Page 17 of The Alpha Wolf Defying Fate

The questions. The confusion.

Even Rory seemed to wonder exactly what everyone clearly was thinking.

How could I possibly know what those things were? And why didn’t I do anything against them?

‘What was that?’I asked my wolf. My arms wrapped around myself to hold back the shiver down my spine. I kept my eyes shifted away from everyone else as they helped Ayden to his feet.

‘I don’t know,’she answered me.‘I’ve never heard that voice before today.’

I hugged myself tighter as I thought about the voice.

It had been deep, though I couldn’t quite tell if it was a man or a woman’s voice. It wasn’t any voice I had ever heard before myself, yet the frightening part of it was that I felt like it had been so familiar.

The mark on the back of my neck was back to burning again then, my hand moving up to rub the at the spot in an attempt to ease away the burn. As I moved, my eyes locked with Ayden, his gray eyes narrowed at my hand over the mark with suspicion.

I couldn’t help but gulp as I pulled my hand back.

No one knew the origin of my birthmark. Not even Rory. It was a secret that only the adults in my family knew. A secret that I only learned when I turned eighteen and my mark burned for the first time.

My mother had been touched by darkness when she was pregnant with me. Infected claws had pierced her skin, and it took all she had to purge her body of the dark magic that threatened to consume her. The crones had cleared her and my health, with a promise that there was no more infection left in her body, but I was still born with the marks that matched her wounds at the back of my neck. Four small black crescent moon shapes, like the claws that had dug into my mother’s neck.

“Let’s get moving now,” Ayden suddenly said. I turned, startled, and watched as he winced into a standing position.

He was clearly still in rough shape. I imagined his wolf was injured as well and doing his best to heal them, but it wasn’t at a normal speed.

“Are you sure?” Baer asked.

“We don’t have to go right away,” Rory added. “You can rest more. We can make camp here, now that we are outside the forest.”

Ayden shook his head. “No, we’ve wasted too much time. I don’t know where those wisps came from or how they snuck up on us, but we need to keep moving. At least until sunset, then we can stop and make camp.”

He looked over at me again, my eyes quickly averting as guilt rose up in my stomach again.

“Let’s go.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the strength to fight him. All I could do was hold myself together as I drowned in this fear that I had never felt before.

“Okay, let’s go then,” I said as everyone turned to look at me.

Rory frowned as Baer nodded, and our group began to continue along the only path leading away from the forest’s edge.

I remained silent, trailing behind to try to avoid the stares of the others. I’d catch them each looking back, could hear their whispers of my name on their lips when they thought I wasn’t paying attention.

It was that voice in the back of my head, however, that I couldn’t shake from my mind.

‘Don’t fear, keep to the path. You will find what you are searching for soon,’the voice echoed.

My wolf whimpered as the voice faded in and out. The same message is playing over and over again in our mind. It made it hard for either of us to pay attention to the group or the scenery around us.

“It’s like something out of a painting,” Rory said from beside me.

I jumped, not realizing that she had drifted back to walk with me.

“What?”

“The view here. It reminds me of an old painting. It’s ethereal. I’m not even sure I could have dreamed up a more beautiful place,” she said, her hand gesturing around us.

“Oh,” I looked around, finally taking in the views of the Forgotten Realm.

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