Prophecy – Chapter 1 – New Friends
Chapter 1
8 Years Ago
Freya, eight years old, lives on the edge of everything.
She does not remember her parents, not properly. There are no clear faces, no voices she can call to mind when she tries. Only fragments surface now and then, the sense of warmth beside her, a hand brushing gently through her hair, something soft and safe that slips away the moment she reaches for it. The elders say they died in a rogue attack, and that is all anyone ever offers.
Freya does not ask questions, but she listens. She watches. Even at her age, she understands when something is being left unsaid. Rogue attacks happen at the edges of the territory, in the places where patrols stretch thin and danger is expected. They do not happen here, not this deep within pack lands where they say her parents died, not without someone seeing or hearing something.
Whatever happened that night has been folded away, and somehow she has been folded in with it, as though she is part of something better left untouched.
So her life is built from what remains.
Scraps of food quietly passed to her by those who feel just enough pity to act, but not enough to step closer. Scraps of shelter found in forgotten corners of the pack grounds, where she curls into herself in cold, damp spaces and sleeps lightly, always aware of where she is and who might come looking.
Most of the pack barely notices her.
When they do, it is rarely kindness she sees. More often it is something guarded, a look that lingers a moment too long before turning away and, although her mind wishes to understand, children who must survive learn quickly to mind their own business and not bother the pack members.
Freya has become very good at understanding when to keep to the edges where people are less likely to care that she is there at all.
She endures, because there is nothing else to do. Even so, she is not entirely alone. she has two friends.
Her first real friend came not long after her eighth birthday, a day she had spent alone, save for a brief stop at the pack kitchen door where Darice had slipped her a small vanilla cupcake in place of a cake.
She had seen him around for as long as she could remember. He was serious for a boy his age, but easy enough with others when he chose to be, though more often he kept to himself.
They met one mild afternoon while she crouched behind the storage shed, trying to eat a crust of bread before anyone noticed she had it.
One of the older boys had seen her and knocked the bread from her hands, laughing as it hit the ground.
For a second she stayed where she was, staring at it, already knowing better than to reach for it too quickly.
A boy about her own age had been nearby, half watching, half distracted by whatever game he had been playing. At the sound, he looked up, took in what had happened, and walked over without hesitation, stopping close enough to be noticed.
“Leave her alone.”
The older boy laughed, but there was something in the way Daemon stood there that made the laughter falter. It wasn’t size or strength, he had neither, but he didn’t move, didn’t look away, didn’t give ground.
After a moment, the older boy bent to pick the bread up and handed it back, more to end the moment than anything else.
Then he and his friends drifted off, their attention already elsewhere.
Her new friend watched them go for a second, his eyes narrowed slightly, as though making sure they would keep walking. Only when they had gone far enough did he turn back.
Up close, he didn’t look much older than she did.
He grinned at her as though nothing had happened and told her his name was Daemon.
Freya brushed the dirt from the bread and held onto it, unsure what to say, but he didn’t seem to expect anything. He just stayed there, as though that was reason enough.
After that, he was simply… there.
He walked with her when he could, appeared beside her when things began to turn, and stayed close in a way that did not feel like effort. If he had to leave, it was only to go home or to the small school in the main packhouse.
Freya went there once, at first, long enough to understand how little space there was for her. The Alpha’s daughter made sure of that quickly enough, along with the others who followed her lead.
When Freya stopped going, no one apart from Daemon, came to ask why.
Instead, she waited outside.
She would linger near the edge of the building, close enough to hear the lessons through the open windows. At first she listened because there was nothing else to do, but before long she found herself following along, holding onto words and sounds, working them out slowly in her own time.
By the time the final bell rang, she already knew what Daemon would come out talking about.
He always came running.
With him beside her, things felt different. Not easier, not safe, but… less sharp. The pack did not change, but for a while she could move through it without feeling quite so alone.
Liam had always been around as well.
He was older by a couple of years, quieter in a different way, and more aware of what was happening even when nothing was said. He had been Daemon’s friend first, but he never questioned why Freya was there or whether she should be.
He shared what he had without making anything of it, stayed close enough that trouble rarely had time to settle, and when things did turn, he stepped in without drawing attention to himself.
If Daemon stood beside her, quick to react and quicker to speak, Liam was usually a step ahead, watching, already aware of what might happen next. Most days, the three of them drift towards the forest’s edge, where the pack lands give way to trees and the rules feel less rigid. It is easier there. Quieter.
“Don’t worry,” Daemon says one afternoon, stepping between her and a group of boys who have taken an interest in her again. “I’ll always protect you.”
Liam rolls his eyes, though he does not move far, his attention already fixed on the boys as though weighing them up.
Freya stays where she is, the words settling somewhere quiet inside her. Without answering she shifts slightly closer to them both.
The other boys lose interest soon after, drifting away when it becomes clear nothing will come of it.
Later, the three of them wander back towards the trees, falling into an easy silence that does not need filling.
For two years the friends are inseparable, then one afternoon Freya goes to their usual place beneath the old ash tree, expecting Daemon to already be there. He often is, either waiting or pacing, or crouched over something he has decided is important enough to inspect. Today there is only the tree and the flattened patch of grass where they usually sit.
