Chapter 6
865 Words
Lucien
The red didn’t fade.
Long after Rhea pulled away, after her pulse steadied and the runes dimmed, that single line of light beneath the stone remained. Neither glowing nor pulsing
Just there like a wound that hasn't decided if it wanted to close.
Lucien didn’t speak. He stared at it longer than he meant to, the air had gone still again but not quiet.
He stood still above it.
The silence wasn’t peace.
Rhea stood behind him, her breath faint and uneven.
She hadn't spoken again, there was no need to
Rhea said nothing as he turned to her.
She didn’t meet his eyes but she didn’t lower her head either.
Her fingers twitched slightly at her sides, like something inside her still remembered the pull.
He reached for her wrist, hesitating just before contact.
Then carefully
“Come on.”
He didn’t remember the walk back.
Only the way her presence hovered behind him. Too quiet to ignore, too heavy to dismiss.
When they passed the guards, no one spoke.
Some of them tried not to look.
Most of them failed.
Reid was waiting at the stairwell but didn’t step in. He simply watched them pass, something unreadable behind his narrowed eyes.
Lucien didn’t stop.
He left her at the upper chamber.
No words.
No questions.
Not yet.
When the door shut between them, he exhaled for the first time since the runes turned red but it didn’t help.
He returned to the chamber alone.
He told no one.
He didn’t need an audience.
What he needed was space and answers
The circle of stone hadn’t shifted. The markings remained dull, cold and unbothered.
All except the red rune.
It wasn’t pulsing now but it wasn’t dormant either.
He stepped into the circle again.
His boots touched the mark where she’d knelt.
The hum stirred faintly, so low it was almost no sound.
He crouched.
Ran two fingers along the rune’s edge.
The stone was cold but beneath it, warmth.
Like something was still breathing under the surface in recognition.
Later, he sat alone in the war archives.
The torches had gone low.
No one else dared come this deep unless summoned. The shadows clung to the ceiling like they’d lived there forever.
He cracked open the locked case.
Three seals.
One for the Blackridge front,
one for Alpha clearance,
and the third…
Vale.
He stared at that last mark longer than the others.
It pulsed faintly when his fingers brushed it.
That wasn’t protocol. A reaction shows it had waited for him.
Inside the case:
*Burnt parchment, stitched together by thread
*A metal collar tag marked EAST-L-04
*And a cracked and blurred painting
Two pale girls.
No names.
Just the stamp in the bottom corner
‘Bloodbound project – phase 3’
He flipped the photo over.
One to survive
One to forget
Lucien closed the box carefully. His jaw ached from how hard he was grinding it.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
It wasn’t fate, it was deliberate.
Someone had brought that girl into his territory.
Someone had left her alive.
That night, he stood on the fortress balcony as the wind howled down from the cliffs.
Snow drifted sideways in sheets, catching in his hair, on his coat, unmoving.
Below, the land stretched silent and dark. The world before the storm.
He didn’t speak, didn't growl, didn't even breathe deeply.
Behind him, the door opened.
He didn’t turn.
He knew her steps now.
She stopped beside him.
For a while, they said nothing.
Then..
“Did you find her?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away.
“I found both of you,” he replied
Rhea exhaled.
Her breath fogged the air between them, then disappeared into the cold.
He glanced at her while she looked at him.
And when she finally spoke again, her voice was almost too soft to hear.
“She’s not dead, Lucien.”
She didn’t say who.
She didn’t have to.
Lucien didn’t speak.
The snow fell between them, silent.
Then her hand moved.
Slowly, like it hurts to lift.
She turned her palm toward him.
A faint light traced along her skin. Thin lines, delicate, like cracks beneath glass. The rune from earlier had changed. It was on her palm, not silver or red but black.
His breath caught.
Not because of what it looked like but because he recognized it.
He had seen that same mark only once, years ago at Blackridge burned into the skin of a body that had never breathed again.
His wolf stirred in fear.
The mark was death-bound.
A rune used to seal magic that should not survive resurrection.
Lucien stepped forward, reaching for her wrist.
The mark vanished.
Gone, like it had never been there.
Her distant eyes met his and something behind them flickered.
“Rhea,” he said carefully, “who else has seen this mark?”
She blinked once.
“I don’t think it’s for you to know.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Then who is it for?”
Her mouth opened then closed again and when she finally answered, her voice was barely more than a whisper
“Whoever left me behind.”
- Writer
