Chapter 2 Meeting Him

Sienna's POV

The wolf cub licked my hand one last time before disappearing into the forest.

I sat in the dirt for a long time, staring at my palms. They looked normal now, small, human, ordinary. Minutes earlier they'd glowed with golden light; they'd knit bone and sealed torn flesh with the careless artistry of something far older than me. The impossible had happened and the world still smelled like damp leaves.

“Sienna!” my mother's voice threaded through the trees. “Where are you?”

I scrambled up, brushing dirt from my jeans. My feet found the path home before my head did; curiosity and fear had left a tailwind I couldn't outrun. When I stepped from the tree-line my mother wasn't alone. A woman stood beside her—tall, elegant, silver hair falling like moonlight though she looked hardly older than my mother. Her eyes were strange, like they held a small, distant ocean.

“There you are,” my mother said, relief dissolving into scolding when she took in the scrapes on my knees and the smear of blood at my ear. “What happened?”

“I fell,” I lied, automatically. Telling the truth—about the cub, about how light had spilled from my hands—would unfasten something we couldn't stitch back together. I had learned early that honesty could be more dangerous than any lie.

The silver-haired woman watched me as if she had read every heartbeat. “You healed a wolf cub today,” she said quietly.

My blood chilled. “I—no—”

“Don't lie to me, child. I felt it from miles away.” She knelt so her face was level with mine. “Golden light. A broken leg made whole. You have a gift, Sienna Voss.”

My mother, Maria, stiffened. “Luna,” she said, urgency sharpening her voice. “She's just a child. She doesn't understand—”

“She understands more than you think.” Luna's hand rested on my cheek, and there was neither malice nor warmth—only a careful assessment. “Your daughter isn't wolfless, Maria. She's something else. Something the pack won't recognize because they've forgotten how to see.”

“What is she?” my mother's whisper frayed.

“A bridge. A balance. A moon witch.” Luna stood. “But not yet a threat. The knowledge would put her in danger.”

“So what do we do?” My mother’s hands trembled on my shoulders.

“Hide her,” Luna said, and the word landed heavier than a verdict. “Let the pack think she's defective. Let them underestimate her. It’s the only way to keep her safe until she’s strong enough to keep herself.”

She looked at me once more. “Your power will sleep now. It will wake when you need it most. Be patient. Be strong. Remember—you are not broken.”

She vanished back into the trees as if she had been nothing but a breeze. My mother clung to me as though my smallness could anchor her to sanity. “Promise me,” she said. “Not your father. Not James. No one. Promise.”

“I promise,” I whispered, though I could feel destiny shifting like tectonic plates under my feet.

And as the years grew by The power Luna spoke of receded, obeying some rhythm I did not yet understand: bursts of light in the dark, a whispered warmth that could cauterize a wound or coax a dying plant back to green. Each time it came, it frightened my mother more than it freed me, and each time she smoothed the memory flat with rules—do not show. Do not boast. Do not let anyone see you.

I learned to pretend like an actor learning stage directions: laugh when expected, keep my hands busy, answer questions with the smallest truths that could not be pried open. My brother James grew from a lanky kid into a man who watched the world with the cautious fierceness of someone who had given up carefree living for guardianship. He drilled me on normality as if rehearsal could make me ordinary. When boys at school shoved me or called me strange, James would appear like an avenging shadow and drag me home, angry and terrified in equal measure.

Luna visited sometimes in the margins of our lives—sometimes at night by moonlight when the house slept and the pack was far away, sometimes disguised as a midwife at a market, leaving gifts that smelled of lavender and old paper. Her lessons were not overt. She taught me how to let the power fold into me like a secret that needed tending: how to close a wound without scaring a child, how to call warmth without burning, and how to read the tremors in a stranger’s voice that hinted at danger. She taught me that my gift did not make me fragile—it made me visible, and visibility could be weaponized.

