SIERRA'S POV
The first days after crossing the border were nothing but pain and silence.
My body ached from the climb and my knee was swollen from the fall. The mountains gave way to lawless woods, where no pack claimed rule and no scent held dominance for long. The air here was sharp and the wind carried no trace of Moonbane. No trace of him.
I kept walking.
The forest became my world, a shifting maze of trees and shadows where I learned what it meant to survive.
I drank from cold streams, stole warmth from abandoned dens, and ate what I could trap or forage. My wolf, weakened by rejection, stirred sluggishly inside me, but she was there. We leaned on each other the way wounded things do. She lent me strength when my body failed and I gave her hope when despair crept close.
Days blurred into nights. I learned to hide my scent, rolling in river mud, masking it with crushed herbs and wild mint. I learned the ways of rogues: how to move without leaving prints, how to listen for danger in the spaces between silence.
And slowly, I changed.
The omega who once bowed her head in the Moonbane hall was gone.
What replaced her was leaner, sharper. A creature born of hunger and stubborn will.
Sometimes, I thought of Isaak.
Not out of longing, but anger.
I thought of his face when he said I reject you. The coldness. The pride. And then, that night under the rain, how it had felt when his walls had cracked, when something real had replaced that cold rejection.
I told myself it meant nothing. That it had been weakness, not love.
But lies taste bitter after too long.
One morning, as frost glittered across the undergrowth, I found a stream and crouched to drink. My reflection startled me. My skin was paler, my cheeks were hollow and my eyes were shadowed with exhaustion, but my gaze was steady.
Weeks passed. The days grew longer, warmer. I built a small shelter near the edge of a clearing, woven from branches and bark. It wasn’t much, but it was mine.
Then the sickness began.
It started with nausea. The smell of meat made me gag, even water turned sour in my mouth. At first, I thought it was infection, some wound festering, or poison from the roots I’d eaten. But when I pressed a hand to my belly, a strange warmth lingered beneath my skin, like a pulse that wasn’t mine.
And not just one, but two.
Do you feel that? I whispered to my wolf.
Her answer was soft. Yes.
The realization hit me like thunder. I sank to my knees, the world spinning, my breath caught somewhere between laughter and tears.
“No,” I murmured. “No, it can’t be,”
But it was.
The Goddess, in her cruel and twisted mercy, had left me a piece of him. Of us.
My hands shook as I held them over my stomach. There was life inside me. The nausea returned in waves, but I didn’t care. I curled against the cold ground.
Tears slipped down my cheeks.
The bond I thought was dead flickered faintly, not to him, but to them. A thread of light in the dark.
For the first time since the ceremony, my heart didn’t ache for what I’d lost. It ached for what I had to protect.
The days that followed were a blur of fierce determination. I gathered herbs for strength, hunted smaller prey, built stronger walls around my shelter. My wolf healed faster than I ever expected, her instincts sharpened by the presence of the lives growing inside us.
Food came harder to find as my belly began to swell, but I learned to adapt. I trapped rabbits, picked berries, drank from streams when the nausea allowed. The forest became both my prison and my protector.
Sometimes I caught the scent of strangers, rogues passing through, their musk heavy with hunger and violence, but I hid well. I wasn’t the trembling omega they could toy with. I was something else now. Something the Goddess had reforged in blood and grief.
When the moon rose full over the clearing, I lay beneath it, hand over my stomach, whispering to the life inside.
“You’ll never know pain like I did,” I told them softly. “Never bow to anyone. You’ll run free. You’ll be strong.”
My wolf purred inside me, her warmth wrapping around the promise.
I closed my eyes, letting the moonlight bathe my skin. The wind carried the scent of rain and pine and distant wolves, but I no longer feared it.
Let them hunt. Let them search.
I was done being prey.
As the weeks turned into months, I found myself moving slower, but surer. My senses sharpened, every sound, every scent clearer than before. The pups were growing fast, their movements more pronounced.
Sometimes, I felt one kick when I laughed, or when I whispered a song I half-remembered from the pack nursery. Those were the only moments I let myself smile.
One evening, I caught my reflection again in the stream. My face was softer now, rounded by the signs of life I carried. But my eyes, those had changed the most. They were no longer afraid.
Still, some nights, I woke with my heart pounding, convinced I could feel Isaak’s presence across the distance. The bond, though faint, pulsed sometimes.
I ignored it.
I couldn’t let him find me. Not now. Not ever.
Because the moment he saw me, he would see them. And I knew what an Alpha did when faced with a threat to his legacy.
He’d see bastards. I saw miracles.
So I hid deeper into rogue lands, traveling farther each week, following the rivers that led toward the northern hills. The air grew colder again, but I welcomed it. The cold made the world clean, sharp, honest.
At night, when the pups stirred, I told them stories. About the moon that watched over all wolves. About strength that doesn’t come from bloodlines but from heart. About a mother who once thought she was broken and learned she was unbreakable.
The Goddess had taken much from me,my place, my pride, my bond, but she had left me this. Two heartbeats where there had once been none. Two tiny souls that gave me reason to keep fighting.
And fight I would.
If Moonbane ever came for me, if he ever came for me, they would find not a frightened omega, but a mother, fierce and wild and ready to burn the forest down before she let them touch what was hers.
The thought didn’t scare me.
It steadied me.
Because this time, I wasn’t going to run from anything.
