BLOOD OF THE FORGOTTEN

Chapter Six: Family’s Betrayal

The silence after the voice faded was even more unsettling than the voice itself.

Selene was curled up against the wall, her chest rising and falling heavily, the tiny splinters from the window frame still stinging her fingertips. She felt both empty and raw, as if her skin had been peeled back to reveal the vulnerable pulse beneath.

The floor creaked again, soft and deliberate. Her mother’s footsteps.

Selene tensed.

“Elara,” she breathed, not daring to utter “mother.” Her throat was still raw from the fever, but she managed to push the word out. “I know you’re there.”

The footsteps stopped outside her door.

A long pause followed, then a voice flat, clipped, as sharp as broken glass. “Get dressed. We need to talk.”

Before Selene could respond, the door swung open. Elara Veyra entered, bathed in the pale morning light. Her posture was rigid, her chin lifted, long dark hair pulled into a severe braid that somehow made her look younger but colder.

Her gaze swept over Selene’s disheveled hair, the gleam of sweat, the wound faintly glowing on her shoulder. Her mouth tightened, not with concern, but condemnation.

“You shouldn’t have gone into the forest.”

Selene let out a humorless, sharp laugh. “You think I wanted this?” She tugged at her nightdress collar, exposing the raw bite mark. “Do you think I asked to be torn apart by a wolf?”

Elara’s expression remained unchanged. She closed the door quietly behind her and moved across the room. For once, she didn’t keep her distance. She perched on the edge of Selene’s bed, though her body was as taut as a drawn bowstring.

“You need to understand,” Elara said softly. “This was always going to happen.”

Selene stared, her heart pounding once, hard. “What do you mean, always?”

Elara’s hands tightened in her lap, nails digging into her palms, but she seemed not to notice.

“You’re different, Selene. You always have been.”

Selene’s throat went dry. “Because I’m nothing. Because you made me nothing.”

For the first time, something flickered in her mother’s eyes. Guilt. Pain. Regret. But it vanished as swiftly as it appeared.

“No,” Elara said. “Because you are blood of the Forgotten.”

The words dropped like stones in the silence.

Selene flinched as if struck. The name, the Forgotten, wasn’t spoken in Blackthorn. It was cursed, a shadow everyone carried but none dared to name. She’d heard it only once before, in whispers from children daring each other to tempt fate.

But her mother spoke it plainly, eyes unblinking.

Selene shook her head. “No. No, that’s impossible. They’re dead. All of them. Burned, slaughtered”

“They were,” Elara interrupted, her voice tense. “But their blood survived. In you.”

Selene’s stomach churned. She wanted to deny it, to scream that her mother was lying, but the fever coursing through her veins, the voice in her mind, it all clicked into place with chilling certainty.

“You knew,” Selene whispered. “All this time, you knew what I was.”

Elara’s silence was enough.

Selene’s hands shook, fury bubbling hotly in her chest. “And what? You thought that if you ignored me, I would just vanish? That if you treated me like a ghost, I’d stop existing?”

Her mother’s jaw tightened. “I thought that if I distanced myself, I might forget what I had done.”

Selene blinked. “What… what have you done?”

Now, Elara’s hands trembled. She pressed them together as if in prayer, but her eyes were hollow. “When you were born… You were so quiet. You didn’t cry like the others. Your eyes open, staring, almost glowing. And I knew. I knew what you were.”

A chill crawled over Selene’s skin. She tried to speak, but her mother’s next words froze her blood.

“I tried to kill you.”

The room tilted. The words echoed, too loud, too clear to deny.

“You were just hours old,” Elara continued, her voice cracking. “I pressed the pillow over your face. I thought it would be quick, merciful. Better than the curse that would follow.”

Selene’s vision blurred. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Her mother’s voice sounded distant, muffled by the rush of blood in her ears.

“But your father stopped me.”

Her head snapped up. Darius. The man who had barely acknowledged her, never spoke more than a few words to her in seventeen years. The man who treated her like she didn’t exist.

“He saved me?” Her voice cracked, filled with desperate longing. “He… cared?”

Elara’s face twisted with bitterness. “No. He didn’t save you out of love. He saved you because the Seer forbade your death.”

Selene’s heart sank.

“The Seer came to him that night,” Elara whispered. “She said you must live. That your blood carried the last thread of the Forgotten, and you would be ‘the blade and the flame.’ That you would either bind the Alphas… or burn Blackthorn to the ground.”

The words seared into Selene’s mind. Blade. Flame. Bind. Burn.

Her chest ached. Her father hadn’t saved her because she was his daughter. He had saved her because some ancient crone demanded it. She had been spared not for love, but for prophecy.

Her whole life, her mother’s coldness, her father’s silence, was driven not by cruelty alone, but by fear, duty. Obedience to a fate they thought was carved in blood.

Selene staggered to her feet, moving away from the bed. “You let me live thinking I was unwanted. Hated. And all along, you were just waiting for this?”

Her mother rose too, her eyes hardening once more, as if any softness had been burned away. “I was protecting you. Protecting all of us.”

“By trying to kill me?” Selene’s voice rose in anger. “By pretending I wasn’t even alive?”

“You don’t understand”

“You're right, I don’t!” Selene shouted, tears blurring her vision, but her rage slicing through them. “I don’t understand why you never held me. Why did you never tell me you loved me? Why did you look at me like a curse instead of your child?”

Elara’s lips trembled, yet she remained silent.

Inside Selene, the wolf stirred, pleased.

They never loved you. They feared you. They still do.

Selene pressed her hands to her head, desperate to silence it, but the truth had already sunk in.

“You wanted me dead,” she whispered, voice empty. “And he only let me live because of the Seer.”

Elara stepped forward, her voice fierce. “Do you not understand, Selene? The prophecy isn’t mercy, it’s doom. If you live, Blackthorn falls. The wolf’s bite wasn’t an accident. It was destiny.”

Selene’s breath came in ragged bursts. Her heart pounded so violently she feared it might shatter her ribs

Destiny. Prophecy. Doom.

No. She wouldn’t allow herself to be chained to those words.

She stood tall, her shoulders shaking but unbroken. “I might be the blood of the Forgotten. I might be cursed. But I’m not yours to fear. Not the Seer’s. Not anyone’s.”

Her mother’s eyes widened.

The wolf purred in satisfaction. Yes. Claim it. Own it. You are power, Selene. You are a flame.

Selene shook her head, pushing back the voice, pushing back the hunger. “I won’t be your curse. I won’t be their prophecy. I’ll make my own fate.”

For the first time, Elara flinched. Her face cracked, not with anger, but with fear.

Selene felt it then, for the first time in her life. She wasn’t invisible anymore. She was terrifying.

And part of her relished it.