Prologue.
The Past
Lightning illuminated the dark summer sky, casting fleeting flashes of light across the forest below. The air was thick with suffocating humidity, and every creature in the forest seemed to be waiting for the same thing.
Rain.
The animals would finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief once the clouds released their burden and the dry earth drank its fill.
It was nights like these that I loved most. There was something peaceful about the forest beneath a stormy sky, something that made me forget, if only for a little while, how lonely the world could be.
A week had passed since the cast on my hind leg had finally come off. My best friend, Ryker, and I had decided to wait for the stars to appear, but the sky had other plans. Instead of stars, we were treated to magnificent bolts of lightning flashing across the darkness like fireworks.
We sat together, watching the sky in quiet wonder.
Then the rain finally came.
The last flash of lightning streaked across the heavens just as the grey clouds released their hold on the water. Rain poured down the valley, washing over the thirsty earth. Within moments, it grew heavier, the lightning flashed faster, and thunder roared so loudly that the ground seemed to tremble beneath our paws.
I scrambled to my feet.
“Come on!” I called to Ryker before racing towards shelter.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Together, we ran towards the cave we had always called home. Its entrance lay beneath a massive rock, once hidden behind a tangle of roots and fallen trees. But after a long season without rain, everything had dried up, leaving the entrance exposed.
By the time we reached it, the storm was upon us.
We settled inside, safe from the relentless downpour, listening to the rain hammer the earth and the thunder rumble through the valley. It promised to be a long, cold night.
I sat near the mouth of the cave, just beneath the shelter of the rock, watching the water cascade from the sky. Every flash of lightning drew my gaze upwards, and every rumble of thunder followed close behind.
I remember thinking how beautiful it all was.
How peaceful.
How simple life could be.
These were the memories that drifted through my mind.
Back then, I had no idea how much my life would change. I didn’t know that one day, I would look back on that night and wish I could return to it.
I don’t think I ever truly found that same peace with Ryker again.
The Present
This was it.
The end.
I stared down at the creature who had changed my entire life, the one who had changed my childhood forever.
He was human.
Every creature of my kind knew to fear humans. We were taught to keep our distance, to never trust them, and to stay far away from their world.
Yet here I stood, facing one of them.
I had spent so much of my life searching for answers, and now I had finally reached the moment when everything would come to an end.
I wanted revenge.
But more than that, I wanted peace.
And it was my duty to make sure that peace finally came.
Another human stood beside him.
As I looked at the second man, hatred stirred deep inside me. A part of me wanted to do to him what I wanted to do to every creature of his kind. I wanted to turn away from the bond that tied us together and let my anger decide his fate.
But I couldn’t.
Not him.
Somewhere along the way, something had changed. I had formed a bond with him that I could no longer ignore, a connection that made it impossible to see him as just another human.
No matter how much I wanted to hate him, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Not when it mattered most.
I closed my eyes and reached deep within myself, searching for every last fragment of strength I had left. I gathered everything I was, every ounce of power, every piece of my soul, and channelled it towards the very core of my being.
There was no turning back now.
I was going to end this.
All of it.
But I knew the price.
My life.
Sacrifices had to be made to keep the peace.
The words echoed through my mind as the power surged through me.
Then came the pain.
It tore through my body, fierce and unbearable, as though my skin and bones were burning from the inside out. Every breath became a struggle. Every heartbeat brought another wave of agony.
I fought against it, even as the pain threatened to consume me.
I knew what I had to do.
I knew what it would cost.
And still, I refused to stop.
Not now.
Not when everything depended on me.
Before It All Began
But I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself.
After all, this is my tail.
So perhaps I should start at the beginning.
Back when I was nothing more than a little wolf pup who had no idea what the world had in store for her.
I was the last-born of my litter, which wasn’t always a good thing for wolves like us. My coat was as white as fresh snow, except for a small, light-brown marking on my chest. It was shaped like a star, standing out against my pale fur like a little patch of dirt.
I remember the day my mother gave me my name.
Even now, I can still hear her voice when I close my eyes.
“And I shall call you Aelle,” she said softly, “for you have the purest coat, marked with a beautiful star from the heavens above.”
