chapter 4
1008 Words
Chapter Four: Bloodlines
Ayla didn’t sleep.
Not because she didn’t want to—but because every time she closed her eyes, she saw fire. A boy’s hand wrapped around hers. Golden eyes in the smoke. And a promise that had never been spoken aloud.
Now, that boy was a man. And the danger she thought long buried had clawed its way back into her life.
By sunrise, she sat on the rooftop of her apartment, hoodie pulled tight, a cup of coffee going cold in her hands. She had laid out the stolen documents on the concrete beside her—photographs, notes, blood results.
The phrase kept repeating in her head:
“Contact with female child…”
Her. It had to be.
She wasn’t fully human. She’d accepted that now. The things she could feel. The way her body healed. The way she had heard Riven’s heartbeat from thirty feet away in an alley.
She’d always believed she was investigating the monsters. Turns out, she might be one of them.
A knock sounded on her rooftop door.
Ayla stood quickly, gun in hand.
She opened it slowly.
Riven stood there—hood down, leather jacket dripping rain, golden eyes locking straight onto hers.
“You should stop leaving your scent everywhere,” he said. “They followed it to the hospital.”
“You were there?” she asked.
“I got there too late.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.” Riven stepped in, brushing past her. “If I had, they’d send more. I want them guessing.”
She watched him, arms crossed. “Why are you here, Riven?”
He looked around the rooftop, then back at her. “ you are in more trouble than you think.”
“ that's all you keep talking about, but you don’t want to make me understand. I am not a delicate material please explain to me.”
“You’re not fragile,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You’re changing.”
“Changing into what?”
“Something old. Something the Blackmoors thought they wiped out.”
He pulled a flask from his jacket and handed it to her. The liquid inside was thick and coppery.
“Drink.”
She hesitated.
“It’s not blood,” he muttered. “It’s wolfsbane tea. If you’re just human, you’ll vomit. If you’re what I think you are, it won’t do anything.”
“And what do you think I am?”
“Half-blood. Like me. But not like me.”
“Helpful.”
He looked serious now. “You’re descended from something older than the packs. A line that had power before the Alphas ruled. That pendant around your neck—obsidian crescent? That’s a sigil. It belonged to the Duskborn.”
Ayla’s mouth went dry.
“My mother’s,” she whispered.
“The Duskborn were healers. They weren’t supposed to fight. But when the war started, they refused to side with the Blackmoors. Cassian took that personally.”
“He killed them?”
“He hunted them.” Riven’s jaw clenched. “My pack protected the last Duskborn bloodline. We hid her.”
Ayla’s knees buckled slightly. “Me.”
“Yes.”
Everything shifted.
Her parents’ deaths. Her childhood nightmares. Her obsession with wolves and fire and unanswered questions—it wasn’t obsession.
It was instinct.
“You saved me,” she whispered. “From the fire.”
“I tried.”
“you never said anything when we met why?”
“I wasn’t sure you remembered. I wasn’t sure if you were still... you.”
She walked away from him, pacing. “So what now? The Blackmoors are hunting you. And me. And I’m—what—supposed to just join your rebellion?”
“No.” His voice was low. “I don’t want you fighting my war.”
“You think I have a choice?”
He didn’t answer.
But in his silence, she saw the truth.
She was in it now. And there was no going back.
Across town, Cassian Blackmoor crushed a silver goblet in his hand.
“So the girl is Duskborn,” he said to his enforcer.
“Yes, Alpha. She accessed the hospital archives.”
Cassian moved to the fireplace, where the fire was coming from. A blade hanging above the mantle. It had been used before. It would be used again.
“She’s the key,” he murmured. “She doesn’t even know it yet.”
“Should I send for her?”
“No,” Cassian said coldly. “We don’t hunt keys. We turn them.”
on the roof, Ayla looked into the disturb state of the atmosphere.
Riven was standing beside her,so close that she could sense the heat of his skin, .He was careful with her. Always holding back.
“You are not saying the truth ,” she said.
“No.”
“Why?”
“ I do… you are never going to trust me again.”
She turned to face him. “Try me.”
He put his hands into hisjacket and brought out a piece of clothe already burnt.
A child’s dress.
“I kept this,” he said softly. “After the fire. I swore I’d find you again. Protect you. Even if it meant hiding from you.”
Her breath hitched. She recognized it.
Her seventh birthday. The one her parents never came home from.
“You were there?”
“I carried you out. They told me you died a week later in a foster home.”
“And you believed them?”
“I had no choice. I was hunted.”
Her eyes were already filled with tears, “You are the only thing that has ever made sense to me,” she said.
He moved closer now, gently brushing a thumb along her jaw.
“we are in this together ,” he said.
And for the first time in her life, Ayla Monroe believed it.
- Writer
