Chapter 1
Blake POV
How do you start a story like this?
Maybe with a mistake. Maybe with a door clicking shut behind you while your heart beats loud enough to wake the entire pack. Or maybe with the moment you realize one reckless night can destroy everything.
Perhaps I should start with me instead.
I am an orphan.
Not a rogue though. Magnus found me abandoned after a rogue raid when I was barely old enough to walk. He said I was wrapped in a torn blanket, screaming loud enough to challenge the moon itself. No scent. No mark. No clue where I came from.
Just me.
He tried finding a family in the pack willing to take me in, but apparently, I was a “wild child.”
Personally, I think that was unfair.
I was not wild.
I was simply the odd one out.
Firstly, there was my appearance. Silver hair — unnatural enough to make people stare too long before quickly looking away. Then there were my eyes. One blue. One green. A mistake the Moon Goddess must have made while creating me.
The older wolves whispered about it when they thought I couldn’t hear them.
“Cursed.”
“Bad omen.”
Children were even worse. Children never know how to whisper.
But Magnus never looked at me like I was something broken. He just looked tired whenever another family returned me after a few days.
“She climbed onto the roof.”
“She bit our son.”
“She kept sneaking into the forest.”
To be fair, their son deserved it.
So eventually Magnus stopped trying to place me with another family and kept me at the pack house instead.
It was not long after that I started attending school like most children my age.
Although, truthfully, nobody actually knew my age. Not Magnus. Not the pack doctor. Not even me. Magnus guessed based on my height and the fact I still cried whenever vegetables touched my plate.
If adults whisper to spare your feelings, then children are the exact opposite.
Children notice everything. Not just one or two of them either.
All of them.
They teased me about my silver hair first. “Old lady.” “Ghost girl.” “Witch.”
Then came my eyes. The other kids would stare too long before daring each other to come closer just to see if the colors changed in the sunlight. Sometimes they asked if I was cursed. Sometimes they didn’t ask at all, and then there was the fact I was painfully skinny no matter how much I ate.
One boy once poked my arm during class and loudly announced, “I think if the wind blows hard enough, she’ll snap in half.”
The entire classroom laughed. Including the teacher.
That one stayed with me longer than I care to admit, as a child things touch you stronger than anything else.
I learned very quickly that looking different meant people stopped seeing you as a person. You became a thing instead. Something strange. Something entertaining.
So, I stopped trying to fit in. I stopped talking unless I absolutely had to. Stopped sitting near the others during lunch. Stopped caring when they whispered.
At least… I pretended not to care, but pretending only works for so long when you’re a child.
One afternoon a group of older boys cornered me behind the school building.
“Do your eyes glow in the dark?” one of them mocked.
Another tugged harshly on a strand of my silver hair. “Maybe she’s part rogue.”
“No,” another laughed, “rogues don’t even want her.”
That one hurt, more than I wanted it to.
I remember staring at the dirt beneath my shoes, trying very hard not to cry in front of them, but even that did not stop the cruel things they said.
The moment they noticed I was hurt; it only became worse. Children can smell weakness like wolves' smell blood. When I finally tried to run, I slammed straight into someone.
Hard.
The impact sent me stumbling backward before rough hands grabbed my shoulders.
One of the older boys. “Well look at that,” he sneered. “The freak’s trying to escape.”
Then came the shoving.
At first, it was small things. A push against the wall. A foot stuck out when I walked past. Books slapped from my hands, but bullies get braver when nobody stops them.
Soon it became bruises hidden beneath long sleeves. Hair yanked hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. Mud thrown at me while everyone laughed, and it became a daily thing.
Teachers ignored it. The pack ignored it.
Even I started pretending it was normal, because sometimes accepting pain is easier than hoping someone will save you from it.
One afternoon I returned to the pack house with torn clothes, dirt smeared across my face, and blood drying beneath my nose.
I had barely stepped through the doors before a guard informed me Magnus wanted to see me in his study. That immediately felt like bad news.
I remember standing outside the study door, trying to wipe dirt from my cheeks before knocking softly.
“Come in.” Magnus only used his “Alpha voice” when something serious happened.
The room smelled like old paper, and smoke from the fireplace burning in the corner. Magnus sat behind his large desk, looking exhausted as usual, but he was not alone.
Elowen Nightshade stood near the bookshelf.
The pack witch... Elowen always looked at people like she could see things hidden beneath their skin.
Her dark hair fell loosely over one shoulder, bits of dried herbs woven between the strands, and silver rings covered nearly every finger. The air around her smelled faintly of rain, lavender, and something ancient I could never name.
Her golden-brown eyes settled on me quietly, and somehow that felt stranger than staring.
Magnus leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “Blake.”
I stood there awkwardly, dirt literally falling from my clothes onto the expensive carpet.
“I can explain,” I muttered quickly.
“Can you?” Magnus asked.
“…No.”
That earned the smallest twitch of amusement from Elowen.
Magnus rubbed his temples. “You got into another fight.”
“I lost another fight,” I corrected quietly.
Silence.
Then Elowen finally spoke. “Did you at least bite one of them?”
My head snapped toward her in shock.
Magnus looked horrified. Elowen looked completely serious.
“…A little,” I admitted.
“That’s my girl,” Elowen murmured.
“Please stop encouraging her,” Magnus groaned.
For the first time that day, I smiled slightly.
