The Broken Leash

RUBY

I watched from the treeline as the aftermath of the pointless raid smoldered below. The small, vulnerable pack had barely survived, their homes reduced to charred skeletons against the evening sky. Smoke still curled from the ruins, carrying the scent of destruction on the wind.

They hadn't stood a chance.

I leaned against a weathered pine, keeping to the shadows. The rogues who had carried out the attack were long gone, having taken what they wanted and vanished back into the wilderness. Back to wherever rogues go when they're done tearing apart other people's lives.

Back to people like me.

Except I wasn't one of them. Not really. I wasn't pack either. I existed somewhere in the in-between—a ghost drifting through both worlds, belonging to neither.

A lone wolf in every sense of the word.