Lilly Lakin's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Lilly Lakin scrubbed blood off the packhouse floor and wondered, again, why she alone could not become a wolf. The others shifted at dusk without thinking. She only stayed a girl, small and tired, with a mop in her hands. She had one thing that was hers: the name Lakin. Nobody would tell her where it came from. That silence was the whole shape of her life, and she was done living inside it. At the far end of the hall, Alpha Edward filled the doorway. He watched her work without speaking. His pack had killed a rival that afternoon, and the smell of it was still in the wood. When she stood to face him, he did not soften. "Faster," he said. "Then wood." "Where do I come from?" Lilly asked. "You took me in. You know." "You clean. You haul. That is what you are." He turned and left. Subject closed, the way he closed everything. Lilly dropped the mop. She knew who could not lie about her. The seer lived up the hill, past the packhouse, in a small hut lit by one lamp. Lilly walked there while the pack ran the woods. She knocked once and went in. Elizabeth sat with a staff across their knees. They had a way of looking at you like they had already watched the whole conversation happen. Lilly had come here as a child and been sent away with riddles. This time she did not sit. "You see everything," Lilly said. "You see what I am. Say it." "I am forbidden," Elizabeth said. "The goddess herself sealed my tongue. I cannot say what you are." "Then don't name it." Lilly stepped closer. Her voice shook, then steadied. "I'm not one wolf and I'm not one girl. I feel it every time they shift and I can't. Tell me I'm not broken. Tell me there's a reason." Something moved in Elizabeth's face. For once they looked less like a seer and more like someone caught between two masters. "You are not broken," Elizabeth said slowly. "You are more than you know and something far above them all. I cannot tell you what you are.” Lilly's breath caught. "Then how do I find out what I am then?" "I walked the edge of the law to give you that." Elizabeth gripped the staff and rose. "The full truth waits at the temple in the valley, north, past the black pines. Follow the river against its current. No one can carry the answer to you. You have to walk to it." Lilly looked back down the hill at the packhouse, then north toward the dark trees. For the first time, staying was the harder choice. "Then I leave tonight," she said.