Chapter Eight
1084 Words
Diana did not leave the pack. She did not cross the borders or disappear into legend the way so many expected her to. Instead, she walked away from the Alpha’s office and followed the narrow forest path that led deeper into familiar ground—past old patrol markers, past the creek where she used to wash blood from her hands after training, past the training fields she no longer belonged to.
Her parents’ cabin waited for her at the edge of the woods.
It was small, weathered, and quiet—smoke no longer rising from its chimney, laughter no longer spilling from its doorway. The porch boards creaked beneath her boots as she stepped onto it for the first time since the night everything broke. The door resisted her before finally giving way with a soft groan.
Dust motes floated in the sunlight.
Diana stood there for a long moment, breathing in the scent of pine, old wood, and memory.
'This is where we stay,' Artemis said gently.
Diana nodded. 'This is home.'
She became a regular pack member overnight. No announcements were made beyond the formal relay of her resignation. No ceremony marked her change in status. But the pack noticed anyway. Wolves always did.
They noticed when Diana no longer trained at dawn.
They noticed when she walked through the common grounds without insignia, without rank markings on her jacket.
They noticed when she bowed her head—not in submission, but in acknowledgment—when elders passed her.
And most of all, they noticed how nothing about her presence diminished.
If anything, it sharpened.
The first pup she cared for belonged to a pair of young hunters who had been called away for extended border patrol. They approached her cabin hesitantly, the father shifting his weight, the mother clutching her pup close to her chest.
“We—uh—Alpha Asher said you weren’t…,” the mother faltered, unsure of how to finish.
“A warrior?” Diana offered calmly, and the woman nodded.
Diana crouched to the pup’s level, her expression softening as the little wolf peeked at her from behind his mother’s arm.
“I can watch him,” Diana said simply. “If you trust me.”
The father swallowed. “You protected my sister during the rogue attack,” he said quietly. “I’d trust you with my life.”
Word spread fast after that.
By the end of the week, Diana’s cabin was rarely empty. Pups padded across her porch at sunrise, some sleepy, some energetic, some crying for parents who had already left for work or patrol. Diana cooked simple meals, patched scraped knees, soothed nightmares with quiet humming and steady hands.
She taught them how to listen to the forest.
How to tell fear from instinct.
How to breathe through anger.
She never taught them how to fight.
She didn’t need to.
The pack watched. They watched as she knelt to tie a pup’s bootlace with the same focus she once brought to strategy meetings. They watched as she carried a feverish child through the rain to the healer’s den without hesitation. They watched as pups—wolves who should have feared her after the confrontation gravitated toward her like she was something safe and constant. The members who know, know she portray a quality of a true Luna.
“She used to protect us,” one member murmured to another as Diana passed through the market square with three pups trailing behind her like ducklings.
“She still does,” came the reply.
No one challenged her presence.
No one disrespected her.
Even the warriors—those who had once trained under her command—lowered their heads slightly when they passed her. Not because she demanded it. Because they remembered.
They remembered the night she held the northern wall alone.
They remembered her standing between rogues and the bunker when the line broke.
They remembered who paid the price.
Hazel noticed too.
From the windows of the pack house, the Luna watched Diana move through the pack like a shadow that refused to fade. She saw the way conversations paused when Diana approached—not from fear, but from reverence. She saw pups laughing on Diana’s porch, their parents’ shoulders lighter knowing their children were safe.
Hazel’s power could command obedience.
Diana inspired loyalty.
But their reverence, their loyalty, should be hers.
Asher felt it most keenly. He saw Diana at a distance at the edge of the clearing, sitting on a fallen log while pups played at her feet. He saw her calm, her restraint, the way she had not once challenged his authority since relinquishing her rank.
And somehow, that hurt more than defiance ever could.
“She’s keeping to herself,” Gamma Tyler reported one evening.
“As I ordered,” Asher replied.
“She’s not causing trouble,” Tyler added. “If anything… she’s stabilizing things.”
Asher said nothing because he knew.
The pack had not lost Diana Nightshade.
It had merely lost the right to command her.
The rumor began as whispers.
A trader passing through mentioned heightened patrols beyond the eastern territories.
A messenger wolf arrived late one night, scent heavy with urgency and foreign power.
By the third day, the words were spoken aloud in hushed tones near the fire pits and market stalls.
“The Alpha King is traveling.”
“He’s searching.”
“They say he’s looking for his mate.”
The rumor reached Diana last.
She was braiding a pup’s hair by the fire when one of the older children spoke, voice low but excited. “My uncle says the Alpha King might come here. “They say his mate hasn’t been found yet.”
Diana listened, she always listened to pups bubbling, even though what they say doesn’t concern her.
Diana resumed the braid calmly. “Stories grow legs when they walk too far,” she said gently to the child. “Finish your soup.”
But that night, alone in the quiet of her parents’ cabin, Diana stood at the window and looked out at the moonlit forest.
The air felt… different.
Charged.
Somewhere far beyond the borders, something ancient was moving.
Searching.
And for the first time since she laid down her rank, Diana felt it—not fear, not anger, but the subtle pull of fate brushing against her path.
The pack slept, unaware, but the moon watched.
And the world was shifting once more.
- Writer