Elowen pushed herself away from the bookshelf and walked toward me slowly. She crouched down until we were eye level. “You know,” she said softly, brushing dirt from my sleeve, “when wolves fear something different, they usually try to destroy it before they understand it.”
I frowned. “I’m not different, I just look different.”
Her gaze flicked briefly to my silver hair. “That,” she said carefully, “depends entirely on who is looking at you.”
I did not fully understand what she meant back then.
Maybe she knew that. Maybe that was why sadness briefly crossed her face.
Magnus cleared his throat. “Elowen came to me with a proposal.”
I immediately tensed, a proposal sounded dangerous.
“No,” I said instantly.
Magnus blinked. “You don’t even know what it is.”
“Still no.”
Elowen laughed softly under her breath.
“She wants to take you in,” Magnus explained.
I stared at him. Then at her. Then back at him again. “You mean… permanently?”
Elowen tilted her head slightly. “Only if you wish it.”
Nobody had ever asked me that before. Families usually decided they did or did not want me after a few days. Nobody stayed long enough for my opinion to matter.
“You want me to live with the witch?” I asked carefully.
“The pack witch,” Elowen corrected with mock offense.
“That doesn’t make it less weird.”
Another smile touched her lips.
Magnus folded his arms. “Elowen thinks she can handle you.”
Elowen reached forward then, carefully fixing a torn piece of fabric near my shoulder. Her hands were warm and gentle. “You do not need to become smaller just because others fear what you are, little wolf,” she said quietly.
Something in my chest hurt when she said that, because no one had ever spoken to me like I was worth protecting before.
I swallowed hard. “…What if I break your stuff?”
“Oh, you absolutely will,” Elowen said immediately.
Magnus snorted.
“But” she continued softly, “you’ll still have a home afterward.”
Elowen homeschooled me after that. Well… “homeschooled” is a generous term.
It was more like controlled academic chaos.
During the day, I spent hours buried in online lessons while Elowen hovered somewhere nearby, pretending not to watch me struggle through mathematics.
She was terrible at normal subjects. Absolutely terrible.
“Why,” she once asked while staring at my screen with genuine confusion, “are there letters inside the numbers?”
“That’s algebra.”
“That’s nonsense.”
Yet somehow she could memorize six-hundred-year-old potion recipes written in dead languages without blinking.
After regular schoolwork came my actual education.
Witch school, and according to Elowen, witchcraft was not something you learned from books alone.
“You can memorize every spell ever written,” she told me once while dragging me through the forest at sunset, “and still remain powerless.”
“Then how do I become powerful?” I asked.
Elowen glanced over her shoulder, dark curls shifting in the wind.
“By learning to listen.”
“To what?”
“Everything.”
That sounded deeply unhelpful at the time.
One evening, after I finished my online assignments, Elowen summoned me to the back garden behind her cottage.
The air smelled like crushed herbs and rain-soaked earth. Candles flickered across the wooden table beside her, though no one had lit them.
I noticed that happening often around Elowen. Things simply… reacted to her.
“Watch and learn,” she said calmly without looking at me. “Listen to my words and learn from them.”
I dropped into the chair across from her dramatically. “That sounds like the beginning of a threat.”
“It might be.” She placed several dried plants onto the table carefully. “Magic,” Elowen began, “is not about control the way wolves believe it is.”
I leaned forward slightly.
“Wolves fight magic constantly,” she continued. “Alphas force obedience. Betas force stability. Dominant wolves force the world around them to bend.” She crushed a silver-colored herb between her fingers. “But witches?” The candles flared brighter. “We ask.”
The flames immediately settled again.
I blinked. “You asked the fire to do that?”
Elowen smiled faintly. “Everything alive carries energy. Fire. Water. Forests. The moon. Even you.”
“That sounds fake.”
“That’s because you’re twelve.”
Fair enough.
She slid the crushed herbs into a small bowl before adding dark liquid from a glass bottle.
“Magic listens differently depending on intention,” she explained. “Fear twists it. Anger poisons it. Grief strengthens it. Love…” She paused briefly. “Love changes it entirely.”
I watched carefully as the mixture inside the bowl began glowing faintly blue. No chanting. No dramatic hand movements. Just Elowen’s calm voice.
“Most young witches fail because they try too hard to dominate magic,” she said softly. “But magic is not a servant, Blake. It is a relationship.”
The glowing liquid suddenly swirled on its own.
I stared openly now. “…Okay that one was actually cool.”
Elowen laughed quietly. Then her expression shifted slightly more serious. “You have power inside you already,” she told me. “Far more than you realize.”
I looked away immediately. “I don’t even have a wolf yet,” I muttered.
Elowen’s gaze softened. “There are many kinds of power, little wolf.” The way she said it made something tight loosen slightly inside my chest. Then she pushed the glowing bowl toward me. “Now try.”
I stared at it cautiously. “What exactly am I trying to do?”
“Feel it.”
“That’s not even proper instructions.”
“It’s the only instruction that matters.”
I sighed dramatically before placing my hands near the bowl.
At first, nothing happened.
Then slowly… I feel warmth, not outside, but inside... like moonlight beneath my skin. The blue liquid trembled slightly.
Elowen went completely still.
I looked up nervously. “Did I break it?”
Her eyes remained fixed on the bowl. “No,” she said quietly.
The candles around us flickered violently.
For just a second, the silver strands of my hair almost seemed to glow beneath the moonlight.
And for the very first time… Elowen looked afraid of me too.
