A Gift of Silverfin
Aurora POV
Two weeks.
It has been two weeks since I turned the most elite wolf pack I’ve ever seen into a collective mud-pie, and I have heard… nothing.
I rolled onto my back, exposing my belly to the warm, unfiltered sunlight. I was lying on a slab of dark grey granite that jutted out over the Mirror Lake, deep, and I mean deep, in the Forbidden Lands.
Today, I wasn’t covered in ash. I wasn’t rolled in the dirt.
I was clean. My fur, usually a mottled grey-brown disguise, was currently gleaming in its natural, blinding white.
It felt strange to be this bright. Like walking around with a target painted on my back.
But out here? No patrol would dare come this far.
The concentration of wild magic and powerful monsters is high, and unless you know how to deal with them. You’re in for a bad time.
So, I indulged. I bathed in the waterfall, shook myself dry, and laid out like a pampered house pet.
‘Where are you?’ I wondered, staring up at the clouds drifting lazily across the blue.
My mind wandered back to him. The Storm Alpha. The one with the obsidian coat and the eyes like molten gold.
I hated that I was thinking about him. I really did. I should be thinking about survival, or the coming winter, though that is far away, or the migratory patterns of the Thunder-Boars. But instead, my brain kept replaying the way he had looked at me across the bog.
He hadn’t been scared. He hadn’t even been that angry, really. He had been… intrigued.
I let out a soft huff, blowing a dandelion seed off my nose.
I had expected a retaliation. I had expected him to come back for a rematch or maybe just with a bigger attitude. I was ready for Round Two. I had even scouted a few hornet nests near the ravine just in case.
But the forest was quiet. The patrols were sticking to the outer rim, terrified to push in.
‘Did I scare you off, handsome?’ I thought, feeling a pang of disappointment that was entirely too sharp for my liking. ‘Was a little mud too much for your delicate paws?’
Suddenly, a shadow swept over me, blocking out the sun.
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scramble for cover. I knew that sound. It wasn’t the frantic flapping of a bird; it was the heavy, leathery whump-whump-whump of massive wings displacing air.
I cracked one eye open.
Above me, six shapes circled. They were sleek, aerodynamic, and covered in emerald and bronze scales.
Wyverns.
To most of the world, these are nightmare fuel. Flying death lizards that breathe corrosive acid and eat livestock. To me? They’re just the neighbors. Well technically, I am in their territory, hence the lack of other monsters.
The flock banked left, diving toward the lake. They hit the water with a chaotic series of splashes, screeching and snapping at each other playfully. They were cooling off. The heat today was oppressive, even for flying reptiles.
I watched them lazily. This was the Green-Striped flock. The Matriarch, a massive beast with a scar running down her left flank, landed on the shore, shaking her wings dry with a sound like cracking thunder.
She looked up at my ledge. She saw a white wolf.
Most wolves would be a snack. But she chuffed, a low, grinding sound in her throat, and dipped her head.
I dipped mine back. Respect.
Five years ago, a rockslide had trapped her hatchling.
The pack had to abandon it, nature is cruel like that.
But I hadn’t. Feeling bad for it, I had spent two days digging that little screeching lizard out, and then I healed its crushed wing with my magic.
The Matriarch had returned just as I finished, probably due to the hatchling calling for her.
We had a… moment. A standoff. She didn’t roast me, and I didn’t run.
Since then, we have had a truce and built a friendship.
A smaller splash drew my attention.
The “hatchling”, who was now the size of a carriage, hopped up the rocks toward my ledge. She was beautiful, her scales shimmering with iridescent greens and golds.
She landed on the ledge with a heavy thud, making my rock tremble. In her jaws, she held a massive Silver-Fin Trout, still flapping.
She dropped it right in front of my nose. Splat.
I sat up, ears perking. Silver-Fin is high-quality fish. Hard to catch without diving gear.
‘For me?’ I projected the thought, even though we can’t mind-link, giving my tail a slow wag.
The young Wyvern let out a happy, trilling shriek, and then collapsed next to me. She didn’t care about personal space. She nudged her massive, scaly head over my back nuzzling my fur and settled in.
She was warm, smelling of lake water and raw fish, but she purred. A deep, vibrating rumble that resonated in her chest. I sighed, leaning against her. I began to gnaw on the fish she’d brought, feeling the comfortable scales of a deadly monster against my flank and back.
‘At least someone comes to visit,’ I thought, taking a bite of the trout.
I chewed thoughtfully, looking out over the water while the young Wyvern closed her eyes, content to nap in the sun with her favorite fluffy pillow.
The Storm Alpha might be handsome, and his pack might be entertaining, but did they bring me fresh sashimi? No.
But still… I looked at the horizon, toward the edge of the land of the werewolves.
I wondered if he was thinking about me, too. Probably not, right?
I swallowed a chunk of rich, fatty trout, the taste bursting on my tongue, but the satisfaction didn’t quite reach my chest. It felt heavy there, like a stone I couldn’t digest.
‘Let’s be realistic, Aurora,’ I told myself, tearing off another strip of fish with perhaps a little more aggression than necessary.
A male like that, an Alpha of an Elite pack, radiating that kind of raw, crackling power, doesn’t walk through life unattached. He almost certainly has a mate. A Luna. Why else would he have such a powerful aura?
I could picture her perfectly, and the image made my ears flatten against my skull.
She’d be pristine. Her fur would be conditioned with lavender and chamomile, not caked in swamp mud and dried blood.
She’d know exactly which fork to use at a banquet and how to smile politely at boring dignitaries.
She would be poised, pedigreed, and perfectly suitable.
The cosmic joke, of course, was that I could do all those things, too. You don’t grow up a Princess without memorizing table etiquette and diplomacy. But he didn’t know that. He didn’t see a girl who could navigate a royal court; he just saw a feral mud-pie. And I wasn’t about to correct him.
I looked down at my paws. They were clean now, white and sharp, but he hadn’t seen this version of me. He had seen the dirty rogue. He had seen a matted, chaotic, feral disaster covered in ash and dirt.
Why would he bother coming back for that?
To a wolf like him, I wasn’t a mystery to be solved.
I was a stain to be washed off. I was probably just a nuisance he’d encountered on a patrol gone wrong.
By now, he’s probably back in his grand pack house, sitting by a roaring fire, laughing with his Beta and Luna about the crazy, dirty she-wolf who threw them a curveball in the mud.
Or he’s probably forgotten me entirely.
The thought stung. It stung worse than the time I tried to pet a Porcupine-Bear.
But really, it was for the best.
I huffed and finished my fish, before leaning my head back against the young wyvern’s warm, scaly flank. The reptile let out a sleepy whistle of air, her heartbeat a slow, steady thrum against my ribs.
I didn’t need a pack. I didn’t need a mate telling me what to do or growling at me because I didn’t bow low enough. I have the sun. I have the Forbidden Lands. I have giant flying lizards who brought me breakfast in bed.
I was better off without him. Definitely.
Our little encounter in the bog hadn’t been the start of some epic romance.
It was just... playtime. I had been bored, the forest had been quiet, and he had been a convenient source of entertainment.
A shiny toy I played with for ten minutes and then tossed aside.
That’s all he was. Entertainment. A break in the monotony.
I closed my eyes, forcing my breathing to match the slow rhythm of the wyvern.
‘I enjoyed the show,’ I told myself firmly, pushing the image of those golden eyes into the deepest, darkest pit of my mind. ‘And now the show is over.’
That was it. End of story.