The Eighth Wake
1255 Words
“You again,” Kaelin muttered, rolling over and dragging her hand across her face, breath jagged and throat raw. “Just let me sleep, damn it.”
The dream clung to her like wet linen. Seven voices, seven faces, seven names each one whispering her worth before walking away. The faces blended now. She couldn’t always tell who said what anymore. Only that they all left.
“You deserve better than me.”
“I’m not ready for this kind of bond.”
“You’re too strong.”
“You scare me.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t feel it the way you do.”
Seven bonds. Seven rejections.
Kaelin sat upright on the stone platform she called a bed. Her spine cracked into place like an old door swinging open. The Arizona night leaked cold through the cave’s open mouth. She reached for the water flask, drank, then spat.
Flat. Warm. Better than memory.
Her eyes flicked toward the mirror shard wedged between stones on the opposite wall. It showed only slivers of her face bronze skin glistening with sweat, gold-burnished eyes still narrowed from the weight of the nightmare. Her braid had come undone. A scar peeked from beneath her collarbone, a thin white trace of rejection number four. He’d broken her ribs when he tried to run.
She’d never made that mistake again.
The dream hadn’t changed in months. It never gave her peace. Never gave her anything useful. Just ghosted promises and the sick pulse of a bond that never lasted.
Kaelin rose and grabbed her leathers from the hook by the wall. Her fingers moved fast, tugging and snapping buckles into place. She hadn’t worn anything soft in three years. Armor. That was what she wore now. Even to sleep.
Her weapons hung beside the door, still polished from yesterday’s sandstorm. Two blades at the hips, a dagger in her boot, another in the back of her belt.
She paused, fingers grazing the blade handles.
“You’re not real,” she told the dream. “And if you were, I’d cut you down before you spoke.”
No reply. Just the wind.
Kaelin stepped outside.
The canyon wind bit her face. Her boots crunched over the rim of stone and sand. Below her, the sleeping desert spread in all directions endless, burning, brutal. No roads. No wolves. No gods.
She liked it that way.
“Again,” she hissed, pivoting sharply on one foot and twisting her hips into the blade strike. “Faster. No mercy.”
Her blade arced through the air, slicing at nothing but ghosts. Sweat slicked her back. Her chest rose and fell with quiet rhythm.
“Block. Turn. Cut deep,” she muttered. “Don’t let them speak. Don’t let them lie to you.”
Her boot scuffed against the training rock, and she lunged forward, blade angled for a throat that wasn’t there. The air parted clean. Her muscles screamed. She welcomed the burn.
“You can’t leave me,” she growled, pretending to parry. “You don’t get to take the bond and spit it out like wine.”
She spun, slashing the air to her left. A single strand of hair snapped free and floated to the sand.
“Keep it together, Kael,” she said to herself. “You’re better alone. You always were.”
Her feet dug into the packed earth of her makeshift training yard a clearing of sunbaked stone behind the cave. The moon hadn’t yet faded. The first edge of dawn light crept low across the canyon wall.
She dropped low into a crouch and launched into a backflip, blades still out.
A voice stirred in her head. Soft. Disappointed.
You were made to lead.
“Not anymore.”
You were meant to protect.
“They never stayed.”
She struck again. The dummy she’d crafted from iron scraps and sandbags buckled under her blade.
“Useless,” she hissed. “Too slow. Too soft. They all said it.”
She kicked the stand. It collapsed.
Kaelin dropped her blades and doubled over, breathing hard. Her lungs hurt. Her knees stung. She was alone.
The wind shifted.
Scent.
Male. Unfamiliar. Approaching.
She straightened, turned, and reached for her boot dagger in one fluid movement. A rider crested the far ridge lone horse, small figure.
Too young for a threat. Probably a runner.
Still worth aiming for the throat if he flinched.
“Don’t come closer,” she called. Her voice echoed.
The rider hesitated. “I bring word. Official court message.”
“Don’t care.”
“It concerns your bond.”
Kaelin’s jaw clenched. She moved forward slowly, hand still on her blade. “Which one?”
“Malric Vale,” the rider answered.
Her hand didn’t move.
He dismounted, holding out a scroll with trembling fingers. “He’s… he’s announced a Luna. Publicly.”
Kaelin took the scroll without a word. Broke the seal. Read.
She stared at the signature.
The court of Frostlands, blessed union, divine match, sacred joining.
Sacred. Right.
She folded the scroll into quarters, calmly. “Tell him congratulations.”
The rider nodded.
“Then tell him I’ll have his throat if he uses my name again.”
His eyes widened. “I yes. Understood.”
“Now get off my mountain.”
He turned. Mounted. Rode fast.
Kaelin walked to the fire pit and tossed the scroll in. Watched it burn. White ash against black rock.
“Seven,” she whispered. “Still counting.”
Her blades hissed as she pulled them from the sand. She didn’t stop moving for another hour.
“She’s the one.”
The words hung in the temple like incense.
Thorne Alaric stood barefoot in the sanctum, moonlight falling across his bare shoulders. The firelight curved along the muscles of his back as he faced the altar, alone.
“She has been marked seven times,” the High Priestess said behind him. “The Eighth Bond has never survived in any of our records.”
“I saw her,” he said. “In the sand. On her knees. Blood on her hands. Fire in her eyes.”
“Prophecy is not love.”
“She’s not prophecy. She’s mine.”
The fire at the altar roared higher.
The Priestess stepped back. “If you claim her, the court will rise against it. You know that.”
Thorne turned.
Steel eyes. Raven hair. A face too still for his age.
“I am the court,” he said.
He walked out.
“Send a rider to the Crescent Wastes,” he ordered.
General Varek frowned. “That’s outlaw territory.”
“She’s there.”
“You’re certain?”
Thorne gave him a look.
The general nodded. “What if she refuses?”
“She won’t.”
“And if she does?”
“She can do it in my presence,” Thorne said. “Not from the dust.”
Kaelin felt it before the sun rose.
The bond.
It lit her spine on fire. Her back arched. Her hands gripped the cave wall as the air thinned around her.
“No,” she whispered, sinking to her knees. “Not again.”
Her wolf howled inside her chest.
She saw him. Just a flash. Eyes like winter, face like stone, voice like the storm.
“No!”
But the bond was already burning.
Already sealed.
And this time something was different.
It didn’t fade.
It held.
- Writer
