Chapter 3: The King’s Ghost
956 Words
POV: Alpha Cassian
The air in the small clinic was suffocating. Not because it was cramped, but because of the scent.
Wildflowers and rain.
It was a scent that hadn't existed in my world for five years. Not since the night I stood on that dais and tore my own soul in half. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, trying to steady my racing heart. It’s the grief, Cassian. You’re hallucinating again.
I looked at the woman standing before me. She was draped in heavy, dark fabrics, her face obscured by a mask of enchanted lace. She moved with a lethal grace, her every gesture cold and calculated. This wasn't the shy, stuttering girl I had discarded. Elena had been soft. Elena had been breakable.
This woman
This Siphon was a blade of ice.
"Bring him in," she commanded. Her voice was distorted by the mask, humming with a vibration that made the hair on my arms stand up.
My enforcers carried Silas in. My Beta, my best friend, was gray-faced, his skin mapped with black veins that pulsed with a rhythmic, necrotic light. He groaned, a sound of pure agony that cut through me.
"On the table," the Siphon ordered.
As Silas was lowered, the woman stepped forward. She didn't use a pack doctor’s tools. She didn't call upon the Moon Goddess. Instead, she hovered her hands over Silas’s chest.
Suddenly, the room grew cold. Terribly, unnaturally cold.
I watched, mesmerized, as a dark, misty substance began to leak from Silas’s pores, drawn toward her palms like iron filings to a magnet. She was drinking the curse. She was a void, pulling the darkness out of his blood and into her own body.
"You're taking it into yourself?" I stepped forward, my Alpha instinct to protect surging to the surface. I reached out to grab her shoulder.
"Stop. It'll kill you."
"Don't. Touch. Me."
The words weren't just spoken; they were a physical shockwave. A pulse of invisible energy slammed into my chest, throwing me back two steps. My wolf, Fenris, snarled inside me, confused. We were the strongest Alpha in the triple-state area, yet this woman had just swatted us away like a fly.
"I told you the rules, Alpha," she hissed, her hands still glowing with a dull, violet light. "I am a Siphon. I don't heal. I equalize. Your Beta’s rot is simply energy. To me, it is a meal. To you, it is death. Stay in your corner."
I stood there, stunned. I watched her work for an hour, the silence of the clinic broken only by Silas’s stabilizing breath and the faint, rhythmic thumping of feet from the back room.
Thump. Thump.
Children.
She had mentioned assistants, but those were the footsteps of pups. Fenris paced in my mind, his ears pricked. Ours? the wolf whispered.
No, I snapped back. Elena died in the river. The scouts found her cloak. There was too much blood.
The thought was a dull ache that never truly went away. I had spent five years trying to convince myself I had done the right thing for the pack. Selene was a powerful Luna. She brought alliances. She brought prestige. But she had brought no heirs. My bed was cold, and my pack was fading. The "Lunar Blessing" Selene promised had turned out to be a curse of its own.
The Siphon slumped slightly, the violet glow fading from her fingertips. Silas’s skin was pale now, the black veins gone.
"He will live," she said, her voice sounding exhausted. "But he needs rest. Take him to the inn across the street. I want him out of my clinic by sunset."
"I told you I would pay any price," I said, stepping toward her again, careful this time to keep my hands visible. "Name it."
She turned, her masked gaze locking onto mine. "Leave. And never come back to Oakhaven."
"I can't do that," I said, my voice dropping. "My pack is suffering from the same rot that hit Silas. I need you at the Silver Moon. I’ll pay you ten times your rate. I’ll give you a seat at the High Table."
The woman stiffened. A low, bitter laugh escaped her. "The Silver Moon? You want me to step foot on that cursed soil?"
Before I could answer, the door to the back room creaked open.
"Mama? Is the scary man gone?"
A small boy, no older than five, peered around the doorframe. He had dark hair, messy and thick, but it was his eyes that stopped my heart.
They were silver.
Not just grey. Not light blue. They were the burning, metallic silver that only appeared in the Blackwood bloodline. The Royal Mark.
"Leo! Get back!" the Siphon yelled, her composure finally breaking as she rushed toward the child.
I was faster. I was across the room in a blur of Alpha speed, my hand catching the edge of the door before she could slam it shut.
"Who is this?" I breathed, my voice trembling. I looked down at the boy. He didn't flinch. He didn't cower. He looked up at me with a stoic, icy glare that mirrored my own.
"He is no one," the Siphon snarled, shoving herself between me and the boy. "Get out, Cassian! Get out before I burn your soul out of your body!"
I didn't hear her. I couldn't. All I could see was the boy’s face. And then, from behind him, a second pair of eyes appeared, violet, like the Siphon's power, but set in a face that was a perfect mirror of the girl I had lost.
"Elena?" I whispered, the name tasting like ash and hope on my tongue. "You're alive?"
- Writer
