Awakening The Silver Wolf

RAVENNA POV 

I snorted a laugh and shook my head. "You've run out of ways to taunt me and now this is what you found, huh? It's not going to work, Zara." 

The witch still had that smile on her face. "Oh, but this is no taunting, Ravenna," she snickered. "Poor daddy got drunk one night and his tongue just kept running. The Alpha and his former Luna were not your real parents, Ravenna. You were abandoned, found by them in a basket, not even a single note found on you, no trace of who you were. Since the former Luna was so kind—may she rest in peace—she begged to keep you. They were childless and had no hope of having a child of their own so they took you in."

I was shaking my head while she spoke, my heart beating wildly. "No, no, no," I kept repeating, my voice hoarse. "No, you're lying, Zara! This is one of your stupid taunting games. You won! Goddamn it, you won! Tell me it's not true. Please, Zara, tell me."

My heart felt like there were nails in them, thrusting deeper the more I breathed.

It wasn't true. No, it couldn't. They were my real parents, they gave birth to me. How could Zara just tint my whole world upside down with just those words?

Zara stepped closer and played with a strand of my hair, her eyes gleaming. "But it's true, Ravenna. Think about this: why do you have no wolf? The Alpha and his former Luna were powerful wolves, don't you know? So why would they give birth to a wolfless baby? That has never happened before. Ever, Ravenna. So think about it." 

And then she walked away, taking a piece of me with her. 

She was lying. This was just one of those ways she tried to bring me down. 

Alpha Hale and Luna Isla were my birth parents. Right?

No, they're not, a small voice whispered back to me. 

And then it all started going through my head like a screen was before me and playing everything I'd missed or chose to ignore.

I didn't resemble the Luna and the Alpha in any way. Our features were all so different.

Isla had blond hair. Hale had black hair. Both their eyes were dark. Both their skin was a little dark.

My hair was silver. My eyes were gray. My skin was light. 

When Isla was still alive I had walked in on her and Hale arguing about something. I haven't bothered to pay attention to the words but now they came rushing to me. 

"We have to tell her," Hale had said. "She must know, Isla. It's not our place to keep it from her."

"But she's still young!" Isla had shot back. "A little more time, my love. A little more time and I'll tell her."

She had died a few months after that day, and Hale never looked at me the same way again. It was as if since his wife, who begged to keep the abandoned child was dead, since his wife, who wanted to love the abandoned child was dead, he wanted nothing to do with her again. It was as if he only tolerated me because of his wife. 

And then there was the pack. The pack who treated me like an outsider, who dragged their children away from me like I had a disease they didn't want them to catch. Only a few had treated me nicely. Only a few. 

The signs have been there all along.

"No," I whispered. But yes. Yes, they weren't my real parents. Yes, I was abandoned in a basket with no note as to who my real parents were. Yes, my real parents didn't want me. Yes, I was pathetic, weak, and unlovable. 

Yesyesyesyesyes.

The sob that burst out of me was loud and piercing. It tore through me like an animal clawing its way out of my chest, raw and guttural, leaving me breathless. 

My knees buckled, and I crumpled to the ground, my hands clutching at my face as if I could somehow hold the pieces of myself together.

How could they not tell me? I thought. How could they have lied to me for all these years?

Tears blurred my vision, the hot, salty drops soaking into my palms. I wanted to scream, but the sound caught in my throat, suffocating me, choking me from the inside. 

I could feel the weight of the truth pressing down on me, each breath feeling heavier than the last. I was drowning in the realization that I had been living a lie. A lie that had become my reality, my sense of self, my family. And now, it was all ripped away.

The pieces of Zara's words echoed in my mind, cruel and unforgiving: You were abandoned, Ravenna. No note, no trace of who you were. 

You have no wolf because you're not even their blood. 

The laughter she had tried so hard to stifle still rang in my ears. It felt like a mockery, like a cruel, twisted symphony to my agony.

I wiped my face, but it only smeared the tears, the evidence of my weakness. I wanted to curl into a ball and disappear, to escape the suffocating reality that was consuming me. My chest felt tight, and the ache in my heart was unbearable. It was as if the world had cracked open, and I was falling into the chasm of everything I'd believed shattered beyond repair.

Why can't I be loved? Why did my real family not want me? Was I unplanned? Did my father want nothing to do with a child and my mother couldn't raise me alone and that was why she left me? 

The questions hung in the air, unanswered, and it broke me all over again. 

The pack—those who had always made me feel like an outsider, the ones who had whispered behind my back, who avoided looking me in the eyes as if I were some kind of curse—had never treated me like I belonged. 

They didn't even see me as one of their own. To them, I was just the girl they had to tolerate, the girl they whispered about when they thought I couldn't hear. I wasn't their sister, their friend, their ally, their pack member. I was just an unwanted stray, always on the outside looking in.

I thought about Isla, the woman who had fought so hard to keep me. She had loved me. I had always believed that, and held onto it as a lifeline. But now, all I could see were the words Hale had spoken that day: We have to tell her...

They had never intended to tell me. She had never planned to tell me. They had kept me in the dark, sheltered me in a lie of love that was never real.

My body trembled, my head spinning, as I sank further into the weight of the truth. Zara was right. I was abandoned. I was a mistake. A freak. An outcast. 

I stood up, my legs unsteady, but I didn't know where to go. There was nowhere I belonged. 

I knew this pack only tolerated me because of their alpha. So I had no one, no family, nobody. 

I slumped against the trunk of a tree, unable to keep myself upright any longer. My body felt like it was breaking into pieces, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I am nothing. The thought was a whisper, yet it felt like a truth so deep it might drown me.

I wanted to scream, but the scream never came. Instead, all I could do was drag myself back to the pack house, not caring who saw me in this state. My parents weren't my parents. The pack wasn't my pack. I had no one. No family. No wolf.

Just emptiness. And the tears wouldn't stop.

I found myself climbing the stairs to my room, not feeling my thighs burning. I found myself in my room without even knowing when I got there. Mia said something but I couldn't hear her from the buzz in my head. 

"I need your phone," I said to her, my voice sounding like I was underwater. 

Mia said something again before she pressed her phone into my hand. I walked to the bathroom and locked the door, dialing the number that I could never forget.

He picked on the third ring. "Hello?"

The tears that haven't stopped rolling increased. "Hi, dad."