Grayson finally moves then but not toward me.He steps to the side, opening a clear path back the way I came.“You can leave,” he says simply.“We won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to.”
My wolf screams at him for it.The bond pulses between us, warm and insistent, and I hate it for making me weak.
“Or,” he continues, “you can come with us.No one’s forcing you.You’re not a prisoner.You’re free to make your own decisions.”
His words are meant to reassure me but all they do is drag me back to a time I don’t want to remember.
The first time the dead spoke to me, I was twelve.It was my grandmother’s funeral.Everyone else was crying but I was staring at the coffin because I could still see her sitting on top of it, legs crossed, shaking her head at the priest.
“They never listen,” she’d said fondly.
I laughed.I couldn’t stop it.But that was my first mistake.
By fifteen, the pack knew something was wrong with me.Wolves don’t like things they can’t explain.They like strength, obedience, and silence.I gave them none of those.
The dead followed me everywhere.Old warriors.Stillborn pups.Victims of border skirmishes my pack pretended never happened.Victims of Hunters.They whispered truths no one wanted to hear.
I learned early not to tell, not that it mattered.Fear always finds a way out.
The night they banished me, the moon was full and merciless.My Alpha stood at the center of the clearing, flanked by his beta and the enforcers.My mother wouldn’t meet my eyes, and my father wasn’t there at all.Fucking coward.
“She consorts with spirits,” the beta said, voice ringing with disgust.“She brings them among us.”
I looked around the circle of wolves I’d grown up with, my chest tight.“I don’t control them.”
A murmur rippled through the pack.Fear.Revulsion.
The Alpha’s gaze was cold.“You see the dead.”
“Yes.”
“You speak to them.”
“Yes.”
“You brought a fallen warrior to his mate without our leave.”
“She deserved to know,” I snapped.“He was murdered.”
That was my second mistake.
The Alpha’s lip curled in disgust.“You defy pack authority.”
“I tell the truth.”Silence fell like a blade.
“Truth,” he said softly, “is a weapon.And you wield it without restraint.”I felt it then, the shift in the air, the decision already made.“You frighten the pack,” he continued.“You undermine order.You invite unrest from beyond the veil.”
My wolf paced inside me, snarling.“I was born this way,” I said and my voice shook.“I didn’t choose it.”
“No,” he agreed.“But we, as a pack, get to choose what we tolerate within our pack, and you are simply too unpredictable and uncontrollable.”The sentence came down like a gavel.“By my authority as Alpha, Trinity Moore is stripped of pack protection and cast out.She is forbidden from returning.Any who aid her will share her fate.”
My mother sobbed but no one stepped forward.No one stood up for me or tried to make the Alpha see sense.I didn’t cry or beg to stay.I just turned and walked into the forest while the dead gathered around me, furious and grieving and helpless.
“They will regret this,” a voice had whispered.
“I don’t know you,” I say now.“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t,” he replies honestly.“But you can walk away at any time and no one will try to stop you.”
