The Flight to the Woods

Avery

"The bet," Gavin stated. He spat the words out like they were a known fact of the universe, a casual truth I was just too stupid to grasp. He flicked his wrist, tossing my pale blue card back into Reece's waiting palm. The thick parchment crinkled upon impact. Gavin looked down his nose at me, his eyes gleaming with the twisted, cruel amusement someone might reserve for a performing animal pacing inside a cage.

I stood frozen on the paved path. The afternoon breeze suddenly felt like ice against my skin.

"When we spotted you sniveling in that herb garden last semester," Gavin went on, pitching his voice loud enough to carry to the passing students, "I told Reece there was no way he could get some random nobody to fall for him. You looked so pathetic. So timid. So damn breakable. I figured you'd run away if a guy even looked in your direction."

Gavin let out a grating, ugly laugh. "But Reece insisted it would be a breeze. He said you were desperate. So we made a wager right then and there. If he could get you to confess, to put yourself out there and make it a grand, humiliating spectacle, he'd win my grandfather's vintage leather jacket from the Northern campaigns."

Gavin took a step forward and smacked a heavy hand onto Reece's shoulder. "Looks like you scored the jacket, man. She fell for it. She even made you a pathetic little love note."

*No.*

The single syllable echoed in my head, frantic and loud. I turned my tear-filled eyes toward Reece. My heart pounded a desperate, bruised rhythm against my ribs. I needed him to deny it. I needed him to shove Gavin away, to shut him up, to offer me just a flicker of the warmth and protection I had fiercely clung to for a year. I waited for the prince from the herb garden to step forward.

But Reece just stood there.

The meticulously handcrafted card I had spent hours agonizing over dangled carelessly from his long fingers. He held it with zero reverence, gripping it like a piece of meaningless trash he was waiting to drop in the nearest bin. His handsome face was terrifyingly neutral. There was no anger aimed at his friend. There was no pity for me. There wasn't even a trace of guilt in his dark eyes.

"Reece?" My voice cracked, brittle and raw in the quiet courtyard. "Tell me he's lying. Please."

Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. The heavy, crushing realization slammed into my chest like a tidal wave of freezing water.

It didn't mean anything.

None of it meant anything. Every shared smile in the library, every gentle word in the dining hall, every time he chased away the bullies—it was a sickening wager. I stared at Reece. The illusion shattered, and for the first time, I saw him with horrifying clarity. He was no prince. He was no savior who had noticed the invisible girl. He was just a cruel, manipulative Beta playing a vicious game with my dignity and my heart.

A year. I had poured a whole year of my life into a lie.

I swallowed the sharp, jagged ache in my throat. I had to salvage some shred of pride. I could not let them see me break into pieces right here on the pavement. I squared my shaking shoulders and extended a trembling hand toward him.

"Give it back." My voice shook, but I forced the words out. "The card. I want it back."

Reece blinked. He looked mildly surprised, as if he expected me to just vanish into thin air. He started to lift his hand, his grip loosening on the blue paper.

Before his fingers could even open, a sharp voice sliced through the heavy tension.

"Reece! There you are."

Sienna Frost materialized in a dramatic flutter of expensive moon-white silk. The Academy's untouchable golden girl moved with a predatory, flawless grace. Her pristine clothes swished around her legs as she glided to a halt. Her piercing eyes immediately locked onto the pale blue paper in Reece's hand. With effortless, practiced ease, she plucked the card straight from his grasp before I could even flinch.

"What do we have here?" Sienna asked. A malicious, superior smile curved her perfect lips, a sight that made my skin crawl with apprehension.

She held the card up, letting the fading afternoon light catch the paper. Her eyes scanned my painstaking calligraphy. She stared at the delicate moonflowers I had drawn by hand, the intricate little wolf I had shaded for hours until my fingers cramped.

"How pathetic," she crooned. Her voice dripped with a condescension so thick it threatened to choke me.

She stepped closer to Reece, intimately pressing her curved body against his side. She claimed him in front of me, a physical barrier I could never cross. She tilted her head, her gaze locking onto my face with deliberate cruelty.

"The Moon Dance is exclusively for real wolves, Avery," Sienna informed me softly. Her tone was laced with venom disguised as pity. "Surely you understand that by now. You don't belong there."

Before I could step forward to snatch my ruined hope away from her, Sienna opened her manicured fingers.

The card drifted downward in a slow, agonizing spiral. It landed face-up in a dirty, muddy puddle left over from yesterday's rain.

I couldn't breathe. I stood paralyzed, watching the filthy rainwater seep into the thick parchment. The dark blue ink blurred instantly, bleeding across the page and washing away the words I had poured my soul into. The hand-drawn moonflowers darkened and curled, drowning in the grime.

