noun ~ a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing

CHARLIE

My skin burned as the cuts across my torso healed, and I huffed, trying not to swipe at it with my paws.

We were deep into no-man's-land and with that came way too many rogues looking for a fight. They were either territorially defensive, seeking a high, or searching for death. I lost track of how many days we were running. Calida started most of the fights. Only two had been in an act of self-defence.

She was a nightmare. Like a child who had shifted for the first time, she didn't take any precautions and acted purely on instinct.

She was in deeper than I thought she was.

Just when I thought that maybe her wolf was settling, and some emotions were coming through, she was back to being wild. I couldn't go near her, couldn't even look at her without her teeth sinking into my skin.

She didn't like me following her anymore, so I had to keep a distance.

It was a tiresome time to be alive, and for a while, I let the wolf take over. He was so besotted with his mate that he daren't stray from her trail, so I knew we were safe.

This was the first time in a while that he has given me back the rails, and it was after a damn fight. Now, I had to clean up the mess of my own body.

This fight, however, was not of the wolf kind. If the beheaded fang bodies didn't tell me, the shape and gaps of the scratches gave away enough.

Why she got into a fight with fucking fangs, I don't know. Like I said, she was looking for them.

It seems after completing her revenge on her home pack, her wolf had turned to taking it out on other creatures instead.

She was currently lapping up stream water, her tongue gulping down the foul taste of vampire. I shook out my fur, glad that all the cuts were clean from whatever the fuck was on their claws.

Man, I was pissed.

To come round after goodness knows how long to having to clean up a vampire fight...

I wondered how long I've been out.

Days? Weeks? Months?

Going by the chill in the air, it was still winter, so it couldn't be months. I wonder if Christmas has passed yet. Was it the new year?

I'd never know unless I came across civilisation. And that was if Calida didn't kill them first.

Calida turned her nose up as I huffed, glancing at me over her shoulder. I remained still, with my head dipped low. She grumbled softly, but didn't show any signs of malice. It was a warning, and I took it with a begrudging nod.

Still the same old wolf.

I sighed, waiting for her next movements. My bones ached with every breath, my skin tugging as it attempted to stitch itself together. Calida lay on her stomach. Her body relaxed as her head swivelled around our surroundings. I noticed she would scan the area, her nose twitching, before the surveillance would stop on me and go round again.

I was still.

I was silent.

I was everything I didn't like to be.

It left me time to my thoughts, time to reflect on my past.

I didn't want to remember my past. It hurt too much to think about my blood pack. My parents, my friends.

I was just a child. Just a teenager when it was taken from me.

When will the world be at peace? When will wolves stop fighting each other for blood or power?

When will all of this hardship end?

I never thought that I'd be in the wilderness again. Honestly, after Phoenix took me in all those years ago, I vowed to never let my wolf break out of control again. And yet, here I was, in a triggering environment and yet my wolf didn't care about anything but his mate.

Time passed in a blur as I followed Calida through the forest and it wasn't until the sunrise of a morning trek that I felt strange.

For a moment, I wondered if it was poisoning, and in my moment of panic, I counted everything I had eaten the past week.

But nothing came to mind.

My senses were on high alert, my wolf telling me that something was near. Something...familiar.

The trees were familiar.

The soil was familiar.

Where was I?

This wasn't Blood Moon.

It wasn't the lycan village.

I shuddered as a sense of sorrow surrounded me. My wolf grumbled softly. Our head hung low, ears on alert.

It was my home.

I haven't been here since the attack. Since the rogues killed my parents and my leaders. I whined softly as we grew closer to what I knew was the pack house. You could still smell the danger here; it lingered in the soil, weighed heavily in the atmosphere.

A fine dusting of snow covered the ground, but the air was misty. I could feel dampness stick in my fur, and fought the urge to shake it away. Calida had slowed her walk, her ears on alert.

There had been rogues here. Many.

After taking down my pack, they must've lingered for a while before moving on. Now it didn't smell like claimed land. So many wolves had passed through or used the buildings as shelter. The stench of piss was almost revolting.

Why take down my pack just to abandon it?

What ever happened to my parent's bodies?

Phoenix never told me what he had to do when he was here. I wanted to brush it off and pretend it never happened. I was a broken, naïve child who thought forgetting was the best way to move on.

How silly was I?

Now the ache dug deep. It carved my insides until I was hollow, with only a single light inside that kept me moving.

I was just a fucking pumpkin.

I groaned softly, shaking my head. Calida stopped, sniffing some of the small huts we passed by. It was a pleasant change of pace, I must admit. My stamina was great thanks to all of this exercise, but I'd take a leisurely stroll over that any day.

Gratefully, we didn't go near my old home. We continued to walk through the pack grounds, my heart sinking with every step. I could see the light brick of the pack house through the trees, the impression of it growing with every passing step. It was relatively clean, with no stench of recent rogues in or around the pack house.

I didn't notice that Calida had slowed behind me until I stopped a small distance from the pack house and looked around. She was sitting on her haunches, her teeth bared. It was then I saw the faintest shimmer and realised I had passed through a border without realising.

