Chasing Adrianna

The night was quiet, save for the distant howls of the wolves that roamed beyond the boundary of their once-thriving pack. The moonlight streamed through the canopy, dappling the forest floor with patches of silver light. It should have been peaceful. But it wasn't.

Adrianna, a newborn wrapped in a bloodstained blanket, cried in her mother's arms. Her tiny fists curled, but her cries went unanswered as her mother's lifeless eyes stared up at the stars. The bond between the two had been severed by death before it could ever be fully formed, and Adrianna's world was already crumbling before she even understood it.

Her father, Soren, was kneeling beside her, his hand trembling as he stroked his mate's cold face. His eyes, usually filled with the wisdom of a leader, were vacant-lost in a sea of grief and madness. His breathing was shallow, his mind somewhere far away. The bond he had once shared with her mother-the bond that had been their strength-now tore him apart. The mate bond was meant to bring them together, but it had become a poison in his veins. The emotional strain, the torment of losing his other half, was more than any wolf should bear.

"Soren... please..." her mother had whispered, her voice ragged as she fought for breath just moments before her death. "Take care of her... protect her..."

Soren's body trembled violently as he held his mate's hand one last time. But his words were hollow, the grief suffocating him from the inside. "I can't... I can't..."

And then she was gone. His heart had been ripped in two, and the shattered pieces clung to the mate bond that still pulsed weakly in his chest. It was a cruel trick of nature-the bond that had once filled him with peace and joy was now a source of madness, a wound that would never heal.

Adrianna, still so small and fragile, had been left to the cruel whims of fate. Her father's madness and grief led him to abandon his daughter as he spiraled further away from reality. He could no longer see her-the girl that was supposed to be his new hope. All he could see was the hollow space that remained where his mate once was. Adrianna was nothing but a painful reminder of the love he had lost.

The forest, vast and unyielding, became her cradle. She was left alone in the wilderness, the cries of her helpless infant self fading into the backdrop of Soren's fractured mind. He had run, abandoned her in the wild as the wolf in him fought against the gnawing ache of the mate bond's loss.

In the days that followed, her cries fell on deaf ears, carried only by the wind. And when hunger gnawed at her tiny belly, she lay in the shadows of the trees, alone.

A week passed before anyone found her.

It was a wandering pack of rogues-a small group of misfits who had long abandoned any allegiance to the pack structure. They were the outcasts, the wolves who couldn't-wouldn't-fit into the order of things. The rogue leader, a grizzled wolf named Kyros, had found her by chance. He had been tracking the scent of a deer and had come across the small bundle lying abandoned near a half-dead campfire.

The sight of the tiny girl, her tiny chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, had stirred something in him-something he couldn't quite place. He had known pain in his life, but this... this was something different. A child, abandoned by the world.

He had scooped her up in his arms, his rough, calloused hands trembling. He couldn't explain why he felt the pull to her. Maybe it was pity. Or perhaps some unspoken connection between him and the girl, abandoned just as he had been by his own kin. His mind, ever so sharp, had calculated the possibilities. A child of fated mates... The bond, the pain of it-it had to have torn them apart. And yet, here she was, living on in the aftermath.

"She's just a child," Kyros muttered to himself as he looked down at the small, fragile face staring up at him. "She won't survive out here alone."

He had taken her back to the rogues' camp, where she was given a blanket and rudimentary care. Kyros had insisted on looking after her-after all, there was no one else who would. No one else could.

The bond between father and daughter was already broken. Adrianna had inherited not just the fate of a lost child, but the callousness of a world that had already abandoned her before she even had the chance to live.

Soren never came back.

The news of her mother's death and Soren's descent into madness traveled quickly through the rogue ranks, but Adrianna's name was already forgotten. She had no place in this world anymore. She was the embodiment of tragedy, a girl raised by the winds and shadows. Her future, just like her past, was a darkened road she would have to walk alone.

She had no choice.

And so, she grew. The days blurred together. Adrianna never knew warmth, never knew comfort. The rogues were kind to her in their own strange, twisted way, but it was not the kindness of family or love. It was the indifference of those who had been broken themselves. Adrianna grew up knowing nothing but sorrow and hardship, her eyes dull with the weight of grief she could not articulate, and a heart that could not be healed.