Amanda

14

The Dark Moon werewolf pack was founded for the forgotten—for those born beneath the moon goddess’s gaze yet cast aside by their own blood. Within its borders, weakness is not a crime, difference is not a curse, and survival is measured by more than speed or strength. Dark Moon does not ask what you lack. It asks only what you endure. Amanda learned early that she could not keep pace with the others. While the pack thundered through the forest like living storms, Amanda lagged behind, lungs burning, chest tightening with every breath. Where others felt freedom in the run, she felt fear—of collapsing, of choking on her own breath, of becoming a burden. Cystic fibrosis carved limits into her body, filling her lungs with a quiet, relentless resistance. No amount of willpower could force air where her body refused to let it flow. Her birth pack saw only what she couldn’t do. They whispered that the moon goddess had made a mistake. That a werewolf who could not run was already half dead. When hunts came, she was left behind. When battles loomed, she was hidden away, as if her very existence tempted fate. Eventually, she was not hidden at all—simply abandoned. Dark Moon found her on her knees in the snow, gasping beneath a silver sky. Jasmine did not ask how fast she could run. She listened to Amanda’s breathing, steadying her, grounding her. Dark Moon did not demand that Amanda become something she was not. Instead, it gave her space to become something else. Amanda learned the forest in stillness. She memorized patrol routes, read tracks others overlooked, and sensed danger long before it arrived. Where her body faltered, her mind sharpened. Where her lungs betrayed her, her resolve hardened. She does not outrun the darkness. She endures it. And under the Dark Moon, endurance is its own kind of strength.