Silence crept back between the damp stone walls of the cave.
The fire in the hearth swayed softly, throwing orange shadows across Caleb’s face, and for once, he looked more tense than usual.
In the corner, Captain Vane let out a long breath in his uneasy sleep.
His large body twitched faintly, as if the war still followed him even into his dreams.
Valerie stared at the torn remains of her white silk dress piled near the side of the cave, then looked back at Caleb’s pair of dim golden eyes.
She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders to keep out the cold biting at her skin.
“How did you survive after that betrayal, Caleb?” Valerie asked quietly.
Caleb clenched his right fist so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and his joints cracked sharply in the silence of the cave.
“I am not sure surviving is the right word,” He answered in a cold tone “What do you mean?” Valerie asked, leaning a little closer toward the fire.
“That night was the night I watched loyalty get crushed into pieces by greed,” Caleb said.
His gaze drifted past the flames, as though he were staring straight into that memory again.
*** The past began turning inside Caleb’s head, dragging him back to that blood-soaked night in the palace of the pure wolf clan.
The smell of burnt stone and the sharp metallic scent of spilled blood hung thick in the main corridor of the palace.
The Front Guard, led by Vane, had tried to hold back the rebel troops at the inner gate, but the enemy forces were far too many.
The screams of dying loyal soldiers echoed through the grand castle, now lit by purple red flames fed by black magic.
“PROTECT THE PRINCE!
FORM A BARRICADE NOW!!!” Vane shouted, his throat raw.
He blocked a heavy axe strike with his silver shield, sparks flying into the darkness.
“We need to fall back toward the forest, Captain!
There are way too many of them!!!” one loyal soldier yelled in panic.
He managed to slash at the enemy in front of him, but then his body froze when a poisoned arrow pierced his neck.
He dropped onto the marble floor without another sound.
Caleb fought at the front line with his massive sword stained with traitor blood.
Every slash carried the rage of an Alpha who had been betrayed, yet his chest felt tighter and tighter.
The black magic poison released by Lyca’s mages had already started to work, slowing the regeneration of his wolf body and draining his strength at a frightening speed.
“LYCA!
COME OUT HERE AND FACE ME!!!” Caleb roared.
His voice thundered so hard it seemed to split the snowstorm outside the palace.
From the darkness of the ruined corridor, a man in black armor stepped forward with elegant but deadly movements.
General Lyca, his own brother, stood there with a cold smile that looked horrifying.
In his right hand, he held a silver dagger wrapped in thick black energy.
“This throne does not belong to a weak wolf like you, my brother,” Lyca said with chilling calm in the middle of all that chaos.
“You butchered our own family just for a damn iron chair?!!!” Caleb shouted, fury exploding inside him.
He tried to strike him with the last of his strength, even as it kept slipping away.
“I saved this kingdom from collapse because your rule cared too much about peace,” Lyca replied coldly.
With sharp speed, he dodged Caleb’s weakened sword swing.
The fight between the two blood brothers became brutal beneath the shattered pillars of the palace.
Caleb, already drained by black magic, kept getting pushed back by Lyca’s speed.
Then, in the middle of that despair, Jarek, another traitor general, suddenly appeared behind him.
Jarek’s sword sliced the back of Caleb’s leg, cutting through the energy line and forcing him down onto one knee on the cold marble floor soaked in blood.
“Now, sleep forever, my dear brother,” Lyca whispered coldly right in front of Caleb’s face.
Without hesitation, Lyca drove the black magic dagger straight into Caleb’s left chest.
A terrifying pain shot through Caleb’s body at once, as if the blood in his veins had turned into boiling lead.
Darkness crawled into the corners of his vision, and his Alpha power collapsed instantly.
His large body fell heavily onto the wet floor.
“LORD CALEBBB!!!” Vane screamed.
Driven by blind rage, Vane broke through the enemy ring just to reach his lord’s dying body.
He cut through the iron chains holding the palace back gate, creating a narrow escape route toward the Forbidden Forest.
He hoisted Caleb’s half conscious body onto his shoulder, then ran as fast as he could through the snowstorm, with flaming arrows raining down behind him.
