The days in Forgotten Camp melted into one relentless rhythm: wake before dawn, run the perimeter until lungs burned, spar until muscles screamed, eat whatever the hunters brought back, collapse at night, repeat. No pity. No coddling. Just survival sharpening into something lethal.
My body adapted faster than I ever thought possible. The soft curves of the omega I'd been hardened into lean muscle. Scars from training faded to thin silver lines almost overnight—my wolf's healing gift growing stronger by the day. The pup inside me grew too; my belly now had a gentle but unmistakable swell beneath the loose tunics Kira had given me. No one commented on it. Rogues understood privacy born from pain.
Kira became my constant shadow and unrelenting taskmaster. She was in her mid-thirties, silver threading her dark hair like battle ribbons, body mapped with scars that told stories she never shared. Her gray eyes missed nothing.
"Shift," she commanded one gray morning in the training ring, the dirt still damp with dew.
I obeyed without hesitation now. Black fur flowed over my skin like liquid night. I landed on all paws—larger every time, shoulders broader, tail lashing with barely contained power. Whispers rippled through the watching rogues. My wolf wasn't just big for an omega. She was edging toward alpha territory.
Kira shifted too—sleek gray, battle-worn but lightning-fast. We circled each other slowly, reading every twitch of muscle, every flicker of ear.
She lunged first—low, aiming for my flank. I twisted, using my greater mass to slam her sideways. She rolled, came up snarling, teeth snapping at my throat. I ducked, countered with a shoulder check that sent her skidding across the dirt.
We reset. Again. And again.
By the third round she had blood on her muzzle from a shallow cut I'd opened on her shoulder. By the fifth, I had her pinned—my jaws gentle but unyielding at her throat.
She huffed submission, shifted human, and pushed to her feet, wiping blood from her lip with the back of her hand. A rare grin cracked her face.
"Not bad, little queen," she said, voice rough but approving. "You're learning dominance. But that power surging through you? It's not just the rejection rage fueling it. Something older. Deeper."
She stepped closer, studying the faint silvery mark that had appeared on my chest after my first full shift—a crescent moon crossed with claw-like lines. It shimmered faintly when I was angry or in heat echo.
"I've seen markings like this in crumbling scrolls the elders hid from packs," Kira continued. "Silver lineage. Blessed—or cursed—by the original Moon Priestesses. Explains the oversized wolf, the accelerated healing, the way your presence makes weaker rogues submit without a fight. If it's true... you're carrying more than just an alpha's pup. You're carrying legacy."
My heart stuttered. My parents had been low servants in Blackwood—killed in a border skirmish when I was six. No stories. No heirlooms. Just whispers that my mother had been "different." I'd assumed it meant sickly. Now doubt crept in.
Kira clapped my shoulder. "Doesn't change today. Train harder. When we hit the next Blackwood supply caravan, you'll lead point. Prove you belong here."
The promise lit fire in my veins.
That evening, around the central bonfire, the camp felt almost like a pack. Rogues shared food—roasted venison, root vegetables dug from abandoned fields, stolen wine. Stories flowed like the flames.
Ronan, the quiet scarred male who'd become my sparring partner, spoke low. "My beta sister was rejected two years ago. Alpha said she was 'too soft.' She lasted three weeks in rogue lands before hunters found her body." He looked at me. "Like you. They laugh at us. Call us weak. But we're still breathing."
I met his eyes. "They won't laugh forever."
A younger rogue girl—Sev, barely seventeen, all sharp elbows and wary eyes—leaned in. "Tell us again about the ceremony. The part where he said you were worthless in front of everyone."
I did. Every humiliating detail: the gasps, the laughter, Serena sliding her arm through his like she owned him, the elder's cold pronouncement of banishment. I described the pain of the bond snapping, the way my wolf had howled inside me for the first time.
When I finished, silence hung heavy. Then Kira lifted her mug of bitter herbal tea.
"To the rejected," she said. "May we rise. And may they kneel."
Mugs clinked. Cheers rose—raw, fierce, hopeful.
For the first time since the full moon ceremony, I didn't feel like an outcast. I felt like the start of something dangerous.
But the nights were harder.
The mate bond, though severed, refused to die. Every few days it twisted like a knife—phantom touches of Darius's fingers along my spine from that stolen moment in the pack house weeks before rejection. His low growl in my ear: "You smell like mine." Heat would pool low in my belly, unwanted, insistent. My wolf whined, pacing inside me: He calls. Answer.
I shoved it down. Focused on the pup's kicks—stronger every day, as if sensing my rage and mirroring it.
One night I dreamed of him: Darius standing over me in the forest, eyes black with possession, hand pressing to my swollen belly. "Mine," he murmured. "Both of you."
I woke gasping, skin feverish, aching in ways that had nothing to do with training.
Revenge waited.
But so did the bond.
And it was growing hungrier.
End Of Chapter 4