That explains why the pack house was untouched.

Did Phoenix place this here? Did Gaia?

Calida clawed at the border, sending ripples up the dome. I hesitated, looking between her and the pack house. Eventually she huffed, flopping onto the ground to stare at me. I took another step forward, and she didn't react.

Another glance between the two, and I walked up the steps. The door was closed, and I shifted to my human skin, securing my hand around the doorknob.

It wasn't locked.

Whoever secured the house thought it was safe enough to leave it unlocked.

Entering inside, the scent of death washed over me. It was as though the house kept it inside, forcing it to sink into the walls and carpets.

The first thing I saw was the balcony, and the instant memory of watching my mother's death plagued me. I staggered back a step, recognising her years old scent in the floor. They had scrubbed all the blood away, but you couldn't remove the feeling of death.

Not from someone who had a sense of smell like me, anyway.

My wolf whined with the loss, forcing me away from the scene to look around. I wandered around the kitchen and living room, noticing that most of the furniture still remained.

Why did they leave it the way it was?

Why was there no change?

Nobody would ever come back here.

What did they do with the bodies of those I loved?

I left the house, not wanting to linger at the pristine death scene any longer. My heart constricted, my breath caught in my throat as I passed the foyer again, staggering out onto the front porch. The door slamming behind me echoed through my ears and brought the attention of Calida.

Her head raised; her ears pricked at my arrival. I stared at her, gulping a breath, before turning on my heel and going around the side of the pack house. Her wolf jumped up, following me with curiosity.

She had mellowed today; it seemed.

She was more dog-like than I have ever seen her.

My instincts pulled me around the back, towards the gardens. The barrier rippled as Calida's fur brushed across it, telling me she was still following.

I stumbled to a stop as the landscape changed. What once had been a flower-filled garden with fresh green grass was now solid mud covered in a fine dusting of snow.

They had torn the ground up.

I shifted to my wolf, lowering my nose to the ground. The scent of ash hit my nose, and I followed it as it led to two different spots. One was unmarked, the ash mixed with the solid earth.

The other had a plaque, and I cocked my head as I peered down at it. Snow coated it, ice sticking to the wooden carvings. I wiped my paw against it, wiping it away to reveal the memorial of my pack.

They had a mass burial.

It was impersonal, but it was the quickest way to clean up a scene like this.

The rogues were burned separately, too.

All my pack members, my friends, my family. The boys I played with growing up... All of them were gone, and it was only me who survived.

Is that why Phoenix kept it secure?

No, I didn't meet him for years after.

This place is untouched. They secured it, well, someone secured it, for another reason.

A witch cannot be trusted. I always believed it, and so did my father. So why did a witch protect this place? What did they want from an abandoned building marred by the deaths of so many wolves?

I shook my head, moving toward the other plaques on the ground. There, I found the alpha and the luna, joined in their own marked grave. But beside them was my father. And with him, my mother.

My body gave out beneath me, the deep wrenching sorrow of knowing that this was their resting place burdened my soul. My stomach churned with the unwanted emotions, a deep whimper leaving my lips.

I rest my head on my paws, reading their plaques with grief.

All I had ever known, buried six feet under.

My father.

My mother.

My unborn sibling.

All three of them were here, away from me. For the first time in a while, I envied them. I envied they were together, without me. But then I grew angry.

Angry because I should've been there too. I should've fought until my last breath, like my father had. I should've protected my mother, helped them to resurrect my unborn sister.

I was a coward.

I shouldn't have run.

I left them all.

I was the only one.

Just me.

Alone.

No parents, no sister, no pack...

Just Phoenix.

And Nova.

And Calida.

And everyone else...

Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps I was supposed to be the only survivor. Some swift, cruel change of fate flipped my entire life upside down just to give me a new one.

Was it better?

Was it worse?

It was neither.

The loss of my family burned deep, and the idea that I may never have one myself dug deeper.

Calida had lost herself to her beast. But I could never take another. I promised her I'd be by her side, and much like my promise to my father, I wouldn't break it.

Rising from the ground, I said goodbye to my parents before turning and leaving the protection of the pack house.

Oddly, the moment I crossed the barrier, Calida's wolf was tackling me. Her teeth sank into my ear, tugging it until I rolled over and submitted to her. Lying on my back, I craned my neck, hoping she would not attack me again. But instead, she sniffed me, digging her nose in deep in my fur before curiously licking my paw.

I watched her through wide eyes as she noted the scents that coated my fur. And when she was done, she pushed off me with a growl.

I huffed, rolling over onto all fours. She huffed before walking away.

And for a moment, I grew distracted.

That was... something new.

I shook out my fur, instinctively following behind her.

Jogging up behind Calida, her wolf glanced at me from over her shoulder. I hesitated, wondering if I had pushed the distance too far, but she didn't react. She merely blinked before breaking out into a run.

I suppose I better just keep riding out this rollercoaster of my life and see where it takes me. Because there was nothing else that I wanted, and family was everything to me.

And I would not break my promise.