Chapter One
Lyla
The piercing sound of the warning bells shredded the silence, a metallic scream everyone in the pack knew meant one thing: danger. If the dictionary needed a picture for chaos, it would’ve been our pack that night. The air was thick with burning cedar and fear. I pressed myself against the trunk of a cypress, its rough bark digging into my back as I watched wolves, stained in red, rip through our homes. Alpha O’Ryan’s roar shook the earth as he charged into the fight. My father, his beta, a blur of almond fur and muscle at his side, a loyal shadow defending the heart of our pack.
“Lyla!” Luna Addison’s voice rang out, causing me to jump. “Sweetie, you need to go into the packhouse. Find Michael, and you two go hide.” She took off, her golden wolf like a beacon of ferocious light after her mate.
I ran as fast as I could, my mind in a state of panic. I was supposed to go into the packhouse to find Michael, but my feet led me up the stairs, straight to my father’s room. The hallway shook with distant howls and shattering glass. Standing outside his door, I could hear voices I did not recognize. Slowly, I opened the door, using the sound of the destruction to cover up the creaking noise of my actions.
Ther were two people inside. One seemed to be looking for something. The other was talking to himself, pacing back and forth while holding a picture. Recognition and confusion were written on his face.
“Keep looking. See you if you can find anything else,” he said to the guy. “I need to leave and get this picture to the King.”
He didn’t wait for him to respond before leaping out the window. The whole encounter was weird. I wasn’t sure why or what photo he had taken.
“There you are! Come on, Ly.” Michael’s voice was a stammering mix of relief and fear. He must have followed my scent up the stairs. His eyes were only on me, too focused to notice the intruder on the other side. It was too late. The door was slung open, banging against the wall. The intruder's eyes locked on me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Run!” Michael yelled, pulling me with him.
We took off running back down the stairs, our breaths ragged as panic overtook us. The sound of the intruder’s feet pounded after us. Looking back, the intruder had shifted into his wolf. I tripped, hitting Michael’s back and sending us both tumbling, which gave the wolf time to catch up to us. His growl was murderous, saliva dripping from his muzzle, eyes trained on the future Alpha. He would have to go through me to get to him, but he didn’t. He paced back and forth but never attacked us. Why wasn’t he attacking? Either way, my twelve-year-old heart was grateful. I told Michael to keep running, and I would stay behind him.
We had escaped the stranger, not knowing we were running toward Melinda, Michael’s aunt. When we rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs, we crashed into her.
“He’s coming,” we yelled, pulling her arm to come with us.
“Go,” she ordered. “I’ll slow him down.”
Michael and I begged Melinda to come with us.
For a moment, it was like time had stood still as she looked into our eyes. She cupped Michael’s face. “Go to our favorite hiding spot,” she said. “I’ll meet you two there.”
We nodded. Our flight instinct, overriding our senses. We listened and ran to the cave under the waterfall. We waited for what felt like hours for her to come, but she never did. The sound of growls had died, replaced by howls of mourning as we felt the bond snap from our Leaders.
Michael doubled over in pain, fisting his shirt over his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Michael,” I whispered, with tears running down my face. “I’m so sorry.”
My father had found us and brought us back to the packhouse. Rows of houses sat half eaten by fire; roofs caved in, exposing the burned beams like broken ribs. Doors hung crooked on hinges or were missing completely. Store windows were smashed in, glass scattered across the street like a black lake of crystals.
Our crops, however, were untouched. The packhouse had only one broken window. The one the intruder jumped out of. There were only a few broken things caused by the one who chased us.
Later, we found out why Melinda never met us. She had lost her life saving ours. We had lost our Luna and our Alpha, but Michael had lost his parents.
Grief held onto my father the longest. After Alpha O’Ryan and Luna Addison died, he became paranoid and lost sleep, convinced someone had betrayed the pack. For almost a year after the attack, he was a ghost in our house. All I knew was he spent most of his day in “the cells” under the packhouse and all his nights reading papers. Every time I asked where he was, their response was “Beta business,” and they would change the subject. Rest was hard for him to find until one day he just started to... show up.
He showed up at training. He would invite Michael over for dinner. He laughed, smiled... he was him again. He never explained what changed; all he said was that he needed to be present to protect the future. I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but Michael and I needed him, and it was a relief to have him back. It took us less than a year to look whole again. Walls went back up. New doors replaced the splintered and the missing ones. Windows were fixed.
Together, we removed the wreckage and debris from our rivers, leaving their glass-like surfaces to mirror the ancient trees that surrounded them. Our canopy of emerald leaves had come back to life, casting a soft, dancing pattern over us. The stench of burning wood and rust was replaced with damp earth and life.
Healing was slower. That part took longer than any rebuild. Learning to sleep without waking at every distant howl and learning to walk the street without checking every shadow. Not crying every time, you walked into the packhouse and learning how to breathe again without feeling guilty for being alive.
