Aeryn: The Crimson Wolf

The flagstones under Aeryn’s boots still held the night’s chill deep in their cracks, as if the courtyard itself had memories of winter’s bone-white breath. She planted her feet at its center, shifting only when the ache in her left instep flared so sharply it sang through the frozen air. Before dawn, they had yanked her here—wrist cords biting into her flesh, her tunic slit ragged at the collar and stained with mud and frost. One arm dangled, heavier than the other, each bruise a bruised bruise, a tally she’d long since lost track of.

Silence settled around her like a physical weight, not empty but thrumming with something tense and sharp—as though the world held its breath before a branch finally cracks. The orphans had formed a loose ring: a few stood rigid with arms folded, shoulders squared as if braced against a gale; others slumped with rounded backs, hands hidden in sleeves, as though they might vanish into themselves if they tried hard enough. No one stepped forward. No one dared hold her gaze. Only Sera did, those dark eyes wide and unblinking at the edge of the circle.

Two guards hovered beside Aeryn, one on each side, their iron bracers glowing dull orange in the torchlight that licked the courtyard walls. The older man clutched the branding rod in one hand, its metal tip still cool. They favored the performance of waiting—crafting suspense like an audience at a cruel theatre.

Aeryn stayed motionless, trusting her bones to hold her. Then came the soft, methodical cadence of footsteps: deliberate, unhurried, the sort of stride that carved space around it. Matron’s footsteps. Even in bitter winter they never hastened.

At the first echo against stone, the children parted. They didn’t need orders; their practiced faces slid aside like curtains. Aeryn looked up to see Matron step through the arched gateway, robed in thick wool dyed the deepest black. Her veil was lowered just past her chin, as though she no longer required full concealment—her authority was cloak enough. A hush of cold followed in her wake, curling along the walls like a living thing.

Matron paused before Aeryn, inspecting the torn fabric at her shoulder blades, the flecks of dried blood at her lip, the rope sores at her wrists. She did not speak to the girl but turned to the assembled orphans.

“This is what forgetting looks like,” she said, voice quiet and precise. It carried across the courtyard like a blade slicing air.

“She struck a Beta. She defied a direct command. She claims a name that is no longer hers.” She pivoted, addressing Aeryn with measured cruelty. “Do you remember what it was, Red?”

Aeryn’s throat clenched. She did not answer.

Matron exhaled—an almost gentle hiss of amusement. “Of course you don’t. That’s the point. Names are given. Names are earned. What you stole was a lie.” She inclined her head toward the older guard. At her signal, he stepped forward, brand-iron raised. The younger guard moved behind Aeryn, hands seizing her shoulders like steel clamps, forcing her chest forward.

Her tunic was bunched between her shoulder blades, exposing pale skin to the torch glow. She stood locked in place, knees barely straight, eyes fixed on a fissure in the courtyard wall.

The iron met her flesh. The heat flared instantly—white-hot, pure agony—and bloomed along her spine like wildfire snapped in ice. Every nerve snapped awake. Her shoulders stuttered upward, legs threatening collapse. Yet no cry escaped her lips.

Matron watched her with head tipped, waiting. But Aeryn held her gaze on the crack in the wall, silent as stone.

The scent of singed flesh and scorched cloth rose, and several younger orphans winced; one stifled a gag only to be elbowed back into stillness.

“Now,” Matron said softly, “you will remember who you are.” She stepped aside, hands folded at her waist. “Take her below. Let her wear the name she’s earned.”

The guards obeyed instantly, each seizing one of Aeryn’s arms. She gave no struggle. Her vision shimmered at the edges; her legs buckled on the first step but she caught herself, grimacing, as the brand’s echo pulsed through every fiber of her back.

They herded her toward the great gate. As they passed the ring of torchlight and into the deeper shadow of pine beyond the courtyard walls, Aeryn’s head flicked sideways—an instinct. Between two dark trunks, just past the frost-dusted boundary, a figure stood motionless. Small, unarmed. Shrouded in shadow.

For a breath, she thought it might be a wolf. Then two eyes caught the torchlight: steady amber orbs, not gleaming or unnatural, simply watching.

Her pulse thudded. The figure vanished against the trunks as the guards pushed her onward.

