A she-wolf.
That's what they said I was.
The words wouldn't leave me alone. They kept circling my thoughts like vultures, picking at everything I thought I knew about myself. Could I really be female? Could my grandfather—my own blood—have lied to me my entire life?
Or worse… had he been wrong?
Defective. That was the word he always used. Like I was broken goods. A mistake the moon goddess had made and forgotten to fix. I'd grown up believing that. Built my whole damn identity around it. The limp I learned to fake. The way I wrapped my chest until my ribs ached. The way I learned to spit and snarl and take hits like the boys because that was safer than being different.
But what if none of it was a defect?
What if all the things I was taught to hate about myself weren't flaws at all… but proof?
I walked faster through the neutral territory, boots crunching softly over dry leaves and dirt. Every shadow felt like a pair of watching eyes. Every sound made my spine go tight.
If I really was a she-wolf…
Then I wasn't just rare.
I was the last.
The thought hit harder than any punch I'd ever taken. The only female left in a world ruled by wolves who believed women were extinct. Wolves who hunted and conquered. Wolves who saw me not as a person—but as a future. A tool. A womb.
I swallowed hard and kept moving.
First things first. I couldn't spiral. I didn't have that luxury. Philosophy could wait. Identity crises could wait. Right now, I needed two things: food and shelter.
Because freedom doesn't mean much when you're starving and exposed.
The neutral territory wasn't a place you just wandered through. Everyone said it was lawless. No pack borders, no Alpha protection, no rules except one: survive or disappear. Wolves here didn't care who you were or what you were. They cared what you had—and whether they could take it.
I tugged my hood lower over my face and adjusted the dirt-smudged jacket I'd stolen weeks ago. I probably looked like what I was pretending to be: just another stray male drifting between territories, too scrawny to be worth challenging and too quiet to notice.
Perfect.
My stomach growled, sharp and insistent. I hadn't eaten since before the chaos with the alphas then rogues. Adrenaline had kept me upright so far, but now that I was out of immediate danger, my body was starting to remember its needs. And it was not happy about being ignored.
Food. Shelter. Then answers.
And money—well. I didn't have much. But I wasn't helpless.
Grandpa made sure of that.
People thought he was just a bitter old wolf, half-mad and half-feral, clinging to outdated ways and superstitions. What they didn't know was that beneath all that bitterness, he was sharp. Careful. Always two steps ahead.
"Never depend on a pack," he used to say. "Packs protect their own. You? You're not like them. So you better learn how to survive without their mercy."
So he taught me things.
How to read a room in three seconds.
How to know when someone was lying before they opened their mouth.
How to move quietly. How to disappear.
And yes—how to take what you needed without being seen.
His rule was simple: As long as the owner is careless or stupid, their money is yours. Just don't get caught.
Morally questionable? Sure. But morality doesn't mean much when you're cold, hungry, and one mistake away from being dragged back to five Alphas who think you're their miracle solution.
I angled toward the outskirts of a small trading settlement—a rough cluster of buildings built along an old supply route that cut through the neutral zone. It wasn't big enough to be a pack hub, but it was busy enough to be useful. Drifters. Rogues. Mercenaries. Smugglers. Wolves who didn't belong anywhere and didn't ask questions as long as you paid.
Or stole.
I lingered at the edge of the settlement, watching.
Old habits slid into place. Eyes tracking movement. Noticing who carried weapons, who walked with confidence, who was distracted. A pair of wolves argued over supplies near a cart. A lone trader counted coins too openly. A group of rogues drank loudly outside a battered inn, attention scattered in a dozen directions.
Careless.
Stupid.
Thank you, moon goddess.
I slipped into the flow of bodies like I belonged there. Head down. Shoulders slouched. The disguise of insignificance. When you look like nothing, you become invisible.
The trader never saw me.
One light brush of my fingers. A practiced movement. The small leather pouch was mine before he even finished recounting his coins. I didn't stop walking. Didn't look back. Just melted into the crowd, heart steady, breath even.
I ducked behind a supply shed two streets over and checked my prize.
Not much—but enough. A few silver marks, some folded bills, and a thin copper token stamped with the seal of a border outpost. Currency that would work in most places. Food money. Shelter money.
Survival money.
I exhaled slowly, some of the tightness in my chest easing for the first time since I'd fled the Alphas' land.
Okay. Step one: handled.
Next, food.
I bought a stale loaf, a strip of dried meat, and a bruised apple from a vendor who didn't ask questions and didn't care who I was. I ate in an alley, back against the wall, senses alert even as hunger clawed through me. Every bite felt like coming back to life. The bread was hard. The meat was salty. The apple tasted like it had been dropped one too many times.
Best meal I'd had in days.
As I ate, my thoughts circled back—because of course they did.
If I really was a she-wolf… then everything made horrible, twisted sense.
The panic. The terror. Grandpa's face when he saw me after—white with something I'd thought was disgust, but maybe… maybe it had been fear.
Not of me.
For me.
What if he'd known?
What if he'd lied because the truth would have gotten me killed?
The thought lodged itself deep in my chest. I wanted to hate him for it. For every cruel word. Every time he'd called me a mistake, a freak, a deformity.
But another part of me—the part that still remembered him wrapping my wounds and teaching me how to lock a door with a piece of wire—whispered something I wasn't ready to face.
Maybe he was trying to keep me alive.
I clenched my jaw and shoved the last of the bread into my mouth.
Later.
I'd deal with that later.
For now, I needed a place to sleep that didn't involve open ground and predators with wandering eyes. I followed the road deeper into the settlement until I found the inn the rogues had been drinking outside earlier. It was ugly. Crooked. Smelled like sweat and old smoke.
Perfect.
The man behind the counter barely looked up when I slid a few coins across the wood.
"One night. No questions."
He nodded once and tossed me a rusted key.
Room three. Stairs that creaked under every step. A door that barely locked. A mattress thin enough to feel the boards beneath it. But it was four walls, a roof, and a lock between me and the rest of the world.
I collapsed onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.
Silence pressed in. Not the kind that comforted. The kind that made room for thoughts.
If the rumors were already spreading… if rogues were willing to storm Alpha territory over the possibility of a she-wolf… then it was only a matter of time before the entire world knew.
And if they knew…
They all would come.
Not just Alphas. Not just packs.
Everyone.
Because I wasn't just rare.
I was power.
I was future.
I was something the world believed had been wiped out.
I curled onto my side, fingers digging into the thin blanket.
They called me salvation.
They called me property.
They called me theirs.
But here, in this broken little room on the edge of nowhere, I was something else entirely.
I was free.
For now.
And I swore—by blood, by bone, by the moon that had twisted my fate into something monstrous and miraculous—that no one would ever cage me again without paying for it.
Let them hunt.
Let them whisper.
Let them dream of owning the last she-wolf.
I wasn't prey.
I was still running.
And I wasn't done yet.