POV - Elena
At first, the day felt ordinary.
Meetings. Emails. The hum of computers and the murmur of voices filling the glass corridors of Ashford Industries.
But ordinary never lasted long for me anymore.
The moment I stepped out of the elevator, I felt it — a shift in the air.
Subtle. Cold.
Like the ghost of a storm brushing against my skin.
I paused, my fingers tightening around the folder in my hand.
Nothing looked out of place. The lights flickered softly above, my coworkers moved about, smiling, focused on their screens. But beneath the surface of that normal rhythm, there was something else.
Something that didn't belong.
I made my way to my office, trying to shake it off. But every step I took echoed differently.
Too sharp.
Too aware.
When I sat down at my desk, I could feel it stronger — a faint hum, an energy that wasn't mine, pressing against the edges of my consciousness like invisible fingers testing a lock.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.
James had told me that as my power grew, I would sense things others couldn't. But this wasn't the soft whisper of life I'd come to recognize. This was intrusion.
I tried to focus on my work, typing, answering messages, organizing reports. It was pointless. My heart was racing too fast, and my senses were alive with warning.
Around midmorning, I felt a ripple of energy near the elevators — sharp, deliberate, foreign.
And then I saw them.
Two people stepped into the open floor. A man and a woman — both dressed impeccably, blending perfectly into the corporate landscape. But to me, they didn't blend at all.
Their presence hit like a cold wind.
The man's eyes were pale — almost silver — and the woman's scent was too clean, too deliberate, as if the air around her refused to cling. They smiled politely at the receptionist, their movements smooth, calculated.
Predators in human skin.
My pulse jumped.
I didn't know who they were. But I knew.
They weren't human.
The pendant against my skin flared hot, as if warning me. I instinctively touched it, pressing it beneath the fabric of my blouse. The warmth steadied me.
They passed by my desk without looking, but I could feel their attention slide over me like static.
When the woman's gaze brushed mine for half a heartbeat, I saw it — faint, hidden beneath her pleasant smile.
Recognition.
And something else.
Curiosity.
I swallowed hard and turned back to my computer. My hands were trembling.
James wasn't in his office. He'd gone to another meeting. I could call him — I should call him — but something deep inside told me not to draw attention.
Not yet.
The rest of the morning dragged by painfully. The air in the office grew heavier, charged with invisible weight. The two strangers spoke to the HR director, asked to see financials, "evaluations" — excuses.
They didn't want data.
They wanted me.
At lunch, I couldn't eat. My coworkers chatted around me, oblivious, their laughter echoing faintly in my ears.
The pendant pulsed again, faster now, as though it could feel my heartbeat.
James…
I didn't say it out loud, but I knew he'd feel it.
The bond between us hummed like a live wire, and I sent my thought into the current of that connection.
Something's wrong.
For a moment, nothing. Then I felt him — distant, but present — his voice like warmth cutting through the cold.
I know. I feel them too. Don't react. Just breathe.
I exhaled slowly, forcing calm into my movements.
But when I turned my head slightly, I caught sight of the two strangers again.
The woman was watching me.
Our eyes met.
And this time, she smiled.
Not a polite smile.
A knowing one.
My skin prickled. Every instinct I had screamed to run. But instead, I straightened, forcing myself to hold her gaze — even as the air between us seemed to pulse with power.
A quiet challenge.
If they thought they could come here and take me like a frightened girl, they were wrong.
Something within me — the part that had been sleeping all my life — rose up then.
Calm. Bright. Dangerous.
The flame.
And though I didn't move, the air around me shimmered faintly — unseen by anyone else, but enough that both strangers stiffened ever so slightly, as if they'd felt a heat they couldn't explain.
I smiled — a small, steady smile that didn't reach my eyes.
They turned away first.
Only then did I breathe again.
I reached for my phone under the desk and typed a quick message to James:
They found me.
Seconds later, his reply appeared.
I'm on my way.
I set the phone down and looked out the window at the city skyline.
The world seemed to tilt — silent, waiting.
The Council had found their bridge.
But this time, I wasn't the helpless child they thought I was.
If they wanted a war, they'd just declared it on the wrong woman.
…
They had come into my life like a cold wind — practiced, polite, the sort of intruders who wore civility like armor. But underneath the tailored suits and the measured smiles they carried something older: the kind of certainty that believed the world could be ordered by fear.
I stared after them as they left the floor, watched their silhouettes pass through the glass and disappear into the city like two stones thrown into water. The ripple from those stones would reach everywhere. That thought should have frightened me. It did not.
Instead I felt… clear.
It is strange, the way new truths settle. The loss of my parents had been a hollow ache for so long, a question I wore like a bruise. Now the bruise had been cleaned and the wound re-sealed with purpose. They had been killed because they loved across a line no one wanted crossed. They had been murdered for mapping a future the old orders feared. I no longer felt small or stolen; I felt inherited.
Power thrummed through me in a new register — not the coy, flickering sensation of something emerging, but the steady, cold hum of something that had always been mine, waiting until I had the courage to claim it. It was not simply energy. It was direction. It wanted justice as much as it wanted protection.
People around me moved through the day believing the world was the same as yesterday. I let them. Let them keep their small certainties. I worked. I answered questions with the same competence I always had. It was a delicious thing, this: to live at the center of a storm and keep smiling through it. Ordinary life tasted sweeter for the defiance in me. If the world assumed I was placid — that I would accept their decisions and their sentences — then it had misjudged me monstrously.
At lunch I walked up to the roof terrace. The city opened out below — a spread of glass and noise, the river threading through like a silver vein. I could feel them watching even now, some distance away, like faint blots on the edge of my awareness. The pendant warmed against my throat as if it, too, remembered its purpose.
I opened my mouth and spoke — not words others would hear, but the quiet language of whatever thread joins blood and fate. It rolled like a tide around me and came from me. I remember, I said to the bones of the world. I know why they burned. I remember love and the cost of it. I will not be costed away.
There was no fear in that sentence. There was anger, yes. Anger that sharpened like a blade. There was grief, still raw, but tempered now into iron. And there was a promise, to myself first and then to anyone who thought they could take me: I would not be stolen again.
When my phone buzzed with James's reply, I didn't rush to his side like a frightened child. I typed: They came. I saw them. Let them try. I am not afraid. I pressed send and let the message float through the calm we share.
The answer was almost immediate: Good. Stay where you are. Don't engage. I'm on my way.
Do not engage. He was right. Strategy is a kind of tenderness. But strategy does not mean submission. I would not cower while others made plans for me. I had a life — my job, my friends, the tender domesticity that had begun to stitch itself into my days — and I would keep it. I would carve it out of whatever stood between me and a quiet happiness.
Later, in the quiet of my desk, I closed my eyes and called to the wolf that lived beneath James's skin.
The connection came instantly — a pulse, deep and ancient, like the sound of the earth breathing beneath my feet.
When his voice came, it wasn't made of words. It was a presence — vast, powerful, certain. But somehow, I understood him completely.
You are the one, the wolf said, his tone like thunder rolling through stone. You belong to this power. You will not break. The old ones — the Council — they have forgotten what true strength is. You will remind them.
A slow, fierce smile touched my lips. Then help me remind them, I answered.
I felt his approval, a low growl of pride vibrating through my soul.
And in that moment, something inside me settled — a clarity, a knowing.
I didn't want war. I never had.
But if war came to my door, I would not hide.
I would stand, and fight, and claim the future that belonged to me.
Because the future isn't something you're given.
It's something you take.