The Split Wolf
1526 Words
Caspian POV
Two days had passed since I found out Adonis was bedridden, and I’d already learned the hard way that white magic had its limits.
When he collapsed again, it was far worse than before. His legs were literally drying up like leaves under the scorching sun; he didn’t look like the Alpha who ascended the throne of the BlackFang Pack; he was nothing more than a vegetable now.
“Damn it, Caspian, do something!” Eris screamed in my face. “He’s your Alpha, for God's sake!”
“The same Alpha who tried to end my life?” I snapped. “The one who worked me like a slave?”
That shut her up. She looked away, unable to meet my eyes.
I would have used this opportunity to run away and hide, but something in me needed to get to the root of all this. I had to figure out what went wrong with Thalia’s wolf inside him. And the truth was, I couldn't just abandon him to die.
They had pulled me out of the prison room and put me on the same floor as Adonis so I could be closer to him in case of emergencies. I had run to his room in the middle of the night more than six times, trying to keep him stable.
It was starting to get exhausting.
“Don't you think it's time to involve the seers?” I pressed Eris. “This is beyond me. If we don’t look into dark magic now, we’re going to lose him.”
Eris shook her head sharply. “No one outside this room can know his condition is worsening. If word gets out, the pack falls apart.” She stepped closer, her eyes flashing. “And if he dies, Caspian? I'll personally hang your head from the rafters of the training grounds.”
As I stared at Adonis' slowly decomposing body, my mind flew to Thalia, wondering where she could be. Every troop sent out by Adonis had come back unsuccessfully after the first set didn’t come back at all, and every time I heard the news, I lost faith in her return.
“Tap into dark magic then…” Eris’ voice dragged me out of my trance.
I looked at her like she had just spat out shredded glass from her stomach. It would have been better if she had done so, rather than saying such stupid words.
“I will not inch myself closer to death for someone who is already in it.” I spat at her.
“You think I don’t know you perform dark magic here and there.” She smiled in a way that made my skin crawl. “I just didn’t say anything because I knew it’d come in handy one day.”
I stared at her, wondering how a sweet soul like Thalia got mixed up with a devil like her.
“I don’t care what you have to do,” she snapped. “Just make sure he’s hale and hearty before the c**k crows tomorrow.”
Since Adonis had fallen ill, Eris had been ruling in his stead. In that short timeframe, fifteen heads had already been hung from the rafters. I had no intention of becoming the sixteenth.
I paced around Adonis's sickbed like a madman, desperately searching my mind for any scroll or spell that could save him. Then, it hit me. I remembered the forbidden grimoire I’d stolen from my old pack before my exile. It contained all kinds of dark spells and incantations—and one of them was exactly what I needed.
During one of my earlier medical checks, I had managed to swipe a piece of parchment from his desk. But to actually perform the spell, I needed something far worse: a piece of his skin.
God, I f*****g hate black magic.
Aside from the negative effect it has on the caster, it also requires very crude tools to perform.
When nightfall finally came, I closed my windows and opened the grimoire: Liber Noctis Sanguinem (“The book of night blood”).
I shivered as my hands touched the ancient, dusty pages.
After pouring a circle of salt, I laid his parchment inside it and opened the grimoire to the page of the ‘Rite of the Bleeding Moon’ spell. This spell was meant to reveal the true source of a supernatural illness or curse and provide the necessary solutions.
I exhaled slowly, bracing myself for the agonizing toll the magic was about to take on my mind.
Then I began the incantations. “Blood remembers what flesh denies and bone remembers what time forgets. Oh, veil of life, unravel to me what lay hidden under rotten flesh…”
The air in the room turned ice-cold. I could feel it instantly, the dark presence I had just invited into my chambers. The chairs rattled against the floorboards and the windows slammed violently in their frames, but I didn't dare stop. Stopping meant death.
“By moon unlit and shadow crowned, reveal the wound that can’t be seen with naked eyes. Reveal the death already lurking in the troubled soul; reveal the truth. Sanguis. Umbra. Veritas.”
Suddenly, the room went dead silent. I blinked, looking around the quiet space with my brow furrowed in confusion.
“Did it fail?” I whispered. “Did I mess up the words?”
Before I could say anything else, my eyes went completely black, and a circle of burning, crimson runes appeared before my darkened eyes.
I gasped, my lungs seizing as the visions began to pour in like a river dam. I couldn’t hold onto one complete image as everything came into my head all at once. Then the crimson symbol split into three, each spelling out one thing.
Almost immediately, the hold the magic spell had on me faded, and I fell to the ground with a loud thud, gasping for air.
I was breathing heavily like I had just run a marathon when my door burst open, and Eris stormed into the room.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, looking around fiercely. “What was all that noise? Are you seriously messing around at a time like this?”
I looked up at her, still trying to catch my breath. My eyes were still blurry, and I was still seeing images from the visions I just had.
“Eris…” I rasped out. “Order the guards… to bring you two pure omega virgins.”
I dragged myself up, my knees shaking as the room spun around me. Eris didn't move, her gaze darting from my pale face to the salt on the floor.
She narrowed her eyes, studying me with deep suspicion. “What for?”
“He isn’t sick,” I breathed, looking straight at her. “And he isn’t cursed. There is something inside him… and it’s trying to break free.”
I staggered to my desk and grabbed the glass of water on it. My right hand was still shaky, so I used my left hand as support it just to take a sip.
“And what exactly is it?” Eris demanded, stepping further into the room.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the open book. Acting on pure instinct, I used my heel to slide the grimoire safely under my bed before she saw it. I hesitated, my throat tight, wondering how she would react to the truth.
“Well… the story we all know about Thalia giving up her wolf to Adonis? It’s a lie. Or at least, it's incomplete.”
“What do you mean by that?” She frowned, her volume rising instantly.
“It means that whatever amateur magic Thalia performed…it wasn’t complete,” I said, looking her dead in the eye. “The ritual failed. She was supposed to give Adonis her whole wolf, but instead, she somehow split her wolf into two.”
Eris stared at me like a dullard, still not understanding what I just told her.
I rolled my eyes. “Eris, Thalia still has her wolf inside of her, half of it at least. And right now, the half in Adonis is trying its best to claw its way out of him to get to Thalia.”
I grabbed my magic tools, preparing to perform a temporary solution. “And if we don’t fix that right now, he’s going to die. He’s going to get rotten from the inside out, and you’re not going to like the sight of that.”
Without saying another word, Eris followed behind me, suddenly quiet like a wet dog.
I kept one vital piece of information to myself, though. There were only two reasons why the other half of Thalia’s wolf would react this violently. It was either she was… dead or that she had found a bond much stronger than the one she had with Adonis.
The mere thought made me sick to my stomach, but for my own sanity and Adonis’s life, I desperately prayed it was the latter.
- Writer
