CHAPTER FOUR
1417 Words
The moon was full again this time
Kael could barely sleep.
He was on the floor of his quarters, not on the bed. The mattress on his skin now was like fire. The beast that was his wolf had been struggling around inside him ever since the ceremony, night after night he had howled. He hasn’t shifted in days, he could not. His body could not withstand it. So it clawed, burned at every effort.
The relationship was lost.
Broken.
and yet, it was not.
He felt he could still feel her.
Faint flickering like ashes at the base of some long-extinguished fire. The tether had been broken, but the imprint, the soul memory of her, would not go away.
Aria.
Damnit!, Kael’s fist struck against the cold wall, and his forehead against the stone, and his knuckles ached.
He whispered, over and over again, as though to himself, with the familiar note of a hundred too much times, I had no choice.
His wolf growled again.
Liar.
He had not said anything to anyone regarding what he saw that day, just before the bond took place.
The look of her eyes.
Fire of silver of her skin.
The mark of Selene.
She did not realize, that is what killed him most. Aria was there open, and expectant, and wonder-dazzled. No one told her that all the elders observing her had already evaluated her as dangerous as soon as the signs flared.
And he has chosen to be the one who’ll serve her emotional pain. He slammed his fists into the wall again.
His father found him like that, shirtless together with bloodied knuckles.
“Are you still torturing yourself over that nitwit? He asked
‘’kael didn’t give a response’’
You made the right choice; that’s the best way to save her.
Kael turned slowly, “Saved her?”
She’s a descendant of selene. A Lunara. A prophecy…
“If the Lunara rises, the alpha would surely die.’’
The voice of Kael was hoarse. It was a stuff everyone has been telling since I was a child. However, nobody knows the origin of such a prophesy. Not even the older ones.”
It does not matter where it came fr0m,” his father flared out. The caution is given. That girl was just a skin wrapped weapon.”
She was not even aware as to what she was! Kael broke voice. You ought to have seen her. She, she felt safe with me.”
The eyes of Alpha Thorne grew narrow. And just think I liked this? Do you think I wanted to set my son up against a girl like that just to end her?"
“You desired to get rid of her’’.
“There was something I desired. I wanted peace.’’
“By banishing an innocent girl?”
The Alpha pressed on. This is nothing to do with innocence. It is about survival. We are one of the few real blood packs in the North. When Selene comes back in line, all that is good now will be ruined. People like humans, the rogue packs, the witches. That girl is a spark that waited to inflame centuries of order.”
Kael spoke very low. Maybe it has to be burned.
He was beaten by his father.
It could be done, not difficult, but significant enough.
I have had enough of that,” said Alpha Thorne. You are not a moon-struck rebel. You are heir to me.”
Kael did not flinch. he had wiped blood out of his mouth, and he now met his father in the eye.
And because I am your heir you must begin to listen.
The silence that was between them smacked.
Then he was off, back, without another word, and on the same to walk past his father--out into the night.
He went out in the woods, far into the woods, away on to the border, away beyond the packhouses, away beyond the burden of the moon. He felt a pain in the body. His wolf strutted. Air he required. Silence.
Answers.
He had come to the rim of the ruins of the ancient temple - the flunk, as it were, of the ancestral Moonfire Hall. Torched in the Witch Wars, now a decayed to broken rock with some ivy strewn pillars. It was a place where it was not patrolled.
The elders too are scared of the happenings in that place.
Kael brought out a torch, and descended into the crypt.
The atmosphere grew different.
Cool, Dense, Still.
He went in this beaten track until he came to the library chamber. There was dust all over. Shelves were lying in themselves, and yet one of them remained full, there was a sign on the wall.
A moon was divided into two. Half wolf. Half flame.
Selene’s crest.
Kael hesitated.
then he lifted his hand and laid his palm flat against the mark.
The wall shone.
And opened.
When you got behind it, it led into a sort of secret room--smaller, round and covered with obsidian. There was only one pedestal which was in the middle of the room, and on which was an old scroll wrapped in silver bindings.
Kael took it off gradually.
When he unfolded it, his heart was beating fast.
The prediction existed. Older than parchment. Emboldened in blood marks and witch-runes.
The line of the first Alpha shall be lost, when the twin moons have come again, and the juices of the Lunara have flowed again beneath them. World from turning will be kept by nothing except for death or surrendering.”
“When the Lunara’s blood rises anew beneath the twin moons, the line of the first Alpha shall fall. Only death or surrender shall keep the world from turning.”
But beneath it, another verse, one that is never shared.
But should the destiny of the union be refused, The curse will rise in silence. The wolf will die. It will scream upon the moon. And the heir shall be devoured from within.”
Kael gasped.
It was not a warning alone.
It was optional.
He stepped out into night with his heart pounding.
He had refused the relationship.
Now his wolf did suffer.
The ghost pains. The impossibility to shunt. The dreams.
It was never self-reproach.
It was the curse.
and an exclamation of pain, of powerlessness, tore out of his chest ere it could be stayed a howl.
His frame broke.
He fancied, for a moment, that he saw there in the mist Aria, with eyes that were silver, and her smile sad at the lip.
Then she was away.
In the war room back at the Alpha keep and looking at the carved map of the Northern Territories, Thorne stood appraising himself.
There is a knock at the door.
Come in, he said.
It was elder Brynn.
The elder said, she disappeared beyond the veil. The Wild Wood snatched her.
Thorne said dejectedly, and he breathed deeply. then she need not be our business.
His eyes however were still glued on the map.
By reason that, at bottom, he knew...
And she would go back.
And as soon as she did, then the prophecy would not spare them.
The Wildwood in the morning was such a sight as Aria never had seen before.
The gold and emerald shafts of the sunlight sifted down through the stout branches, and patterned on the mossy ground. the air was sweet with rain that had not fallen, and up somewhere above the clouds the birds sang songs not heard in the common world.
It was a living breathing forest that whispered.
And this time Aria was not afraid of it.
She was frightened of what was belike she was carrying in her belly.
Maelis occupied a ledge which was the extremity of a ridge, and her cloak was flapping behind her, like shadow-wings. Since Aria had this vision two nights ago she had talked little. She had fallen apart mentally with her mind thinking nothing except of questions, guilt and a cold, brewing ache.
However, now she was prepared to receive answers.
and Aria repeated, You said she was my ancestor. “Selene. but thou never told me who she was.”
Maelis glanced her radiant violet eyes to her. It is high time then you knew.
She took her staff up, and the forest smote again.
Blown by the wind they were followed round. The trees bent over.
And this tale started.
- Writer
