Prologue
Nature was the first thing she’d ever known.
She was drawn to it like bees to a flower, the sun & the moon. They were a pair, her ability to connect with every fibre and every inch of the forest. She knew deep down it was much more than being a hippy or a plant loving freak, no. This was more, more than her, more than her parents.
The pack healer Leeka, had noticed this when kaeia was a baby, the way she crawled and whimpered out of her mother’s arms to immerse herself in their field, to be able to touch and smell every single flower.
There were moments the only thing that would silence the young pup’s cries was the sight of a pretty flower, or a handful of them. She was a curious thing when she was little, never growing out of it as she grew older. Her sister was always so much better with talking to others and training to be alpha, whilst little Kaeia stayed in the fields and laid in the grass patch her father had specially planted for her.
It was a fence of her favourite flowers, trees growing over a wire shelter. She laid there for hours, sometimes falling asleep surrounded by the one thing that gave her peace.
She could hear the trees calling her, feel the way that they spoke. It wasn’t just about the sight or smell they provided, it was the safety in numbers, the ability to be self sufficient as an eco-system rather than rely on external resources.
Leeka smiled from her little hut, seeing the warm glow around Kaeia. No one else could see it, but she was far more powerful than anyone else would ever know.