The Exile

Emma’s POV

Darrel had planned it all from the very beginning.

Every word, every order, and every lie.

He didn’t do it to protect me—no. That was the cruelest part. He did it to save himself. To preserve his name, his rank, and the illusion that he was still the noble Beta of the Silvermint Pack.

If the truth ever came out—that he, a man entrusted with honor, had slept with his own niece and left her pregnant—he would fall from grace like a stone cast from the heavens.

So he gave me what he called a chance. But it wasn’t mercy. It was exile.

He called it "a new beginning," his voice laced with fake sympathy.

“I’ve packed what you need,” he said, handing me a satchel. “Food, water, some coins. Enough to survive.”

And then he looked away. Like I was already gone.

Like I no longer existed.

I clutched that satchel like a lifeline as I walked deeper into the woods, each step dragging me farther from the only home I had ever known.

I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.

The moment I crossed the border of Silvermint territory, the tether that connected me to everything—my family, my pack, my past—snapped.

I wasn’t just an Omega now.

I was a rogue.

A ghost no one would speak of again.

He made sure of that.

His final betrayal.

His last gift.

The forest swallowed me like a forgotten secret.

The trees loomed like judges, tall and silent. The wind howled through their branches like it mourned me. The air was damp, thick with moss and memory.

That first night was the coldest I’d ever known.

I found shelter beneath the gnarled roots of a massive tree, curling myself into a trembling ball beneath the blanket Darrel had tossed into my bag. Every crack of a twig sent my heart racing. Every howl in the distance made my wolf cower.

I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid. I was heartbroken and I was sick.

Nausea rolled through me in waves, a cruel reminder of the life growing inside me. I wrapped my arms around my belly, trying to feel the warmth of my child, whispering into the darkness.

“We’ll make it,” I said, though I didn’t believe it.

But I had to try.

Days blurred together.

Each sunrise greeted me with pain in my joints, hunger in my belly, and doubt in my heart. I followed a dry streambed, hoping it would lead to a larger water source. I chewed on bitter roots, sucked moisture from wild fruit, and rationed the meat until it was almost dust in my palm. I drank from puddles and prayed they wouldn’t make me sick.

I avoided wolves.

I knew the borderlands were watched. Packs sent patrols to keep rogues out—and sometimes to clean up those already dying in the woods. I didn’t want to become one of their corpses.

So I crawled through brambles, hid in hollow logs, and made nests in caves with moss for bedding.

Pregnancy made everything harder.

My ankles swelled, my back ached. My senses were dulled by fatigue. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I wasn’t just surviving for myself anymore.

I had named him in my heart: Dowells.

Not for Darrel. But as a twisted reclaiming of what he had taken from me. This child would not grow in shame. He would carry a name—and a strength—that no betrayal could break.

Two weeks into exile, my body could barely move.

I stumbled into a rogue camp.

It wasn’t hidden, just deep enough into the forest that no pack bothered with it. The smoke from their fires reached me before their scent. When I arrived, I looked like a ghost: hollow cheeks, torn dress, dirt streaked across my face.

They noticed immediately.

Their laughter was sharp and mocking.

“What’s this? A runaway Omega?”

“Pregnant, too. Looks like someone’s dirty little secret.”

“She won’t last a week.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t plead. I sat at the edge of their fire, eyes low, but ears wide open. I kept the satchel close, hidden under my blanket.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

My instincts screamed. My wolf paced inside me.

A man—tall, greasy-haired, and snarling with amusement—crept up to me, thinking I was out cold. He reached for the satchel.

I snapped.

I smashed his nose with a rock I’d hidden beneath the blanket, and when he roared in pain, I bit down on his arm so hard I tasted blood. He screamed, and the whole camp turned to see.

I thought they’d kill me for it.

But they didn’t.

They watched. They murmured. And then one of them—an older woman with a scar across her neck—chuckled.

“She’s got fight.”

From then on, they called me Little Fang.

I stayed. Not because I trusted them—but because I had nowhere else to go.

The camp was a collection of lean-tos, old tarps, and rotting furs. Wolves lived there who had once belonged to packs—some exiled like me, others abandoned, others banished for reasons they wouldn’t speak of.

They didn’t believe in hierarchy.

They believed in survival. In blood, in power, and in usefulness.

So I worked.

I cleaned wounds after fights, stitched torn shirts, foraged for edible herbs and roots. I kept to myself and listened.

I learned their names.

There was Bren, the woman with the scar, who had once been a Beta but was maimed for speaking against her Alpha. There was Holt, a limping wolf who brewed poison from mushrooms. And Dagger—no one knew his real name—who trained by slashing bark with knives every morning before dawn.

I studied them all.

When no one watched, I mimicked their movements—how Dagger moved his feet when he fought, how Bren wrapped wounds, how Holt tested plants for toxins.

Pregnancy dulled my strength, but sharpened my focus.

Some nights, I lay under the stars, hands on my belly, whispering old lullabies I half-remembered. The sky seemed closer in the wilderness—bigger and quieter.

My child kicked for the first time during a thunderstorm.

I cried alone, beneath a patched tarp that barely kept out the rain, I sobbed with joy and pain. That tiny flutter inside me was proof: I was still alive.

We were alive.

One morning, as I gathered mushrooms near a stream, a rogue girl about my age approached me. She had dark eyes, suspicious but curious.

“You’re not like the others,” she said.

I looked up, wary. “Neither are you.”

She smirked. “Name’s Kyna.”

“Emma,” I replied.

She crouched beside me, eyeing my swollen belly. “When’s it due?”

“Few more months.”

“You gonna keep it?”

“Yes.”

She nodded like she respected that. “You’ll need help when it comes. I’ve delivered pups before.”

“Thank you.”

That was all we said. But from then on, she became something close to a friend. She taught me which mushrooms weren’t just safe—but medicinal. Which berries cured fever, which bark could dull pain.

She didn’t ask where I came from.

And I didn’t ask where she belonged.

The rogue camp never became home.

But it became part of my story. A steppingstone. A crucible that burned away weakness and left only steel.

I had changed.

My face in the stream’s reflection looked older, leaner, with eyes that no longer trembled with fear. My voice no longer shook. My heart no longer yearned for what was behind me.

I would build something ahead.

One night, Bren sat beside me by the fire, smoking a crooked pipe.

“You’ll leave soon,” she said, not as a question.

“Yes.”

“Good. You’re too strong for this place.”

I looked at her. “I was never meant to be here.”

She grunted. “None of us were. But only a few of us still remember.”

I left before sunrise a week later.

No ceremony, no farewells.

Just a stolen map Holt had given me, a direction Kyna had whispered, and the quiet knowledge that my time in the dark was done.

The forest stretched ahead and unforgiving.

But now, I wasn’t just surviving.

I was preparing.

Somewhere beyond the trees, beyond the cold, beyond the shame and silence, there was a future waiting.

A pack who wouldn’t judge.

A place where my child could be born in safety—not scandal.

I would find it.

And when the time came, I would return—not as a rogue.

But as a force no one could deny.