Inside the stone corridor beneath the courtyard, every footfall echoed against damp walls that reeked of mildew and old copper. The torches here sputtered with cold blue flames; their smoke clung to the low ceiling in a choking haze. Aeryn’s boots scraped the flagstones as they turned into a narrow wing.

Her cell was second from the end: a shallow chamber with bare stone walls, a single cot bolted to the floor, an iron ring mounted at shoulder height, and a battered bucket in the corner. The guard with the key swung the door open with a clang that rattled the hinges; the other shoved her inside. She stumbled forward, grazing her shoulder on the rough wall before catching herself on the edge of the cot. Withdrawing, she lowered herself down gently—too gently to betray the agony of each movement.

The door slammed. The lock clicked. Footsteps receded. Torchlight faded. Silence settled, thick and pervasive.

Her legs were smeared with courtyard mud; her shoulder throbbed in time with her ragged breath. Blood caked in her dark hair; her lip was split and dry. She stared at the stone floor, every irregular line in the flagstones seared into her memory.

A faint rap sounded from the cell next door—soft, deliberate. Knock. Knock.

“Aeryn?” Sera’s voice, hoarse and remote through the masonry. “Can you hear me?”

Aeryn did not answer. She kept her hands clasped on her knees, willing her heartbeat to quiet until it matched the hush of unused tunnels.

“I saw you,” Sera whispered after a pause, voice cracked. “You didn’t scream. No one ever—” She broke off. “They think that name will stick, that I’ll begin calling you… something else. But I won’t. Not ever.”

Silence stretched again. Aeryn’s bones ached, her skin itched where the brand still pulsed fire beneath frost.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Sera added, softer now, like a lullaby. “Just—don’t think you’re alone down here.”

Stillness reclaimed the cell. Aeryn leaned her head against the opposite wall. The stone was rough and cold, and she did not close her eyes. She sat that way for a long while, fingers curled against the place above her heart, feeling its stubborn beat.

Eventually, Sera’s voice returned, whisper-sleep gentle: “They can take your name, but they can’t give you one.”

Then: nothing. Only the hush of her own breath.

Time passed. The corridor torches dimmed until moonlight was the lone illumination, filtering through a narrow slit high on the wall. Shadows pooled in the corners, shifting with the breath of the night.

Aeryn kept vigil on the cot, back pressed to stone, knees drawn up. The brand’s heat dulled to a steady ache, but every so often her burned flesh twitched, as though trying to unremember the iron’s kiss. She traced the cracks in the wall with her gaze—the chipped corner, the missing floorboard sliver, the rusty hinge that never fell completely away.

But that night, her thoughts didn’t linger on pain or on Matron’s hollow threat. They returned to one thing: those eyes in the forest. They’d seen more than her wounds or her defiance. They’d seen her—Aeryn, not Red, not Beta-breaker, just herself. The look had weight, a living thing that pressed against her chest even here, six feet of earth and wood below the courtyard.

A scraping at her door startled her. Not metal on stone, but something softer—organic. She rose on trembling legs and placed a hand gently against the rough wood. Past the threshold, nothing moved. No guards. No voices.

Another sound, higher up. From the slit. She turned, heart pounding. The moonlight shaft shivered. A shadow flickered across that narrow beam—like someone slipping past the light and freezing, unseen.

And then: an almost inaudible sigh of wind rattling pine needles. A presence, undeniable and silent.

Aeryn drew back from the door, waiting while the night held its breath. The moon climbed. The flicker fled. But the feeling remained: she was being watched by something that knew her beyond the name sewn to her tunic.

After what felt like a lifetime in the dark, she rose fully, legs stiff but certain. The slit above cast a pale thread of light across the floor. She crouched in it, letting the cold wash over her hands.

Then, softer than the rustle of a cloak, she spoke.

“My name is Aeryn.”

Her voice did not echo. It didn’t need to. Between the stone walls and the silent guardian beyond, the air itself seemed to drink the word in.

She sat back on the cot, fingers pressed lightly against her chest, feeling the pulse there—solid, relentless, hers. A faint scrape sounded at the wall beside her—not claws, not wood, but a presence shifting closer.

She did not look. She did not speak. Through the slit, a sudden breath of pine-scented air drifted in, carried on a wind that had slipped through solid stone. The silence did not recede; it leaned nearer, vigilant, companion to her defiance.

Aeryn closed her eyes. Something had waited. And now, in the hush of midnight, she waited back.