Jessica
Listening to him talk made my own troubles feel small.
I had spent days crying, screaming, throwing rocks at the walls, and trying to run away.
He had been sitting in this dark cave for a hundred years.
He had watched women walk into this cave satisfy him, lose their lives, and decay until nothing remained except clothes and bones.
He had stayed in this pit through all of it without losing his mind.
He was a Lycan Elder, but the truth was bigger than that.
He had been a king.
He had built La Fita from nothing.
He had loved a woman, lost her to a tragedy, fought in wars, and survived while everyone around him turned to dust.
My chest felt tight.
I looked down at my shoes, feeling bad about how I had treated him since I woke up.
I had called him names.
I had yelled at him.
I had even jumped onto his body when a yellow skull rolled out of a pile of old clothes.
I glanced back up at his face.
He did not look like someone who had lived five hundred years.
His skin was smooth, his jaw was wide and clean, and his long white hair fell over his broad shoulders.
He looked strong.
Whenever his lips moved to speak, a strange feeling stirred deep in my stomach.
My skin felt warm despite the cold water dripping from my dress.
I wanted to take a step closer to him.
I wanted to feel his heavy arms wrap around my shoulders and hold me against his chest.
I stood there staring at his lips until his long fingers snapped twice right in front of my eyes.
“Hello?” Elden asked.
I blinked fast and took a half step back.
“What?”
“Are you still in there?” he asked, leaning his head to the side.
I straightened my neck and pulled my shoulders back, pretending I had not been staring at his face the entire time.
“Yes. I am right here. I heard you.”
He lowered his free left hand and pointed a thumb at his chest.
“If you were listening, tell me what I just said.”
My throat went dry.
I cleared my throat, looking at the stone wall behind his head, searching my mind for a single word he had spoken in the last ten minutes.
My mind was completely empty.
I looked back into his eyes and gave him the only line I remembered.
Elden lifted both of his eyebrows.
“That is the only thing you heard?”
I gave him a slow nod, keeping my face completely flat like I was sure of myself.
“Yes. That was the last thing you said.”
He let out a long breath and shook his head, his white hair moving across his chest.
“I have been standing here talking for half an hour, Jessica.”
I looked around the dark room.
The small light coming from the opening had faded away.
Darkness covered the far walls of the cavern.
“Look up there,” Elden said, lifting his free left arm toward the ceiling.
“The light is gone. Night is here again.”
I looked up at the opening, then brought my eyes back to his face.
“It has been days since you woke up,” Elden said, his voice quiet.
“We are wasting time standing on this place. You keep talking about leaving this hollow, but you are not paying attention to me.”
I squeezed the hem of my wet dress with both hands.
He was right, but I was not going to tell him that out loud.
I put on a tough face and shrugged my shoulders.
“You should just summarize what you said,” I told him.
“I will summarize it,” he said, taking a step closer to me.
The remaining chain on his right arm rattled against the stone wall.
“I will do it because you asked nicely, and because you are gorgeous.”
My head snapped up.
“What did you call me?”
My heart gave a hard thump against my ribs.
I stared at his face, trying to read his thoughts.
Why was he giving me compliments out of nowhere?
And why did my cheeks feel warm just hearing him say that word?
Nobody had ever called me gorgeous before, except my sister Josephine.
When Josephine said it, it made me smile.
Hearing it from a hundred-year-old Lycan standing two feet away from me in a dark cave made my pulse run fast.
I turned my head away, looking down at the stone and sand.
“Do not think you can use smooth words on me to win my trust.”
A short, low laugh came out of his throat.
“I am not trying to win you over. I am telling you the truth. What I said was simple. I was betrayed.”
“I could tell you every detail of how my own advisor turned against me,” Elden said, rubbing his bare left wrist.
“I could tell you how he set the trap, how he used my own guards against me, and how he locked these iron rings on my arms. But that is a long story, and I do not have the patience to tell it all tonight.”
His grey eyes moved slowly down my wet clothes, resting on my shoes before coming back to my face.
“And clearly, you do not have the patience to sit here and listen.”
I pulled my lips into a flat line to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
“So here is the short version,” he said.
“The people I trusted turned on me. I was struck down from behind. When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting on this stone floor with iron on my wrists.”
He stopped talking and stared at me.
I could tell he was skipping parts.
He left out big pieces of the story, not because he forgot them, but because opening those old memories brought real pain to his chest.
As I looked at his face, the old stories my father told me around the fire when I was a little girl began to fit together in my head like pieces of a puzzle.
I remembered sitting on the floor in our old house, listening to my father talk about the ancient wars.
I used to hate those long history lessons.
I hated hearing about old kings, dead soldiers, border lines, and ancient rituals.
I always wanted to go outside and play in the green grass instead of listening to dry facts.
There was one story my father told me that stuck in my head.
It was the story of the man who built La Fita.
Everyone in our territory believed the founder died in a great battle in a place called Olio.
My father told me that the founder fell on the field, surrounded by enemies, and his body was left to rot.
According to the old storytellers, something impossible happened after the battle ended.
The founder opened his eyes again.
His powers woke up to a level no normal wolf had ever seen.
He possessed strength that could crush stone with bare fingers.
Some of the survivors called him a god, but he refused the title every time.
He told them he was just a man who refused to stay dead in the ground.
He walked through the destroyed village of Olio, searching through the burnt wooden houses for anyone left alive.
He found only one person.
A young wolf boy, bleeding and hiding under a pile of broken wall boards.
The founder picked up the young wolf, put him on his shoulder, and walked away from the ruined land.
They traveled together for more than fifty years, moving from one territory to another, sleeping in caves and eating wild deer.
They finally arrived at La Fita.
Back then, La Fita was not a grand city with high stone walls and rich pack houses.
It was a messy camp filled with weak refugees, scared women, and children hiding from slave hunters.
Renegede raided the camp every week, taking wolves away in chains or killing them for sport.