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I’d been sent there to put down an uprising, a direct order from my father. I had marched into the ruins of the old city with a unit of trained wolves at my back, the scent of smoke and blood already thick in the air. The humans had been fighting hard, like they were desperate, cornered. They knew they were losing, but they weren’t going down without taking as many of us with them as they could.

Orders were orders. Humans were the enemy. That’s what I’d been raised to believe. That’s what had been drilled into me from the time I was old enough to understand what war was. I was there to crush the last remnants of their resistance, to remind them that wolves ruled the city now, and that they always would.

But then I had seen her.

Just a kid, filthy and half-starved, crouched behind the burned-out frame of an old car, her wide eyes locked onto me. She should have been afraid, but she just stared at me, chin jutting out, like she was ready to fight me herself if she had to.

Something about her had made my stomach twist.

She was too young to be standing on a battlefield, too small to be here among the dying and the damned. Yet, there she was, and something in me wavered.

So I did the one thing I wasn’t supposed to do.

I spared her.

When I realized there was no human left to take her, I took her with me and I left.

We were on the run for a while; her, a scared, but stubborn little shadow at my side, and me, trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with her. I had no idea how to take care of a human kid, but she had adapted quickly, never complaining, and never slowing me down. Still, I knew I couldn’t keep her for long. The wolves were already hunting me for what I’d done, so she wasn’t safe in my company.

So I had left her with a small group of human survivors hiding in the mountains. A couple of them, though fearful and wary, had agreed to take her in. She had watched me go without a word, just staring at me with those same damn defiant eyes of hers.

I had told myself it was for the best, that she would be safer without me.

But I had never stopped wondering about her.

What had become of that fierce little girl? Was she still alive? Did she hate me for leaving her behind? What did she think of me? Did she even remember me?

I closed my eyes, exhaling slowly, but the past never let me go so easily.

I remembered the way she had looked at me that last night before I left her in that mountain hideout. There had been no tears, no pleading. Just quiet understanding, like she had already known, even at eight years old, that people didn’t stick around when things got tough.

I had wanted to tell her it wasn’t like that. That I was leaving her to keep her safe. That she wasn’t just another casualty in a war she didn’t ask to be part of. That maybe, someday, I’d come back for her.

But I hadn’t.

I had just turned, walked away, and never returned.

I had told myself I was doing the right thing, that if she stayed with me, she would never have made it past childhood. That I had spared her not just once, but twice.

Yet, all these years later, I still saw her in my mind’s eye, still thought about whether she had survived. Had she made it out there in the woods, even when the wolves had started rounding up the humans like cattle? What kind of life had she been forced into?

Had she ever forgiven me?

I let out a slow breath and rubbed a hand over my face. It was a useless line of thinking. The past was the past. I couldn’t change it, and after everything, after all the blood on my hands, I didn’t deserve to know what had happened to her.

I let myself sink deeper into the mattress, willing my mind to shut down. I was exhausted and needed sleep. I closed my eyes with a loud sigh and put her out of my mind so I could rest.

For the first time in a long while, I actually fell into a deep sleep, but it didn’t last very long.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The pounding at my door yanked me out of sleep like a gunshot going off right next to my head.

With a groan, I shot upright, my heart slamming against my ribs, instincts snapping to attention before my brain could catch up. My ears strained, catching the muffled voices outside, the shuffle of movement.

Something was up.

Another round of knocking—louder this time, more insistent.