Chapter 227: The Girl

Rhydor’s POV

I stood at the edge of the rushing water, my jaw clenched tightly as I stared down at the small girl.

She had actually just talked back to me. Nobody ever talked back to me.

Even the older children in the village and the younger warriors in training flinched whenever I raised my voice.

They instinctively lowered their eyes, bowed their heads, and stepped out of my path whenever I walked past.

Yet this little girl, dirty from head to toe, her face smeared with thick mud around her cheeks and her messy black hair full of stray leaves, had the nerve to stand right in front of me and laugh.

Her black hair fell loosely around her small shoulders, devoid of any lighter strands, making the dark smudges on her forehead stand out even more.

"Do you even know who I am?" I asked, my voice turning cold enough to freeze the water at our feet.

"Do you realize I could have your whole family wiped out with just a single snap of my fingers?"

She looked straight up into my eyes. She kept her small hands resting firmly on her hips, her posture completely relaxed.

She did not take a step back, and she did not blink in fear.

"Really?" she asked, a wide, gap-toothed grin spreading across her muddy face.

"And yet you cannot even skip a flat stone across the water."

A sudden wave of heat rushed up my neck and flooded my cheeks. My chest burned with sharp embarrassment.

"Shut up!" I shouted, taking an aggressive step forward.

"Stop telling me to shut up," she said, her bright voice surprisingly firm as she held her ground. "I don’t listen to you anyway. You are just a big loser."

I let out a harsh scoff, turning my head away toward the trees.

I truly could not believe what was happening. A ragged child was standing by a riverbank, treating me like an equal, or worse, like an idiot.

"Please, when you are finally done embarrassing yourself, can you just leave my spot?" she asked, waving her hand dismissively toward the riverbank. "This is my place."

I frowned, looking down at the patch of mud and flat river stones where we stood.

"Your place? You mean to tell me that you actually own this entire spot?"

"Yes," she said, nodding her head vigorously.

"Really?" I asked, my tone dripping with heavy sarcasm. "That is strange, because I do not see your name written down anywhere around here."

Her small forehead creased into a deep frown. She looked around the muddy bank for a second before her eyes landed on a long, thin stick lying near a pile of damp reeds.

She bent down, grabbed the stick, and marched right back over to where I was standing.

Crouching down in the dirt near my boots, she began pressing the sharp point of the wood into the soft earth.

She carefully drew the letter A.

Then she stopped. She stared at the dirt, her small brow furrowed as her mind clearly struggled to figure out what came next.

I stood above her with my arms crossed, watching her pause. It was painfully obvious that she had no idea how to spell her own name.

Determined to keep writing, she dragged the stick through the dirt again, pressing down hard.

She drew another A right next to the first one. After that, she scraped a squiggly, crooked line across the mud, followed by a clumsy shape that faintly resembled a capital G.

She added an R, then a shaky vertical line for an I, and finished it off with a long L.

She pushed herself up from the ground, wiping her muddy hands on her dirty skirt, and pointed the stick down at her creation with immense pride.

"Here," she said, her face beaming. "Here it is."

I looked down at the messy gibberish carved into the soft mud near my boots.

"Looking at this mess, I can already tell you are pretty dumb," I said, a smug smirk tugging at the corner of my lips.

The proud look on her face vanished, replaced by complete confusion.

"What do you mean by that?"

I pointed my finger down at the crooked letters in the dirt.

"I am guessing the very first letter A has something to do with your actual name. And this sloppy part over here was supposed to spell out the word ’girl.’"

"But you cannot even spell a simple word like ’girl’ correctly, which means you definitely do not know how to spell your own name either."

Her cheeks flushed dark beneath the dirt, her eyes flashing with sudden heat.

"I can spell my name!"

"Then go ahead and write it down properly," I challenged, folding my arms tightly across my chest.

She quickly looked away from me, staring off toward the rushing current as she tossed her stick into the tall grass.

"I do not have the strength to write anything else right now. Just leave this place. This is my spot."

"Nope," I said, grinning down at her. "I am not going anywhere."

I stepped past her, leaned over, and picked up her discarded stick from the grass.

Crouching down right next to her messy letters, I used the tip of the wood to clearly spell out my own name in smooth, bold strokes.

Once I finished writing the last letter, I dragged the stick around the whole thing, drawing a large, perfect circle to seal it in.

"This is officially my spot now," I said, standing up and dropping the stick into the dirt.

"It has my name written right on it."

She stepped closer, her wide eyes staring intently at the fresh letters carved into the earth.

Her lips moved silently as she tried her best to pronounce the word drawn inside the circle.

"Ry... Ry-d..." she mumbled, stumbling over the middle letters until she completely gave up with a frustrated sigh.

"You truly are illiterate," I said, shaking my head as I looked down at her.

She looked up at me, her eyes round with genuine confusion.

"What is that word? Does it mean that I am cool?"

I slapped the palm of my hand straight against my own forehead, letting out a loud groan.

