Morrigan: I Am Your Fate

Morrigan's Future

In the morning the sun rose above me and it felt glorious to awaken in nature.

I was still in pain, but I felt refreshed after sleeping through the night.

I saw that I was still bleeding, but I was not alarmed. I just went down to the stream to drink and then wash myself again as I planned exactly what I needed to do.

I knew that if I was going to survive I needed to focus on food and shelter.

My pack had been traveling to a summer meeting where they would meet with other packs from this region, and I knew the direction they would be heading to get to that.

If Luc had been less impatient and more practical he would have waited a couple of months to get me pregnant so we weren’t traveling so far while I could barely walk, but my discomfort was not his primary concern and it had never seemed to be so difficult for Gaella.

Now I had to decide what I wanted my future to be - I could make my own way to the summer meeting and show up alive and furious at the way they had left me, or I could go in the opposite direction and leave behind everything I had ever known, embracing my new life as a Loner.

I spent the afternoon setting traps to try and catch something to eat, and then went back and cleaned up the tent.

I had left the entrance open all night and the smell was not quite as bad anymore.

I didn’t want to stay here for too long, but I had a place to shelter if I needed and I knew that leaving before I was ready would be more dangerous than putting up with the discomfort of being in that tent.

I thought of how horrified Gaella would be when she saw that I was not dead, and how furious Luc would be with her.

I had been picturing the things that would happen to that woman every day since I woke up alone and it filled me with a steely determination to follow after the pack and humiliate her by showing her that I was not dead and that she was not going to get away with murdering my son.

But then I thought about how everybody else would react to me arriving alive and I knew that Luc would not let me leave the meeting with another pack.

He wanted me for himself, and everything he had said to me in those hideous private moments when he was observing my naked body came back to me as I lay quietly beside the fire to preserve my strength.

I could not get my revenge on Gaella without Luc capturing me to keep with him. I could not survive alone while I was still recovering my strength and unable to transform.

I could not go to the meeting to see if a new pack would accept me because my old pack would know I was there.

I felt another hunger pang and decided to try the traps I had set earlier.

I had managed to capture a hare and I dispatched of it swiftly with Gaella's knife and took it back to the camp to prepare and cook.

I felt another cramp and the feeling and scent of fresh blood.

I would be bleeding like this for another few days at least, and after that, it would take at least another cycle of the moon before I could transform again - my son’s birth had been traumatic enough that it was likely I would need longer than that.

I cleaned myself up as the smell of the rabbit cooking started to make my stomach growl and I found myself salivating by the time it was ready to eat.

I would have eaten the damned thing raw without skinning it if I had to wait another day to eat, but I was just about capable of waiting patiently and the taste of that unseasoned rabbit cooked over a campfire was divine to my starving taste buds.

I was able to think a lot more clearly after that, and I sat at the fireside considering all the things that had been running through my mind all day now that I was more capable of really thinking about them.

I knew that I wanted to kill Gaella, and that half of me wanted to kill Luc. It wasn’t only the fact he was an Alpha that was stopping me; some deep instinct in me hated the idea of killing my one tangible link to my son. Luc deserved my wrath as much as Gaella did, even though he had grown to care for me in his own twisted way.

He had chosen to take my virginity with no warning and I was told he would be fathering a child with me, I was not asked if I was willing.

Staying away from them was the best idea. They thought I was dead, and I was free to go wherever I wanted and to choose my own destiny now.

I was starting to see that this life, the life of a Loner, was possibly the one I was supposed to lead.

My snowy white hair made me seem like I was special on the surface; if I was a pure white wolf I would be able to choose whichever pack I wanted and live well with them.

Unfortunately, my white hair, usually the sign of the mutation which indicated an extreme natural magical ability that was so desirable, was a fluke. I was a silver wolf when I transformed, just like all the others in my pack.

Any pack I encountered in this form would feel like I had cheated them the first time they found out the truth about my wolf form, and that I did not possess any magical ability at all.

I stoked the fire and added some more wood that I had gathered on my way back from resetting the traps I had set.

I did not like the way the clouds were looking overhead and I wanted the fire to be strong enough to last if it started to rain - something that would also force me to seek shelter in the tent I had been avoiding overnight.

