Chapter 14 : The Pactmakers
351 Words
Clara reached the ridge before dawn.
The pendant was gone from her neck—it had felt wrong to bring it. Too personal. Too his. She needed to be alone for this. Needed to find answers that didn’t start and end with Liam’s blood.
The hilltop shrine was older than the town, older than the chapel, older even than the legends. Built of stone and bone, it curved like a wolf’s ribcage around a ring of ash. No one tended it. No one admitted it was real.
Except the woman who waited there.
She wore red.
Not a cloak—robes. Stitched with antlers, feathers, and a dozen different languages. Her hair was gray, eyes like coal dust, and her voice, when it came, was smooth as oil.
“You lit the flares.”
Clara nodded.
“You burned the wolf.”
“Yes.”
“You summoned the pack and the people, both.”
Clara stiffened. “Was that a mistake?”
The woman smiled, sharp and slow. “That was power.”
---
Clara stepped forward. “Who are you?”
“I am the memory of balance,” the woman said. “One of the last Pactmakers.”
Clara’s mouth went dry. She’d read the word only once—scribbled in the margins of the ledger, half-erased.
The Pactmakers weren’t a myth.
They were the ones who brokered peace between humans and the old blood. Kept the monsters hidden and the hunters leashed.
“You knew about Varrick?” Clara asked.
“I knew before Varrick.” The woman knelt beside the ashes, dragging her finger through the soot. “There is always one who breaks the order. A wolf who feeds on chaos.”
She looked up. “But this time, there is also you.”
---
Clara hesitated. “What am I?”
“Something new,” the Pactmaker said. “A bridge. A warning. A spark.”
Behind her, the ashes stirred in the wind.
“The First Wolf is waking,” the woman whispered. “And your Liam is standing at the gate.”
- Writer
