Chapter 30 Exploring the pack house 1

Chapter 30: Chapter 30 Exploring the pack house 1

Talia’s POV

The hallways of the pack house were quieter in the afternoon.

I had spent the morning in my room, thinking about Elena’s words. ’Walking through fire shows who a person truly is.’ But I had already walked through fire, because I had survived fifteen years of cruelty.

So I could survive this too.

But surviving and living were not the same thing. In Cresswood, I survived. I breathed. I ate when I could, and I stayed alive. But to be honest, I did not really live. Maybe here, I could learn the difference, and maybe that was what the trials were really about.

But I could not survive by hiding in my room forever.

So I put on my shoes, straightened my dress, and walked out the door.

The torches flickered in their iron brackets, casting shadows that danced across the stone walls. The air was cool, and the smell of smoke and old stone filled my nose.

I did not know where I was going, but I just walked.

I wanted to see a different part of the pack house, not the familiar parts I always went to, so I walked in a direction I had not gone before. I turned left, and walked through a small hallway. Then I turned right, and then down a flight of stairs. I walked past the gathering hall, past the kitchen, and past rooms I had never seen before.

Wolves passed me in the hallways. Some bowed, some nodded, and some just stared.

I kept my head high and my eyes straight ahead.

The stone floors were cold beneath my feet, and the walls were lined with torches that flickered with every step I took. I could feel their eyes on me, burning into my back, and judging every movement I made.

I wondered what they saw when they looked at me. ’Did they see a weak Omega from a weak pack? A girl who did not belong? Or something worse? Did they even know my father was the Alpha of Cresswood pack?’

The words ’my father’ felt wrong in my mouth. He was Alpha in name only.

To me, he was nothing but a ghost who walked past me in the hallways, and a stranger who shared my blood, but not my pain. I did not know if the pack knew about him, and I did not care. Because he had never cared about me.

If they knew, would the way they looked at me change? Who cares anyway.

My mind was racing, but I kept walking, and I made sure I kept my shoulders straight back and my chin up. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing me crumble.

"That is her," a voice whispered behind me.

"The Alpha’s mate," another voice said.

"She is not much to look at."

I did not turn around, and I did not slow down. I just kept walking.

The whispers followed me everywhere I went. I had learned to ignore them, or at least, I had learned to pretend I did not hear.

I turned a corner and found myself in a long hallway lined with tapestries. Each one showed a different scene of wolves hunting, wolves fighting, and wolves standing beneath a full moon.

I stopped in front of one and studied it.

In it, a woman stood at the center, with her arms raised to the sky. Wolves surrounded her, with their heads bowed. The moon behind her was larger than life, glowing silver and gold.

"What is this?" I asked.

But no one answered, because I was alone.

The silence in the hallway was heavy, pressing against my ears. I walked slowly, running my fingers along the edge of the tapestries. The fabric was rough, old, and worn from years of hanging on these walls.

I wondered who had woven them, and who had decided which stories to tell and which to forget.

’History was written by the winners.’ I had heard that somewhere, maybe from Piper, because she liked to read. She said books told you who people wanted to be, not who they really were. So I wondered what these tapestries were hiding, what stories were left out, and whose face was missing.

Maybe my mother’s face was hidden in one of them, or maybe her story was written in the threads, waiting for someone to find it.

I shook my head to bring myself back to reality and I kept walking.

I continued down the hallway, and I saw more tapestries, and more scenes. There was one where a pack was gathered around a fire. Another showed a wolf shifting under a red moon. And another was of a man and a woman standing on a cliff, with their hands clasped together.

I wondered if any of them were real. If the scenes were memories or legends or warnings.

I turned another corner and found myself in a large room filled with weapons.

Swords hung on the walls. Axes leaned against the racks. Shields were stacked in corners, their surfaces scratched and dented from use.

I had never seen so many weapons in one place.

Some of the swords had names carved into the blades. I traced one with my finger. ’Ronan.’ Another said ’Elena.’ The same name as the healer. I wondered if she had fought once, and if her hands that were now steady had once held a sword.

People changed, but weapons did not. Weapons waited for their next owners.

In Cresswood, the pack house had a small armory, but it was always locked, and I was never allowed inside.

I reached out and touched the hilt of a sword.