The choice
1065 Words
Mia's POV
The air was too still after Xander’s footsteps faded.
I stood rooted where he had left me, the cold bite of his absence spreading through my chest like frost.
He hadn’t even looked back. He didn't utter any words nor signal to me, he just left.
The ache was sharp at first, then it began to settle in, spreading through me like slow poison.
Aria’s gaze flicked from me to the hooded woman at the edge of the clearing, the seer.
The woman’s stillness after what happened was unnerving, her face mostly shadow beneath the hood, but her eyes… they glinted like they knew things no one should.
Something in those eyes seemed to pull Aria forward. She didn’t say a word, didn’t look back, she just started following the seer into the shadows beyond the cave.
My hand twitched at my side, wanting to reach out, to keep her close.
But my fingers closed on nothing.
Their steps faded into the forest until the only sound was the restless rustle of leaves in the wind.
Then I heard another sound,a slow clap echoed behind me.
When I turned, my eyes met with Darius
He leaned against a tree, as though he had been there all along, watching.
His arms were crossed, his mouth tilted into a faint smirk that didn’t belong in this moment.
“Some mate you have got,” he drawled, the words dripping with mockery. “Leaves you here like yesterday’s shadow.”
My jaw tightened,my hands curled at my sides. I wanted to snap back, to say he didn’t understand,but the words were locked behind the wall that had caged my voice all my life.
He pushed away from the cave, his boots whispering over the earth as he approached.
His presence seemed to take up all the air between us.
“You think he’s coming back?” he asked, his tone soft now, but softer in the way a blade could slide between ribs without making a sound.
I shook my head, a small, uncertain movement I hated myself for.
Darius’s eyes held mine, searching every flicker of doubt. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you?
The way he pulls away, the way his eyes harden when you are near.
That is not love, that’s a man waiting for an excuse to disappear.”
I wanted to deny it, to bury the memory of the cold look in Xander’s eyes just before he turned away, but the sting of those words slipped in like they belonged, like they had been waiting for me to hear them.
Darius moved closer still, his voice dropping lower.
“You’re powerful, Mia. More than he knows, and even much more than you know.
But if you stay here, you’ll waste it on someone who will never see it.”
My breath caught.
Because under the poison of his words was something else,something I couldn’t ignore.
The whispers I had heard these past weeks. The talk of the Order, and the name that had been buried deeper than all the others.
He seemed to feel the shift in me, the way my heartbeat stumbled. His smirk deepened. “You’ve heard, haven’t you? The Order is coming after you to silence you forever,tonight.”
My chest tightened when I heard that.
Was that the reason Xander came in to look for me?
Was he sent by the other to pick and kill me?
I had those thoughts within.
I turned to Darius and signaled, “The First Silent Mate,the one in the forbidden stories. The one they said could end battles without lifting a hand, without making a sound. What happened to her?”
“You could meet her,” Darius said. “Learn what they have hidden from you since the day you were born. I can take you there and protect you. Unlike him.”
The words dug deep. I saw Xander in my mind’s eye, walking away, his back to me. I remembered the heat in his touch the night before… but it felt so far away now.
Darius extended his hand, palm up. “Choose, Mia.
Stand here, waiting for someone who will never return or come with me, and claim what’s yours.”
The cave seemed to hold its breath. My pulse roared in my ears. Slowly and hesitantly,I stepped forward.
His hand closed around mine, it was warm,I felt so safe that I was already sealing my choice.
We walked through the trees in silence, his stride steady, mine unsure.
The clearing disappeared behind us, swallowed by the dark.
Every step I took felt heavier, like I was walking deeper into something I couldn’t reverse.
A lone wolf’s howl split the air somewhere behind us. It was sharp, almost mournful.
For one single heartbeat, I wanted to believe it was for me. I didn’t let myself hope.
The sky bled into night as we reached the edge of the forest.
Beyond it, jagged cliffs rose like black teeth against the horizon, and at their base crouched a fortress of dark stone, its towers scraping the last light from the sky.
“Welcome to your new home,” Darius said. His tone wasn’t warm. It was a promise. Or a warning.
My gaze caught on movement ahead, a lone figure waiting at the fortress gates, cloaked in black.
I slowed. My fingers twitched with the urge to sign a question, but before I could, Darius’s grip tightened on my hand, a silent command to keep moving.
“You’ll see soon enough,” he murmured, guiding me forward.
As we stepped closer, the figure lifted her head.
For an instant, the air around us felt charged, humming with something ancient and dangerous.
My skin prickled, before my mind caught up.
The First Silent Mate.
Her eyes locked on mine, and in them.
She stepped forward, the air between us bending under the weight of something unspoken.
My pulse raced, my instincts screaming to move, to speak, or do something, but I couldn’t.
Darius’s hand tightened again, and his voice brushed my ear, low and certain. “Now it begins.”
The First Silent Mate’s lips parted. No sound came out, yet, something in my chest shifted, deep and dangerous, like she had placed a hand inside me and turned a key I didn’t know existed.
The gates began to open.
- Writer
