The Alpha's Blood-Stained mate

Chapter 12: A Venomous Reunion

I stared at Mira and felt as though the floor had vanished beneath me. The flickering light from the lantern made her scars look like deep, dark canyons on her skin. My stomach twisted with a mixture of joy and pure terror. I wanted to reach out and touch her to make sure she was real, but the look in her blue eye told me she would kill me if I moved.

Mira was my childhood friend. We had shared secrets and played in the gardens of the Silver Moon palace. I had mourned her for five years. I had seen her face every time I closed my eyes and pictured the fire. But the woman standing before me was not the girl I remembered.

"Mira," I breathed, my voice cracking. "I thought you were gone. I looked for you in the nursery. The roof had already started to collapse and the heat was too much to breathe. I truly thought no one could have survived that."

Mira laughed, and the sound was like glass breaking in a quiet room. She stepped closer and the scent of burnt sugar and old ash clung to her clothes. "You did not look hard enough, Princess. You saw the flames and you chose yourself. You chose to run into the woods while I was pinned under a burning beam. I felt my skin melting away while I screamed your name over and over. Did you hear me, Vespera? Or were you too busy saving your own skin?"

The guilt hit me like a physical punch to the chest. I remembered that night with terrifying clarity. I remembered the roar of the fire and the way the thick smoke had blinded me. I had called out for her, but when the ceiling started to cave in, I had panicked. I had been a child and I had run.

"I am so sorry," I whispered. Tears began to blur my vision and I did not try to stop them. "If I had known you were alive, I would have come back. I never would have left you to the flames. I have lived with the weight of your death every single day."

Mira leaned down until our faces were only inches apart. Her scarred skin was tight and shiny under the lantern light. "You did not leave me to the flames. You left me for the dead. But the Coven found me. They pulled me from the ash and they rebuilt me. They gave me a new purpose because the old one was useless. They call me the Harvester now. I collect the souls and the secrets that people like you think they can bury."

"The Coven?" I asked, my voice shaking with a new kind of fear. "Mira, they are the ones who started the fire. They are the ones who destroyed our pack and killed my father. Why would you ever work for them?"

"Because they are the only ones who did not lie to me," Mira hissed. She stood up and began to pace the small silver cell like a caged animal. "Unlike your precious Alpha. Unlike Kaelen Vane."

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of his name. The mate bond pulsed weakly in my chest, a reminder of the man who had thrown me in here. "Kaelen did not know you were alive. He told me he was trying to stop the Coven."

"Kaelen knows everything," Mira said. She turned to look at me with a cruel, lopsided smile. "Did he tell you how he really got his throne, Vespera? Did he tell you about the deal he made five years ago to become the Butcher?"

I shook my head. I did not want to hear this. I did not want to believe a single word coming out of her mouth, but the silver-fever was making it hard to think straight.

"He did not just kill your father to stop a ritual," Mira said. Her voice was full of poison. "He killed your father because the Coven offered him a trade. They wanted the Silver Moon pack out of the way. They wanted a puppet in the North who would do their bidding. Kaelen traded your father's head and your very life for that crown. He was supposed to hand you over to us five years ago, but you disappeared into the woods. He has been looking for you ever since, not to save you, but to fulfill his contract."

"No," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "He has my father's ring. He told me he wanted to protect me."

"He has the ring because it is a trophy of his victory," Mira mocked. "He only wanted you back so he could finish the deal. He needs to hand you over to the Coven so he can keep his power and his lands. Why do you think you are in this silver cell? Why do you think he has not come to save you? He is upstairs right now, celebrating with Silas while you rot."

The words felt like they were true because they explained my reality. They explained why he was so cold in the Great Hall. They explained why I was chained in the dark while the silver poisoned my blood. The mate bond felt like it was dying, replaced by a cold and empty hole in my chest. I felt foolish for ever thinking a man like Kaelen could love me.

Mira reached into the small iron brazier she had brought into the cell. She pulled out a silver branding iron. The tip was glowing with a pale and ghostly blue light. The symbol of the serpent and the shattered moon was etched into the metal. It looked sharp and hungry.

"Kaelen is waiting for the news," Mira whispered. She stepped toward me and I backed up until I hit the cold, silver-lined wall. There was nowhere left to run. The silver in the stones made my back sting, but it was nothing compared to the fear of the iron in her hand. "He said it is time you were officially marked as Coven property. He does not want a mate, Vespera. He wants a slave who cannot talk. He wants to make sure you never tell the Council the truth about his deal."

I looked at the glowing iron. I looked at the face of my oldest friend and realized the fire had not just burnt Mira's skin. It had burnt away everything good in her. She was a weapon now, and she was aimed directly at me.

"Please, Mira," I begged. "Don't do this. We were sisters."

Mira did not hesitate. She grabbed my shoulder with a grip that felt like a metal claw. She leaned in close to my ear and her breath was hot against my skin.

"This is for the nursery," she whispered.

She pressed the glowing silver iron toward my bare shoulder. She aimed it right over the spot where Kaelen’s old scar was. I screamed as the silver touched my skin and the smell of burning flesh filled the tiny cell. The pain was an explosion of white light that took me over completely. As I spiraled into the darkness, the last thing I felt was the crushing weight of Kaelen's betrayal.