“Leave me, Vane…
that is an order…” Caleb muttered, his voice weak and broken.
“I will never let the blood of our king die in the hands of these traitors, my lord!!!” Vane shouted back, panting hard even though two deep arrows had already pierced his left shoulder.
The Forbidden Forest greeted them with thick darkness and an ancient, suffocating magical aura.
The giant trees seemed to bend and close off the path behind them, giving them a few seconds to breathe.
But the wound in Caleb’s chest kept leaking thin black smoke, proof that Lyca’s curse was slowly tearing apart his wolf heart.
“We are almost at the ancient altar, my lord…
hold on…” Vane gasped, struggling under Caleb’s weight.
“That altar has been dead for thousands of years, Vane…
there will be no portal,” Caleb said with effort, then coughed up thick black blood that stained the snow beneath him.
“Pure Alpha blood can awaken anything the ancestors left behind,” Vane answered firmly.
He laid Caleb down on a cracked stone altar covered in black moss at the center of the forest.
From far away, the howling of the pursuing wolf soldiers grew louder, breaking the cold silence of the night.
Vane immediately took a defensive position in front of the altar, gripping his cracked silver sword with trembling hands from sheer exhaustion.
“Use your blood on the rune carved into the center of this stone, my lord!!!
I will hold them here until the very end!!!” Vane shouted without looking back, staring straight into the darkness of the forest where pairs upon pairs of red enemy eyes had begun to appear.
“I can’t leave you to die here, Vane,” Caleb muttered, trying to lift his body even though it felt as heavy as a giant boulder.
“Your presence in the future is the only hope our broken clan has left, go now!!!” Vane shouted fiercely, throwing himself at the pack of enemy wolves that were beginning to leap out from the bushes.
With the last of his fading consciousness, Caleb dragged himself across the rough surface of the altar stone.
He pressed his blood soaked palm against the ancient circular rune carved into the center of the altar.
The moment he did, the black stone beneath him shook violently, releasing a blazing silver purple light so bright it split the night in two.
“CATCH THE PRINCE!!!
DO NOT LET HIM TOUCH THE PORTAL!!!” Jarek shouted from afar, ordering his troops forward as fast as possible.
But it was already too late.
The ring of light from the ancient altar suddenly expanded, tearing open a vertical dimensional crack across the air above the Forbidden Forest.
Gravity around the altar went completely wrong, pulling Caleb’s weak body into the freezing vortex of energy.
“I will come back, Lyca,” Caleb thought to himself before his body was swallowed whole by the endless darkness of the dimensional rift.
The pain of passing through the crack felt like his body was being shredded by thousands of invisible blades.
Caleb lost consciousness completely when he was thrown out of the sky portal and crashed onto the wet forest ground on Earth, on a very cold night months ago.
*** Back in the present, inside the quiet stone cave, Caleb stopped speaking.
He looked down at his own right hand, which was still trembling slightly.
The memory of that night still left a real physical ache inside his wolf body.
“And after that, I woke up and found a very loud human girl staring at me with a pale face,” Caleb muttered, trying to break the tension between them.
“Heh!
Of course I was pale!!!” Valerie protested, even though her eyes were glistening with the sadness she had been holding back after hearing the full tragic story.
“You suddenly moved and stared at me like you were about to tear me apart the moment you woke up!!!
Ungrateful wolf!!!” “I was only following the last survival instinct I had left after that battle,” Caleb replied, looking at her with a gentler expression.
“That wound on your chest…
that horrible wound that took weeks to dry…
so that was from your brother’s black magic dagger?” Valerie asked softly.
She touched her own chest, as if she could feel the unbearable pain Caleb had once endured.
“Yess, and the silk strips torn from your dress, and the way you wrapped and pressed the bleeding wound without hesitation, were the only things keeping that black poison from spreading faster through my body,” Caleb answered, staring at her with complete sincerity.
Valerie let out a small snort and turned her face toward the fireplace.
“I’m not some genius healer who knows anything about medicine, Caleb.
I was just panicking like crazy that night.
