The night was heavy with silence, the kind that presses against your skin like a second coat. In the heart of the woods, where the moon dared only to filter through twisted limbs, a cry echoed—sharp, desperate, and far too small for a place so ancient and unforgiving.
She was left there, curled in a nest of damp moss and fallen leaves, the chill of the earth soaking through the thin blanket she'd been wrapped in. A babe of no more than three months, still soft with the scent of milk, but already hardened by a world that had decided she was too different to love.
On her right shoulder, the shape of a black cat marked her pale skin — not ink, not scar, but something older. Something that shimmered when touched by starlight and throbbed faintly when the wind whispered through the trees. Her birthmark. Her curse, they had said.
Her mother had looked away as her father laid her down. Neither had stayed to watch the last breath of warmth leave her tiny form. Neither turned back, not when the wind rose with warning nor when the wolves began to howl.
But the wolves did not feast that night.
They came silent through the trees, eyes gleaming like twin moons. The largest stepped forward, black-furred and regal, as though carved from night itself. He sniffed at the child. Growled low.
The pack held its breath.
Then, slowly, the great wolf lay beside her.
And she did not cry again.
By dawn, she was gone from the mossy bed — carried away in the jaws of something wild and powerful, yet unexplainably gentle. And so began the tale of Anecia, the girl raised by wolves, her fate woven in shadow and silver, cursed by blood yet chosen by beasts.
She would not know love in the way others did. She would not walk the smooth paths of the city or laugh at the safety of firelight. Instead, she would learn the hunt. She would run with paws that weren't hers. She would learn to howl.
And when the time came… she would learn what it meant to be claimed by something older than man.
Years passed, though time meant little in the forest.
The girl who had once fit in the crook of a wolf's jaw now ran through the trees on bare feet, swift as shadow and twice as silent. Anecia grew beneath the moon's gaze, limbs wiry and strong, skin kissed by bark and bramble, eyes bright as firelight. Her mark—the black cat on her shoulder—stretched and darkened with her, pulsing faintly on nights when the stars burned silver.
Her words were howls and growls, her language a tilt of the head or flick of an ear. She did not speak as men did, nor had she heard the clumsy weight of human tongue. Her family were wolves. Not just in name, but in spirit. She hunted with them, fed with them, bled with them. The Alpha taught her the stalk, the Beta taught her the patience, and the runt of the pack, a cinnamon-pelted pup called Liri, taught her how to play.
She ran as one of them.
She belonged.
And yet… she always knew she was different.
Not by the way she moved—nimble and quiet as any pup—but in the way she stood alone when the others curled up together at night. In the way her skin shivered when the winter winds cut deeper than fur could shield. In the way her dreams sometimes showed her strange things: fire that danced in a glass bowl, and voices like wind that carried meaning in sound, not scent.
But these dreams never lingered long.
Not until the night they came.
It began as a murmur in the trees. A hush of metal clinking softly against leather, the low rumble of foreign voices, too deep and steady to belong to any beast she knew. Anecia crouched low in the underbrush, bare feet pressing into cold earth, her heart drumming a wild rhythm in her chest.
She crept forward.
Light. Not firelight like the lightning in storms—but steady and warm, like glowing stones.
Figures moved between the trees. Tall. Upright. Like her… but not. Their skins were strange, wrapped in layers of cloth and color. Their voices were sharp and clipped, cutting through the night like birdsong run through with thunder.
Anecia's breath caught.
They looked like her. Or… she looked like them.
But they moved so loud.
So slow.
So blind.
She watched from the darkness, crouched on all fours, her body tense and still, hidden among root and shadow. They laughed. One threw something at another and barked a word that made the others shake with sound.
She didn't understand.
Not a word.
But she understood something else: they were hunters.
They bore the smell of steel and ash. Of distant things. Of danger not born of fang or claw, but of something stranger—something clever. Something ancient.
And for the first time since the wolves found her, Anecia felt something stir in her gut that she could not name.
Not fear.
Not hunger.
But curiosity.
What were they? Why did they sound like storms and light? Why did her hands look like theirs… and not like paws?
She stayed hidden, silent, crouched beneath the shadow of the trees.
But deep inside her, something had shifted.
And the girl who was raised by wolves, who ran as they did and spoke as they did, began to wonder if she was truly wolf at all.