"Do you not go to school at all?"

Her energetic posture suddenly deflated. She lowered her head, staring quietly down at her muddy boots, and slowly shook her head side to side.

"I do not have a mother or a father to take me there," she whispered, her voice sounding small and fragile for the very first time.

"Only the children who have mothers and fathers get to go to school."

I stood perfectly still, watching her. The realization hit me like a heavy weight in my chest.

She was an orphan, living all on her own without anyone to guide her or care for her.

A quiet awkwardness settled over us, the sound of the rushing stream filling the silence between us.

I did not know what to say to make up for my harsh words.

"How about we make a deal?" I asked, my voice softening as I took a half-step closer.

"You teach me how to properly skip stones across the water, and in return, I will teach you how to read and spell words."

She snapped her head up, her eyes wide with a sudden spark of hope.

"You will really do that?"

I gave her a firm nod.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked me up and down with deep suspicion.

"Are you actually being serious right now? Or are you just lying to me so I teach you how to skip stones, and then you run away and never come back?"

"Let us do it like this," I said, keeping my expression honest and steady.

"You give me just one quick lesson on how to skip stones today. Then tomorrow, I will sit down right here and teach you how to spell a full word."

She crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her messy head of black hair.

"No way. You have to teach me how to spell a word first. After that, I will show you how to skip stones."

"You look exactly like the kind of person who would learn what he wants and then run away without keeping his promise."

I let out a long breath, rolling my eyes at her stubbornness, though a tiny smile crept onto my face.

"Fine. What is your actual name? We can start by learning how to spell that."

She shook her head fast, taking a small step backward.

"I am not going to tell you my real name. You just have to teach me how to read other words."

"Why will you not just tell me your name?" I asked, completely baffled by her secrecy.

"Because I have a lot of mean bullies looking for me," she said, her small face turning dead serious.

"I do not want them finding out where I am hiding."

My brow furrowed with curiosity.

"Who are these bullies?"

"You would not understand anyway," she said, waving her small hand as if waving away the thought entirely.

"Just teach me how to spell a word like you promised."

"Fine," I sighed, walking over to a flat patch of dry dirt near the water.

"Let us start with the word ’girl.’"

I grabbed a small pebble from the ground and used its sharp edge to write out the letters one by one into the smooth dirt, carefully pronouncing each sound as I went. G-I-R-L.

She crouched down right beside me, leaning her knees into the mud as she stared at the marks.

She repeated the letters after me, her voice slow, careful, and filled with deep concentration as her little finger traced over the shapes I had carved.

The hours slipped past us without me even noticing.

I completely forgot about the harsh punishment my mother had assigned to me up the hill.

I forgot about my little brother sitting at the training grounds, and I forgot about all the heavy expectations resting on my shoulders as the future Alpha.

She was unlike anyone I had ever met in my life. She was fascinating, utterly fearless, and entirely unfiltered.

She did not bow to me; she talked back whenever she felt like it, and she treated me like a normal person instead of a powerful leader’s son.

She was the only child in the entire territory who spoke to me without a trace of fear in her voice.

When the bright sun began to dip low behind the tree line, casting long orange shadows across the rushing water, she suddenly froze and looked up at the sky.

"I have to go right now," she said quickly, scrambling up from the dirt and wiping her hands on her skirt.

"I need to get back before they notice that I am missing."

Before I could say another word, she turned around and ran off into the thick bushes, her fast footsteps fading into the distance.

I stood up, dusted the dirt from my trousers, and slowly walked back up the hill toward the main estate.

The harsh afternoon sun had already moved away from the stream, meaning my official time of punishment was long over.

Yet as I walked into the quiet halls of the pack house that night, my mind was not on my parents or my brother.

My thoughts were entirely consumed by the strange, fearless girl at the river.

I could barely sleep that night, my chest buzzing with an unfamiliar excitement as I waited for the sun to rise so I could head back down to the stream.

****

Day after day, we kept meeting at the exact same spot by the rushing water.

True to her word, she taught me how to skip flat river stones.

It proved to be far more difficult than I had originally anticipated.

I tried over and over again, throwing stone after stone straight into the riverbed, only for them to sink with heavy splashes.

But she stayed right beside me, pointing out my mistakes, fixing my arm position, and laughing whenever I failed.

When I finally threw a smooth, flat pebble that skipped once across the surface before sinking, a surge of pure triumph exploded in my chest, making me feel as though I had just conquered a whole kingdom.

During those quiet summer days, I found myself ignoring almost all of my usual daily responsibilities.

Whenever my parents ordered me to take Nicholas down to the training grounds to watch him practice, I simply walked my brother to the edge of the courtyard and patted his shoulder carelessly.

"I have something important to attend to," I said, waving my hand dismissively as I turned around.

"Just go ahead and train by yourself today."

Before he could argue or cry, I sprinted away from the estate, heading straight down the hidden dirt path toward the river stream to meet the black-haired girl.