I was exhausted when I lay down on the furs in the tent, and I did not wake up until long after I normally would have the next day. It made me realize exactly how far I had to go before I would be able to fend for myself if I did accept that living as a loner was the right choice.

I had made my decision by the end of that day - there was another hare in the traps I had set, and I had spent most of the day feeling almost relaxed at the camp.

I could start to build up my strength, and I had a place to shelter in bad weather. I would stay here until the first time I was able to transform, and then I would move on and begin my own life as a Loner.

As I tracked the cycle of the moon from waxing to waning in one long and ever-repeating cycle all of the days and nights were a blur.

I tried to push myself a little further each day, and I tried to prepare myself for life when the wildlife I was able to capture to sustain myself was less abundant.

I was drying meat on a basic rack which I kept outside on warm sunny days, and brought into the tent at night so that it would not be raided by opportunistic carnivores.

I felt like it was the life I was always supposed to lead, and as horrible as it was to admit I was somewhat glad that everything I had been through had resulted in me leading a more peaceful life.

I did not expect anything much to change until the moon was at the same stage it was now again - I could still not transform, even though the loose skin that had swamped my slender stomach during my first days alone was now taught across the muscles I had been able to reshape.

The clothes I had kept when I went through the things that had been left behind slowly began to fit me again until one day I realized the only signs that my belly had been so unbelievably swollen during my pregnancy was the stretch-marks that were not yet fading the way I knew they would, given time. The only other permanent change had been to my breasts, which were fuller now than they had been before my pregnancy.

As time went on it began to rain more and more, and I was glad that the menial task of lighting the campfire is one I had been tasked with often enough that I could restart the fire the few times it died out completely.

It was not even difficult to sleep in the tent when I needed to anymore, though I did prefer to sleep in the open given the choice.

If I was not afraid that Luc would bring the pack back close enough to know I was still here I would have been happy to stay at that campsite throughout the winter while I decided which direction to travel in.

But as I saw the moon growing fuller in the sky I knew that I would use the fact the full moon made transforming slightly less draining and see if I was ready to transform this time.

That was what I had said since I decided I was not going to live as a Loner. When I could transform, I would leave.

I sat at the fire the night before the full moon would be at its most potent and looked up at the sky with a fresh sense of hope and wonder - tomorrow would be the start of my new life; I could sense it.

A gentle breeze chilled me slightly and I decided that I wanted to make sure I was as fresh as possible tomorrow and that sleeping in the tent was the best idea.

I had strategically torn the smallest of the white linen shift dresses that Gaella had given me to wear to form a more free hanging gown that was both loose and comfortable and it was cool enough even inside the tent that I hesitated as I began to shrug the dress off, and chose instead to wear it to sleep in.

As I lay on the pile of furs and felt my eyelids growing heavier I smiled, because I knew that my dreams would be filled with memories of the wind blowing through my fur as I ran free as a wolf - and more importantly, I was sure that I would feel that again tomorrow.

My eyes snapped open.

It was the dead of night, and there were noises and smells that I was not expecting, and certainly not prepared for.

There were people outside. They were my kind, not human, but they were not from my own pack. They were silent, and I guessed that they had either planned to ambush me or that their pack was mind readers and that they did not rely on speech when they were working together to prey on a Loner like I was now.

My heart thundered in my chest and I reached out beside me to pick up Gaella’s knife.

A sharp pain shot through my hand and I whipped my head around to find the cause.

I was not alone in the tent - an exquisitely beautiful woman who was a similar age to me was looking down at me as her foot was firmly pressed on my hand.

I noted her long dark blonde hair and full lips, but in the darkness of the tent without quite having the full power of my senses back I could not make out the color of her eyes.

Regardless of their color, they were locked with mine, and I knew my own eyes were filled with terror.

The beautiful woman kept looking down at me as she called out to someone outside the tent.

“Ares!”

I did not recognize her accent, and her looks were striking but bore none of the features that could mark her out as a member of any particular pack.

I had not heard of a wolf named Ares before, either. I guessed that he was Alpha of whichever pack she was with and a moment later my suspicion was confirmed when a tall shadow filled the doorway.

I did not need to see him clearly - I already knew that he was the man I had seen in that delirium-induced vision I had on the morning I awoke alone. And now that he was not keeping his scent masked I was flooded by a feeling, unlike anything I had ever felt before.

He was my destiny.