The branches move gently above her, leaves whispering together in the light breeze. A few fall loose and drift down, turning slowly as they land.
She pauses at the edge of the clearing, looking around as though he might simply be hidden from view.
At first she assumes she is early. Daemon is often late, usually with some hurried explanation about a trail he had followed or something strange he had seen further into the forest.
So she waits.
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then lowers herself to the ground, pulling at a thread on the edge of her sleeve. The grass is still damp beneath her fingers, cool against her skin. Somewhere nearby a bird calls, sharp and sudden, before the sound fades back into the trees.
Time stretches, though she has no way to measure it.
She looks up again, expecting to see him stepping through the trees at any moment, pushing branches aside, already talking.
Nothing moves.
“Daemon?” she calls, not loudly at first, more to test the quiet than anything else.
The sound seems to disappear too quickly.
She gets to her feet, brushing her hands against her skirt, glancing once more towards the path he usually takes. Something about the clearing feels wrong now. Not empty exactly, but as though it has already been left behind.
“Daemon?” she calls again, louder this time.
There is still no answer.
The unease settles slowly, tightening somewhere in her chest. She turns and begins walking back towards the houses, quickening her pace without quite realising it. By the time she reaches the path, she is running.
“Daemon!”
His house comes into view between the others, small and familiar, but something about it makes her slow. The door is not quite closed. It shifts slightly with the movement of the air.
She hesitates for a moment, then pushes it open.
Inside, the quiet feels different.
Not the ordinary kind, where voices and movement might return at any moment, but something flatter, as though the space itself has been emptied. The table is bare. The shelves that once held small things, things she never paid much attention to, now stand clear.
She steps further in, looking from one room to the next.
There are no scattered belongings, no signs of anyone leaving in a hurry. Everything has simply… gone.
Freya moves through the house again, slower this time, as though she might have missed something the first time around. She opens a door that leads nowhere new, pauses in the middle of the main room, then turns back again, her breathing starting to come faster without her meaning it to.
“Daemon?” she says, quieter now.
The name feels different in the empty space.
Nothing answers her.
She steps back outside, the light catching her eyes for a moment after the dimness inside. The wind moves through the tall grass, bending it in slow waves that reach the edge of the yard and fall away again.
She stands there, looking at the house, trying to make sense of it.
“He’s gone.”
The voice comes from behind her, close enough to make her turn quickly.
Liam stands a few paces away. He looks as he always does, but there is something held tighter in his expression, something he is not quite managing to keep hidden.
“You knew?” she asks. The words come out sharper than she expects.
Liam shakes his head.
“No. I only heard this morning.”
She watches him, searching his face for something more, something that might explain it properly.
“Where did he go?”
Liam glances past her, towards the line of trees beyond the houses.
“They’re saying his family left in the night.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Freya says quietly, the certainty coming from habit more than belief. “They wouldn’t leave without telling us.”
Daemon’s parents had always been kind. They had fed all three of them more than once, had let her stay long after she should have gone, pretending not to notice when she lingered near the door. For a while, it had almost felt as though she belonged somewhere.
But it had never lasted.
The Alpha had made it clear early on that Freya was not to be taken in. No one said it to her directly, but she had heard it often enough in passing, in the way adults spoke when they thought children were not listening. A pack could not carry those who could not stand on their own. Favouring one weakened the whole.
It was not said with cruelty. That was what made it harder to understand.
Daemon’s mother had still slipped her extra food when she could. His father had let her sit by the fire on colder nights. But there had always been a limit, a point where kindness stopped and distance returned, as though they were careful not to cross a line they could not afford to ignore.
Freya had learned not to ask why.
Liam does not argue with her now. He stands there with his hands pushed awkwardly into his pockets, his gaze drifting briefly toward the empty house before returning to her. There is something held tight in his expression, something he cannot quite put into words.
Neither of them can make sense of it. Daemon is simply… gone. No warning. No sign that anything had changed.
The breath leaves her chest in a sharp, uneven pull, and before she can stop herself she steps forward, pressing her face against Liam’s chest.
The sobs come without warning, breaking through whatever she had been holding in place. Liam stiffens at first, caught off guard, then shifts, his arms coming around her in a way that is uncertain at the start but steadies quickly as he realises she is not pulling away.
Freya grips the front of his shirt, her fingers tightening in the rough fabric. Her tears soak through it almost immediately, warm at first, then cooling in the open air, but Liam does not move, does not try to ease her back or quiet her.
He just holds on.
There is heat in him, from running, from the sun, from simply being there, solid and real. She presses closer without thinking, her face tucked into the space beneath his collar where the fabric smells faintly of woodsmoke and grass.
“It’s alright,” he says after a moment, the words quiet, not quite certain, but steady enough.
One of his hands lifts, hesitates, then settles against the back of her head, his fingers resting awkwardly in her hair before stilling there, as though he has decided that is where they should stay.
Freya does not answer. She stays where she is, holding on, letting the weight of it come out in uneven breaths that gradually begin to slow.
Liam does not let go.
