The Crimson Oath

Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Rejected and Marked

POV: Seraphina Vale.

The wall of silence was broken with laughter. I heard the mocking whispers. The gasps. The disbelief.

"No," I whispered. My legs shook. My chest caved in. Something inside me cracked wide open—Lysandra whimpering in pain, “Seraphina do something. I will die if you don’t help.”

"You don’t get to do this, Kael" I said, louder now, wild with grief and fury. "You don’t get to reject fate."

Kael turned his back to me. “I have done it already mutt.” “What makes you think I can stoop so low just to accept a thrash and call it fate.” He spat.

Then the dam burst open as I dropped to my knees, clutching my chest, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

And then—it happened.

A searing pain burned across my collarbone. I shrieked as light burst from my skin—a sigil that I had been hiding since I was young, flaming in crimson light. The symbol I had been born with, glowing for the first time since I was a baby.

The ground trembled. A wind whipped through the circle making the floating lanterns exploded in flame.

"I knew she was a witch!" someone screamed. “Don’t think you will scare me this time.”

"No," someone else breathed. "That’s not witchcraft. That’s... prophecy."

I curled into myself as the sigil carved itself into flesh with heat and magic.

And then the sky cracked open.

It felt like a strong assurance inside me that something was rising. Something ancient and alive.

My wolf, Lysandra snarling violently in my head. “Lysandra, can you at least stop,” I shrieked, holding my head. My blood. My power.

“It’s time for it to manifest.

"I didn’t cry when Kael rejected me. I bled. From my skin, from my soul, and from something I didn’t even know I carried."

When I opened my eyes, the world was too white.

Blinding sunlight filtered through thin curtains. The pungent aroma of wolfsbane, and old wood filled my nostrils. My head throbbed like a war drum, and my body ached in places I didn’t know could hurt.

"She's awake," a voice screamed.

“Where am I?” I asked, my eyes still reeling from the blinding sunlight.

“You’re at the infirmary.”

I finally caught a glimpse of the figure who probably had been watching over me all this while. It was one of the omegas.

The last thing I remembered was the ceremony. Kael. His voice. The rejection. The way the air split. The sigil—the damn glowing mark that made them all scream.

Then… darkness.

I immediately looked at my collarbone to check if the symbol was still there.

Another murmured, "Should we call the elders?"

"No. We wait for orders."

A chill crept down my spine.

They didn’t care that I’d been rejected. What they only cared about was my survival.

What is survival when fated mates aren’t together. What is survival when I can’t find happiness but rather gifted with humiliation and shame.

A nurse entered moments later, silent and stiff. She remained silent, didn’t look me in the eye. She set a tray beside my bed, filled with herbs and a cup of something steaming, “This is your medication. Make sure you take it,” she said, not waiting for any response as she walked out as though I was diseased.

I pulled the covers back. My body was bare under the medical gown, but all I could focus on was the angry red burn across my collarbone. The sigil had dimmed now, but its outline pulsed faintly under my skin—three sharp lines curling around a crescent moon.

The same one I was born with. The same one they’d tried to forget.

I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at it. Hours? Minutes? I could only move when the pain in my chest returned—not physical pain.

It was emotional. Spiritual.

By right, a rejected wolf should feel it when a bond is rejected. A clean break like a snapped string. But I didn’t.

I still felt Kael as though he sat close to me, rubbing his hands on my shoulders.

Why hadn’t it broken? I wanted this bond to be broken immediately. Not someone who calls himself a leader treating his fated mate as though….. “wait a minute; he called me trash.”

I tried reaching for my wolf, Lysandra but she remained silent. Distant. Almost… restrained.

“I know you’re searching for me, but don’t. Since you’re not finding a way to get our mate back.”

*******

That night, I couldn’t sleep, through the muffled sounds, I heard whispers.

They didn’t come from the corridor, and not also the funny sounds Lysandra always made since our mate rejected us. They didn’t belong to any nurse or patrol wolf.

They came from inside me.

She was fire and moonlight…

They bathed her in blood to keep her hidden...

Your name is not just Seraphina.

You’re divinity. The key to ancient secrets.

I clutched hard at my blanket trying to block out the noise in my head, tears stinging the corners of my eyes, "Shut up, I don’t want you. Just leave me alone,"

But it seemed as though my words were just a fuel to the fire, as the voices became louder in my head.

“NO!!” I screamed, my hands held my head when I entered something like a vision.

The snow was soft that night.

A baby was found in the woods, crying for the suckling milk of the mother, skin burning with fever, wrapped in tattered silk embroidered with gold.

A woman held the baby, eyes wide with horror as the mark shinned on the baby’s shoulder.

“She’s not from here,” the Beta had said. “That’s royal cloth.”

“But the last we could remember, no one survived the Eastern m******e,” the Elder replied.

The woman looked down at me, then up at the moon, “Then this girl is a ghost.”

Then I jerked back to myself. “Moon goddess!” I screamed, my breath running in escaping gasps.

I looked at the clock beside my bed, it was already 2am. But it was 12am when my eyes caught the clock last.

“But. But. I didn’t spend so long. The snow. A woman. An elder. The mark. Eastern m******e, and a ghost,” I murmured, my brows furrowed in calculation as sweat streamed down my face.

I always thought I was cursed.

For years, I hid my strength from the entire pack. When I was twelve, I broke a bully’s ribs with a single shove. When I was fifteen, I outran a full-shifted Beta in a sprint. And once, I healed a deep cut just by touching it.

I thought it was shameful. Freakish.

Now… I wasn't sure it wasn’t something else.

The next morning, I left. They didn’t stop me. I think they were afraid to.

What I needed was air, the swirling movements of green leaves and thick silence all to myself, which the forest always served me with. It was the one place I didn't feel like prey, even when I was.

My feet crunched over dead leaves as I walked, arms crossed tightly. The cold air cascading on my pale skin.

I sat at the usual spot I had made for myself when I heard eerie footsteps behind me.

Too heavy to be a deer. Too fast to be human. “Who’s there?” I asked, my voice laced with panic.

The reply was silence.

I spun around. “Sera isn’t here for some hide-and-seek?” “Who’s there? Show yourself.”

The reply was still the same, but this time, with the footsteps becoming louder.

I cringed, my heart throbbing hard against my chest.

A husky howl pierced through the already tensed air, when a large wolf lunged at me.

I barely had time to move before its claws sliced down my arm, blood spraying across the leaves. I hit the ground hard, gasping.

He shifted midair—landing as a man.

It was a rogue, his eyes were wild, ringed in red.

“Well. Well. Well. So it’s true.” “She is still alive,” he said hoarsely.

I scrambled backward. “Who the hell are you?!”

He stepped closer, sniffing the air when he caught sight of the mark on my collarbone—the sigil still faintly glowing.

Without hesitating, he dropped to his knees. “Forgive me,” he whispered, voice trembling. “My Queen. We were told you were long dead.”

“Who is Queen?” I asked, my hands clenched to my torn gown.