I was also running from the mad people chasing me all night long.” Caleb stayed quiet and listened closely.
“I ran through thorny trees until my white dress was ripped apart and my hands got cut by branches,” Valerie continued, rubbing a small scar on her palm.
“When I got too tired and almost gave up, the storm came.
Luckily, it covered the sound of my footsteps from those hunters.” Valerie let out a long breath, remembering that ridiculous and terrifying night all over again.
“Then, when I was walking through the bushes, my foot got caught on something.
I thought it was just a fallen branch, but it was actually a big guy lying there.
And that was you,” Valerie said, pointing at Caleb with her chin.
“You had a thick leather cloak, ripped apart in the back.
You were covered in wounds, and your blood was already soaking into the ground.” “Then?” Caleb asked, a tiny smile beginning to show at the edge of his mouth.
“I was shaking so badly!!!
I called out to you a few times, but you did not move at all.
I thought you were already dead,” Valerie muttered.
“But when I finally gathered the courage to check your pulse at your neck, it was still there.
Your breathing was so short and weak.” Valerie then looked toward the top of Caleb’s head, where his pair of silver gray furry ears sat.
“But what really shocked me was when I tried to touch your shoulder.
My eyes went straight up to your head.
There was this weird pointed shape sticking up between your thick black hair.
I honestly thought, is this a movie set or what?
Why is this guy wearing a wolf ear headband in the middle of nowhere?” Caleb let out an amused snort.
“A wolf ear headband?” “Yes!!!
Because it was just too weird for someone to suddenly have ears like that in a forest on Earth!!!” Valerie shot back, her face bright red.
“But then I looked closer, and one of your ears moved a little because it heard a sound in the woods.
I immediately crawled backward in terror!!!
I got full body chills and realized those were real ears.” Valerie shook her head, remembering how Caleb’s cloak had shifted and revealed a long furry tail lying weakly on the wet ground.
“That night, I could only sit frozen on the dirt, staring at your wolf ears and tail without being able to speak because I was so scared.
I was totally confused.
Were you human or animal?
My brain told me to run, but my legs were locked in place.” “And even though you were terrified after realizing I was not a normal human, you still decided not to leave me to die in that forest,” Caleb said softly.
Valerie turned her face away, feeling awkward under the intensity of his stare.
“Yeah…
well…
I could not just leave you there.
There was no way I was going to let some dying creature stay in front of me without helping, even if that creature was a disgusting wolf monster like you.
I just did not want you to die after I dragged your huge heavy body all the way into this cave!” “Thank you so much, Valerie,” Caleb said softly.
Valerie’s heart jumped hard in her chest.
“Shit, why is he suddenly being so sweet?
Damn it, damn it, damn it!!!” she cursed in her head, trying hard to hide the red that had started spreading across her cheeks.
To distract herself, Valerie quickly got up and walked over to Captain Vane, who had started trying to sit himself up in the corner of the cave.
“Hey, do not move around too much!” Valerie snapped at Vane, her frustration fake and sharp on purpose to cover her embarrassment.
“The silk strips I used to wrap your wound could come loose again if you keep acting up!” Vane looked at the human girl with a confused expression, then glanced toward Caleb, who was only smiling faintly at Valerie’s explosive behavior, even though he knew she had a heart far kinder than her mouth.
“Thank you for your help, Miss Valerie,” Vane said in a deep and rough voice, lowering his head slightly in deep respect toward the woman who had saved his lord.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Valerie muttered while straightening the last pieces of fabric tying in the corner of the cave.
“The important thing is that you both rest now.” Caleb stood and walked slowly toward the cave entrance.
He stopped there and stared at Earth’s night sky, filled with stars, with his golden eyes shining sharply in the dark.
The night wind brushed through his black hair, making his wolf ears twitch in alert.
Even though this world felt strange and peaceful, Caleb knew he could not stay here forever.
There was a throne to reclaim, a family to avenge, and a clan to save from destruction.
But for now, inside this warm stone cave, he was grateful that fate had dropped him into the hands of an ordinary human girl with an extraordinary kind of courage, a girl who had saved his life without thinking twice.