her body pulled into a single, taut arc.
"I heard something."
I listened. At first, there was only the forest—the whisper of leaves, the dull vibration of earth.
"Maybe game," I suggested.
Selene didn't move.
"No," she said softly. "This is… organized."
And then she was running.
The world didn't just get faster—it sharpened. Every sound separated, as if time had fractured. I heard Selene's heartbeat, felt the strain in her lungs, and for the first time I truly understood: if we fall now, there will be no restart. No next path, no next forest, no next dawn.
I wasn't afraid for myself.
I was afraid for her.
Because Selene had always protected me. And now, for the first time, I felt I might have led her into danger.
Light sliced through the trees like moonlight through a blade. Leaves thundered beneath us, the ground pounded underfoot. Selene didn't run blindly—every movement was deliberate, each step a fusion of survival and tactics. I was inside it with her, yet felt the world accelerate around us. Every branch, every trunk, every shadow struck me as a warning.
Someone's following us, I thought. I didn't need to say it. Her fur answered the thought—and then I caught the scent.
Wolves. Four of them.
Different from any we'd met before. Not feral survivors of the wild. These were trained. Cold. Watching every twitch we made.
Selene surged forward. There was no panic, no rage—this was pure strategy. As if she could already see where they'd try to corner us. My heart hammered, but not with fear. My body matched the rhythm, the coordination. A chase like this couldn't be measured in emotion—only in precise choices.
A guard's shadow burst through the dense leaves ahead. The air snapped tight. When he shouted, his voice cut like cold steel:
"Royal Wolf territory! In the prince's name—halt immediately!"
Selene didn't slow. Her body flew between branches, every muscle taut but steady. She wasn't fleeing.
She was facing the impossible.
And I was with her.
The tempo spiked. Branches lashed back, the ground roared, wind bit into my skin. I saw the first net thrown, slicing the air, felt the tension as it closed in.
A jolt.
A heartbeat of weightlessness.
And we fell.
The net slammed shut—thick, threaded with silver. Selene growled and fought, every nerve straining to break free, but the grip only tightened. The weight wasn't just on our bodies—it pressed with a realization: they didn't want to drive us away.
They wanted to break us.
Selene fought, but beneath the pain was something else—calculation. The moment when instinct must step back because force is no longer the answer.
I knew if she kept struggling, we'd both die.
And she knew it too.
"In the prince's name—shift!" the leader commanded.
"Don't make this worse for yourself."
Selene panted. I felt her fury. Her defiance. And the recognition she couldn't avoid.
This wasn't a fight.
This was a capture.
"Enough," I said.
And I shifted.
The world collapsed.
Returning to my human body felt like every pain arriving at once. Muscles burned, ribs protested, a thousand needles pulsed beneath my skin.
The guards stared.
Then I heard it—the stunned, broken disbelief:
"A… woman?!"
There was something terrifyingly human in that shock. Not pity. Not compassion. Confusion. Because their rules no longer fit me. I wasn't what they'd prepared for—and that made me both dangerous and vulnerable.
I felt Selene trembling inside me—not weakness, but rage and fear. Not for herself.
For me.
I saw uncertainty ripple through their gazes, felt the tension shift. I wasn't just a fleeing wolf anymore. I was human flesh braided with instinct. And that combination unsettled them.
Selene panted, resisting—and with it came a realization she'd resisted until now: the fight could no longer be instinct alone.
This wasn't a battle.
This was an arrest.
And the understanding that being a woman might make me seem fragile by their laws—but the strength sleeping in my body and my heart never had been.
As the net sealed around us, fear and pain crashed over me together. But I knew Selene was still inside me. Same body. Same mind.
And I wouldn't let go.
I cried out.
Dropped to my knees within the net.
Air refused my lungs.
"Careful," someone said. "She's injured."
The voice felt distant. My vision narrowed; the edges of the world went dark.
The last thing I felt was Selene's panicked movement within me.
Not separation.
But terror—
that she couldn't protect me.
And then…
Nothing.