Visibility meant risk. The pack had its own rules and histories, and even when they forgave physical difference they feared things that unsettled the old hierarchies: witches, bridges, anything that might pull balance from their control. Rumors circulated quietly—another family had hiding children of questionable blood, a healer who could turn the tide of a skirmish. We watched the whispers like predators watch the wind.

To keep safe we cultivated a life that would not invite scrutiny. We lived small. My mother ran a hair braiding business and kept the house immaculate. James apprenticed with an auto mechanic by day and learned pack politics by listening in every shadowed conversation he could find. I found refuge in books. Shelves became my confessional; stories were maps to other ways of being. When Luna could not come, I read, and the rhythm of printed words steadied me when nights were loud with worry.

There were near-misses. Once, a boy in the market cut his hand on broken glass and a rush of light made my fingers tingle. I wrapped my scarf tighter and told the truth—that someone else had already helped him. Another time, a pack enforcer flattened his suspicion into interrogation; James lied us out of danger with a calm that burned behind his eyes for days after. Each time, the fabric of our deception thinned a little.

As I grew older, the hiding became an art. I perfected plainness like a cloak: neutral clothing, downcast eyes, the practiced small talk that made people forget you were interesting. The power within me slept longer between dreams. Luna’s visits grew rarer; she said the world had to teach me its own lessons, and I believed her because the world is a tutor that often grades harshly.

Work at the bookstore felt like an apology I could give the world—shelving other people's dangers and dreams, recommending epilogues I could never live. The shop smelled of dust and tea and the faint sweetness of possibility. Customers told me their troubles between covers and left less burdened, and for a few borrowed hours I felt useful in a way that didn’t require hiding.

James worried as the circle of our small life tightened around us. He wanted me to have friends, to breathe air that wasn't seasoned by caution. “You can’t hide forever,” he told me more than once, with a worry that could have been folded into anger. He was right; hiding is a kind of imprisonment with no visible bars.

So, when a gathering of the supernatural community was announced—an evening in the city for pack business and networking—James pushed. “You need to see the world,” he insisted. “Meet people who aren’t looking for reasons to hurt you. You can blend in. I’ll be there.”

I hesitated because every instinct screamed danger, but I also felt a tiredness at the edges of my life, a small hunger for something that wasn’t fear. Maybe, I thought, you can step into a crowd without giving everything away. Maybe being invisible on purpose is different from being invisible because you’re scared.

The night of the gathering I practiced neutrality like a prayer. I wore plain clothes and tied my hair back. James buzzed around me, doing what big brothers do—protecting and admonishing. When we arrived the room thrummed with power: laughter that carried, a ripple of cold like someone had opened the window on winter, the quiet crackle of elemental conversations. For the first time in a long time, I felt the nervous thrill of possibility instead of the dull ache of vigilance.

I intended to keep my head down. I told myself to be small and safe. But then the crowd thinned and I rounded a table to get away from loud voices and walked straight into a body. The glass in my hand sloshed; a drink arced and scalded my wrist. I stumbled back, apologies spilling faster than the beverage.

“You okay?” a voice asked—steady, present. Hands steadied my elbow and the world redirected.

When I looked up I met a face I would recognize a thousand times over: dark hair falling just so, eyes like storm-clouds, a smile that softened everything it touched. He was tall and confident in a way that filled the space around him, and for a split second the idea that I might be safe in this room felt less like delusion and more like an invitation.

“Fine,” I said on automatic. “I’m fine.”

He chuckled. “No, really. You're not hurt.” He smiled like he meant it. “I’m Kael. Kael Ashford.”

The name landed like a stone in placid water—every ripple worth remembering. The Ashford pack had weight. He could have been the last person I wanted staring at me. Instead he looked—improbably—interested in me, not in the legacy that trailed his surname.

“I'm Sienna,” I said, because the moment felt like one of those small risks that might make light of the heavy years behind me.

When he asked for a walk on the terrace, the city lights glittering like a promise, I almost said no. But years of hiding taught me the cost of never risking anything at all. I stepped toward a future I couldn’t name and let the conversation begin.