Whispers erupted around us. Other students had gathered, drawn by the commotion and Sienna's loud arrival. I heard the sharp clicks of communicators. Phones raised into the air like weapons. Bright camera flashes blinded me, capturing my public, crushing humiliation from every angle. Fingers pointed at my trembling frame. Cruel, echoing laughter bounced off the nearby stone walls, suffocating me from all sides.

I stared at the soggy, ink-stained mess in the mud. My chest heaved.

"Avery." Reece's voice cut through the laughter. It was flat. Annoyed. Final. "You need to leave. You're embarrassing yourself."

I snapped my gaze to his face. There was no apology in his tone. Only a cold, indifferent dismissal. He wasn't sorry for destroying me. He was irritated that I was still standing there, ruining the aesthetic of his victory lap.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. It was a fractured, broken sound. I didn't know who I was apologizing to anymore.

Then I turned and ran.

I fled blindly, desperate to escape the mocking laughter chasing me down the path. I sprinted past the massive training arena where I had watched him spar. I ran past the towering stone library where I had holed up dreaming about our future. My chest burned with every frantic breath. Hot tears streamed down my face, blurring the manicured lawns and stone statues of the Academy into a chaotic smear of green and gray.

The harsh, unforgiving voices of my parents echoed tormentingly in my mind. Their words synced with the pounding rhythm of my boots hitting the dirt.

*Wolfless.*

*Worthless.*

*Why do you even exist?*

I ran until the manicured grounds vanished behind me. Tangled roots and wild, unkempt grass took over the path. I didn't stop, pushing my lungs to the breaking point until my exhausted legs gave out beneath me. My knees slammed into the dirt right at the forbidding edge of the Murmur Woods.

This was the Academy's ancient, strictly forbidden zone. It was a dangerous territory where students vanished and never returned. Towering, moss-covered stones loomed in the encroaching shadows like silent sentinels. A thick, dark canopy of leaves wove together overhead, choking out the remaining sunlight and plunging the forest edge into deep gloom.

I collapsed onto the damp earth. The cold moisture seeped through my uniform trousers. Hiding my face in my hands, I let the raw, unfiltered grief tear its way out of my throat in wracking, ugly sobs. My fingers clawed at the wet dirt. I wept for the wasted year. I wept for the lies. I was so unimaginably tired. I was tired of constantly being a disappointment to my family. I was tired of hopelessly yearning to be wanted by anyone in this brutal world.

For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of my own shattered weeping echoing among the ancient, towering trees.

Then, the forest fell into an unnatural silence.

The wind stopped blowing. The insects ceased their chirping. Even the rustling leaves froze.

Piercing through that heavy, dead quiet came a sharp, wild scent. It hit my senses like a physical blow—a potent mixture of deep cedar, crisp mint, and the thick, copper-sweet tang of fresh blood.

The aroma wrapped around my body like invisible, commanding hands. My breath hitched in my chest. The rational, survival-driven part of my brain screamed a frantic warning. *Run. Get out of here. Danger.*

But I couldn't move. The paralyzing fear vanished in a heartbeat, eclipsed by a magnetic, profound pull. It felt like a deep, ancient bodily recognition snapping into place. My ribs ached with the intense force of it, dragging me toward the shadows.

A strange, intense prickling warmth rushed to my eyes. The heat burned away my remaining tears, making the twilight shadows sharpen into vivid, impossible focus. The dark woods suddenly looked different, mapped out in crisp lines and contrasting shades.

I pushed myself up, my hands trembling as they left the dirt. I stumbled blindly toward a shallow rainwater puddle settled near the twisted roots of a massive oak tree. I leaned over, peering down into the rippling, dark reflection.

I froze in shock.

My irises were glowing.

A faint, ethereal silver light pulsed rhythmically in my eyes. It beat in perfect time with my racing heart, glowing just like pure moonlight trapped beneath the surface of the water. I blinked, but the silver radiance remained, cutting through the gloom.

It was fundamentally impossible. The wolfless could not manifest eye glows. It defied every biological law they taught us in the classrooms. Wolfless meant dormant, broken, empty.

Yet there I was, staring at a predator's gaze.

The intoxicating scent of cedar, mint, and blood grew stronger. It washed over me in a heavy wave, acting as an irresistible thread tugging at my very core. The smell promised something fierce and unknown, drowning out the lingering memory of Sienna's laughter and Reece's cold dismissal.

My feet began to move on their own accord. I stepped away from the puddle, leaving the safety of the Academy borders behind. I followed that impossible, blood-laced scent deeper into the treacherous darkness of the woods, moving inevitably toward something my very body recognized as meant to be.