The man of the woods

Chapter 2:

There was a heaviness to darkness. Not only the lack of light, but the burden of the unknown, of breathing darkness, of battered silence as dense as mist. And there Aria woke.

First, pain bit her. Her arms and legs were aching and hot. Her side was sore, bruised probably. Her back was as raw as it could get. She did not move, however. She could smell him because. That smell wild and keen and a mixture of cedarwood and iron and the smell of the very first frost of winter did not leave her like a warning.

Her eyelids flickered up. She was in a cave not a deep one, but covered with moss and with stone, and secluded enough so that no pack patrol would take the trouble to investigate it. A fire was smouldering at the entrance, and the man who had saved her was seated a little farther than its rays could reach, sharpening a dagger which flashed back silver in the glancing strokes.

He was observing her.

"You have awakened," he said. The voice was rough and unused, gravel over stone.

Trying to sit up, Aria gasped, and pain rocked her ribs.

"Never make a move." He stood beside her already, and his hands were unexpectedly gentle as one touched her shoulder in order to lower her to the ground again. "There is a broken rib on each side. You are almost killed by that scoundrel.”

She looked at him and blinked. "Who... Who are you?"

The man gazed at her awhile before he replied. "My name is Kael."

Kael. A black name. The name of one of whose Alphas she had never heard, of one of whose warriors too. Yet it was all in the way he carried himself, which gave the indication this man was dangerous.

"Why have you saved me?" she said.

The eyes of Kael twinkled. He went back to his sharpening.

"The Moon said so, because it told me so."

Aria started. “The... Moon?”

"I have lived long enough on the fringe of the wilderness to recognize her voice when she speaks," he said slowly. "You have not died yet. No, not so.”

The eyes of Aria were sore. Is not yet time to die. The word yet stuck on her chest like a rock. Had she not wanted to die? Had she not fled into the night with not but heartbreak and shame behind her, hoping the wind would blow her out of this world?

She averted her head. "You ought to have left me alone."

Kael made no reply. The fire was crackling between them. There was a long silence before it was interrupted by the gentle noise of wind outside the cave and the slow, rhythmic sound of Kael sharpening.

And then he said, "You are the Omega that Lucien turned away, are you not?"

Her breathing was arrested. He knew even here, so far in the woods.

"Why do you know that?"

He shrugged. "The news flies as fast as wolves. When the Moon herself took a husband and the Alpha spat in her face especially.”

Shame came back as a flood. Aria shrank up, so far as her bruised body would permit.

"No," she said. "I did not ask. I did not want to be his mate."

Something flashed in the eyes of Kael as he glanced at her again. "Wanted somebody more?"

She hesitated. "I only wanted to be... noticeable. Not mocked at. Not mocked. Not beaten.”

Again, a long silence. Kael put away his knife.

"Until you are mended, you will remain here. Then you make up your mind where to go.”

"Where have you got to go? I have nowhere."

Towering, in firelight shadowing, stood him. "Then make somewhere."

Days were spent in the cave.

Kael was harsh. He was never mean. He was a monosyllabic, hunterish, disappearing person. But on the occasions of his returning, he brought with him food and herbs, and at other times blankets. In some cases, nothing but silence.

And Aria slept the first sleep of her life.

Her wolf grew more and more inside her every day. Still bruised. Still caged. However, not so much.

She looked at the fire every night and she recalled the laughter of Lucien, whose laughter had destroyed something in her, which had never been complete anyway. She heard his voice again, his refusal, the smug face of Talia, on his side.

The tears which then could not fall, now fell in the dark, unheard.

One morning Kael saw her standing by the cave mouth, cloak drawn tightly around her, face lifted toward the pale sun.

"You are recovering very quickly."

Aria nodded. "I must."

Kael observed her. "It was not a mistake made by the Moon."

Aria squeezed her heart. "Meaning what?"

"You think yourself worthless," he said, not unkindly. "But the Moon never chooses amiss. When she picks you, then there is power within you. And even Lucien rejected... does not sever the relationship. It does not kill it, but it just hurts it.”

She lied, saying, "I do not want him."

Kael did not expose her. He just turned his back. "Then learn who you have been without him."

It was a different kind of dream that she had that night.

She saw herself standing in a forest of silver, and all around her there was howling of wolves. It was moonlight on the trees, and forth through the mist rose a woman tall, pale-skinned, moon-eyed.

"It is Aria," she said.

"Who are you?"

"And I am what you will be When you have let yourself awake.”

Aria blinked. "I do not understand."

The voice of the woman resounded. "It is not your power that is broken. It was just concealed."

"Where is the hidden?"

"In your blood. In grief they own. On your wolf.”

And the woman turned and Aria saw a mark burning on her back the ancient rune of the Moon Goddess, long forgotten in the packs.

"Mate, you say: but you are not the only one. You are selected."

Aria woke up with a beating heart.

The cave was still, the fire low. Yet out in the open there was a sound.

Then a snarl.

With a gasp she leaped to her feet. The smell was common. Not Kael. Something sharper. A thing she had learned in nightmares.

Talia.

The trees were fluttering with her voice like poison.

"Did you think you could run, mutt?"

The next thing was a growl of Kael, deep and warning as thunder.

Yet there came more voices. Warriors. Lucien’s soldiers.

"They are here because of me," Aria whispered.

Kael appeared, and his eyes burned with anger.

"No," he answered. "They come to draw blood."

Then howls broke out at night.