The Bondmaker's curse

Chapter 15: Proof

I didn’t return to the healer’s den that night.

Instead, I stayed at the forge after the fires had died down, the scent of soot and tempered metal clinging to my clothes. It was quiet—no clatter of hammers, no voices, no breath but my own. I sat where the light from the embers barely reached and turned the carved piece over in my hands again and again.

My mark.

My memory.

It didn’t feel like a claim. Not yet. But it was something made by my hands and left in their world—a piece of the in-between I was always straddling. It wouldn’t matter to the elders. It wouldn’t change the questions the pack whispered in the shadows. But it was mine. And for now, that was enough.

In the morning, things changed.

The enforcer arrived.

She didn’t enter with ceremony. No drumbeat, no herald. Just the unmistakable sound of boots across frost-hardened dirt and the weight of silence that followed her like a second shadow. Her name was Mairead, and I remembered it from whispers—Cathal’s peer, once, before she’d chosen a different path. She was broad-shouldered, blunt-faced, and moved with the kind of stillness that only came from a long, brutal history of survival. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes found mine like she’d known I’d be there before anyone else did.

“You,” she said, voice low and cool. “You’re the one making the pack nervous.”

I didn’t answer. Just stood.

Cathal appeared then, stepping from the barracks with a practiced calm, but I caught the flicker of tension in his stance.

“Mairead,” he said. “You weren’t expected.”

“I go where I’m needed,” she replied. “And your guest”—she looked at me again, this time with deliberate calculation—“has stirred too much water to stay still any longer.”

The courtyard stilled. Neasa came to stand at my side, not close, but near enough to draw a line in the dirt.

“What are you here for?” she asked.

“A challenge,” Mairead said. Her voice carried, steady and sharp. “Old ways. Old law. If he’s to walk among us as one of ours, then let him face me. Let the blood decide.”

Cathal didn’t flinch. But his jaw tightened. “You know what you’re invoking.”

“I do.” Her gaze didn’t move from mine. “And so does he.”

I didn’t break eye contact. My heart was a cold stone in my chest, but I nodded once.

“I’ll face you.”

No one spoke.

Somewhere, a crow called once and then fell silent.

The forge fires would be stoked again that night. Not for ceremony.

For proof.

“I’ll face you,” I said.

And just like that, the ground shifted.

Not under my feet, not in any tangible way. But in the eyes of the pack, in the silence that stretched thin like wire, in the way even Cathal looked at me—not with pity or hesitation, but with something sharper. Measured. Real.

Mairead gave a curt nod. “Dawn. The north circle.”

Then she turned and walked away without another word.

The courtyard broke apart after that. Not in noise, but in energy. Like wolves clearing out before a storm.

Cathal didn’t say anything at first. He just stood there, staring at the space Mairead had left behind. Then he turned to me, jaw set, and gestured toward the training ring.

“Now,” he said. “We don’t have long.”

Cathal was not gentle.

The moment we reached the ring, he shed his outer coat and tossed me a sparring blade. “You won’t beat her with strength,” he said, circling. “She’s faster. She’s heavier. She’s older. She’s killed more wolves than you’ve had meals in this den.”

“Then why even try?”

“Because it’s not about beating her,” he said. “It’s about surviving her. Holding your ground. Making her bleed just enough that the pack sees you as one of their own.”

I gritted my teeth. “So it’s theater.”

Cathal lunged without warning. The flat of his blade slammed against my ribs and knocked the breath from me.

“No,” he said calmly. “It’s law.”

We trained until the sky darkened.

He pushed me hard—relentless footwork, guard drills, how to fall without losing control, how to strike low and roll away before a finishing blow landed. He taught me how to make it look like I wasn’t losing even when I was, how to buy seconds, how to breathe through pain.

“You won’t win,” he told me again, over and over. “So stop thinking like a hero. Think like a survivor. You’ve done it before.”

Every time I hesitated, he punished it. Every time I backed down, he pressed harder. He didn’t treat me like I was fragile.

He treated me like I was one of his own.

Neasa joined us as the last light bled out of the sky. She tossed me a waterskin and leaned against the fence.

“You move too upright,” she said. “She’s going to use that. Sweep your legs out and gut you while you’re still trying to look proud.”

I took a breath. “You have a way of inspiring confidence.”

She smirked. “I’ve seen Mairead fight. I was ten when she broke my cousin’s collarbone during a challenge. She fights like a landslide. You don’t block it—you slip through the cracks.”

She joined the ring. Took a blade. Showed me.

Neasa fought differently than Cathal. She was fast, coiled, unpredictable. Where he was a wall, she was a trap. A sudden hook of the heel, a sharp jab to the elbow, a cut of motion meant to off-balance and unmake.

She knocked me down more times than I could count. But each time, she held out a hand to pull me back up.

Cathal watched. Said nothing. But I saw the approval in his eyes.

We trained until I could barely breathe.

Until my muscles shook and my palms bled.

Until I moved without thinking.

By midnight, we rested by the outer fire pits. Neasa wrapped a cloth around my knuckles. Cathal sat beside me, sharpening one of the training blades in slow, measured strokes.

Neither of them spoke of fear. Of doubt.

Only of what needed to be done.

And for the first time since this pack had dragged me out of my own blood, I felt something like readiness settle in my bones. Not courage. Not conviction.

Just the sense that I wouldn’t face this alone.

Cathal set the blade down.

“She’ll try to humiliate you,” he said. “Make an example. But remember, the pack’s not looking for perfect. They’re looking for proof. That you can bleed and still rise. That you’re willing to stay standing even when no one expects you to.”

Neasa met my eyes. Her voice softened, just slightly. “You make her work for it, Silas. Even if you lose—make her earn every step.”

I nodded. My throat was dry.

Tomorrow, I would face the enforcer of the old law.

And tonight, I was no longer unprepared.