Those words stayed with me long after so many other things had faded.
Sometimes, I would wake from my sleep in a fright, haunted by fragments of memories I couldn’t quite understand. My earliest years had not been kind to me, and the past had a way of creeping into my dreams when I least expected it.
I was young when it happened, barely old enough to understand the world around me. Still, I remember the fighting.
The pain.
The fear.
My family was gone.
At least, that was all I could remember.
Something terrible had happened to them, and somehow, I had been the only one saved. I was too young to understand what had taken place, and as the years passed, the memories slipped further away.
Perhaps I wanted to forget.
Perhaps I simply didn’t know how to remember.
Either way, my past became little more than a collection of broken images and unanswered questions.
I was a wolf.
And for a long time, that was all I knew how to be.
My only friend was another wolf, a fellow outcast who had been shunned by the packs just as I had. A loner, like me. Someone who understood what it felt like to be unwanted.
His name was Ryker.
He was the closest thing I had to family, and I loved him as fiercely as any wolf could love another. If the world turned against him, it would have to go through me first.
I would protect him with my life.
Perhaps it was fitting that we had found each other. Neither of us seemed to belong anywhere else, but together, we had somehow managed to build a little world of our own.
Of course, I wasn’t entirely ordinary myself.
My eyes were probably the first thing anyone noticed about me. They weren’t brown, green, or even the golden-yellow common among wolves.
They were bright blue.
Blue like the sky on a clear summer’s day. Blue like the ocean when sunlight danced across its surface.
Everyone who met me seemed to admire their colour, but beauty came with its own troubles. My eyes made me stand out, and standing out was the last thing I wanted to do.
Other wolves thought I was strange.
Different.
Weird.
No matter how hard I tried, making friends with my own kind always seemed impossible. It was as though those bright blue eyes announced to the world that I didn’t belong.
As I grew older, the differences between me and other wolves only became more noticeable. My fluffy tail grew longer, and my fur became softer and silkier than most. By winter, it was long enough to wrap around myself like a blanket, keeping me warm through the coldest nights.
I had always been different, even when I didn’t understand why.
But I wasn’t alone.
It was during my first spring, after a long and bitter winter that I had somehow managed to survive, that I finally began to understand something important.
I didn’t need a pack to belong.
I didn’t need the approval of other wolves to be happy.
I had Ryker.
He had become my favourite companion, my best friend, and the one creature I could always count on, even if he was a little odd-looking himself.
Once we became friends, he rarely left my side. He loved playing silly games, pulling ridiculous tricks, and finding ways to make even the dullest days entertaining. Our conversations could be strange and completely nonsensical, but that was part of what made them wonderful.
Somehow, he always knew how to make me laugh.
And I loved him for it.
Ryker wasn’t difficult to recognise, though calling it a crowd would have been rather generous, considering how often we were alone.
His coat was grey, but unlike the smooth, shiny fur of most wolves, his was rough and unkempt. White markings covered his stomach, muzzle, inner ears, and tail. His eyes were a warm golden-brown, though they were often overshadowed by the ragged tear in one of his ears.
Scars marked his body, leaving little gaps in his fur. Each one seemed to tell a story, a reminder of a past I knew hadn’t been kind to him.
I never asked him to explain every scar.
He never asked me to remember every nightmare.
Perhaps that was why we understood each other so well. We both carried pieces of a past we couldn’t quite put into words, and neither of us needed the other to be perfect.
We simply needed someone who would stay.
And Ryker stayed.
He stayed when other wolves turned away. He stayed when my strange eyes made me an outcast. He stayed when my dreams woke me in the middle of the night and when the memories of a family I could barely remember threatened to swallow me whole.
With him, I didn’t feel strange.
I didn’t feel unwanted.
I didn’t feel alone.
For the first time in my life, I was happy.
I had a home, even if it was nothing more than a cave beneath a massive rock. I had a family, even if it was only one other wolf. And I had a future that, for once, didn’t seem so frightening.
My past had finally stopped hunting my dreams.
I was no longer afraid of what tomorrow might bring.
I had Ryker, and he had me.
I thought I was complete.
I thought my life had finally reached its peak.
Or so I thought...
