CHAPTER4
1196 Words
Zirah's POV
I expected chains. A cage. Maybe a cold basement with iron walls and no windows.
That was what they said about the North. About Kylan Sinclair and the wolves who followed him into exile. Monsters. Savages. Beasts who had forgotten what it meant to be human.
Instead I woke up on clean sheets that smelled like pine and woodsmoke. A fire crackled somewhere nearby. The warmth wrapped around me like arms I didn't deserve.
My hands flew to my stomach before my eyes fully opened.
Still there. The tiny flutter. Faint but stubborn. Alive.
I exhaled so hard my ribs ached.
"The paste will burn soon. Try not to scratch it."
His voice came from the corner of the room. Low. Unhurried. Like a man who had nowhere else to be and nothing to prove to anyone.
I turned my head and found Kylan sitting on a wooden chair with a ceramic bowl in his hands. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows and there was greenish residue on his fingers. The same substance I could feel drying on my wounds. Cool at first. Then warm. Then starting to sting.
"What did you put on me?"
"Mountain sage and iron root. Stops infection and accelerates healing. Your cuts were deep."
I pushed myself up on the bed. Every muscle in my body protested but I forced myself upright. I needed to see him clearly. I needed to understand what I had walked into.
He was not what I expected.
The stories painted Kylan Sinclair as a feral creature. Half mad. Covered in scars and rage. A wolf who had challenged the Sinclair bloodline for the throne and lost, banished to the northern mountains where no sane wolf would follow.
But the man in front of me was calm. Controlled. His dark hair was tied back and his jaw was sharp and clean. His eyes were grey like storm clouds rolling over frozen lakes. There was red flickering at the edges of his irises. The mark of a beast wolf. A wolf whose animal side had grown stronger than the human.
That should have terrified me.
It didn't.
"Why did you bring me here, Kylan?"
He set the bowl down on the stool beside us. "Because you were dying."
"People die every day. You don't carry all of them home."
Something shifted in his expression. Not a smile. Not quite. But the corner of his mouth moved like it wanted to.
"No," he agreed. "I don't."
"Then why me?"
He leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. Hands loosely clasped. The firelight caught the scars on his knuckles and painted them gold.
"Because we have both been thrown away by people who should have protected us. And because I know what it feels like to bleed on the ground while the ones who made you bleed sleep comfortably in warm beds."
I swallowed hard. My throat was raw from screaming and crying and swallowing rain.
"You watched it happen. You saw what Lucien did."
"I have eyes inside that estate. I have had them for years."
"Surveillance stones?"
He nodded once.
Of course. He was supposed to be Alpha before the exile. He would have had access to everything. And clearly he had found ways to keep that access even from the outside.
"So what do you want from me? Because nobody saves a broken omega out of kindness. Not in this world."
He stood. The chair creaked under the release of his weight and he crossed the room until he was standing in front of me. Close enough that I could smell cedar and iron and something wild that didn't have a name.
"I need a Luna," he said simply.
"You need a Luna or you need a weapon against your nephew?"
His eyes held mine. Steady. Patient. Not offended.
"Both."
The honesty stunned me. I had expected a lie. A pretty speech about nobility and compassion. Instead he handed me the truth like a blade, handle first.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I will heal you. Feed you. And let you walk out of here whenever you are strong enough. No chains. No debt. No conditions."
"You swear that?"
"I will do more than swear it."
He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small blade. Before I could react, he drew it across his own palm. Blood pooled dark and rich against his skin.
"I will bind the oath in blood. To you and to your unborn child. That no harm will come to either of you under my protection. That I will not touch you without your permission. That I will not use you or discard you the way he did."
My lips parted but no sound came out.
An Alpha. A blood oath. To an omega.
This didn't happen. Not in any pack. Not in any world I had ever known.
"Why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't. Not yet. Trust is earned and I haven't earned yours." He held out his bleeding hand. "But let me start."
I stared at his hand for a long time. The blood was dripping onto the stone floor. Each drop loud in the silence between us.
I thought about Lucien. About the moonstone crushed in his fist. About the rejection that had torn my wolf apart. About the rain and the mud and the white dress stained pink with my own blood.
Then I thought about the flutter in my belly. The stubborn little heartbeat that refused to stop.
I reached out and pressed my palm against his.
His blood was warm. It seeped between my fingers and something ancient stirred in the air around us. Not a bond. Not yet. But a promise that carried weight.
"If you break this oath," I whispered, "I will find a way to destroy you. Even if it kills me."
He didn't flinch. Didn't pull away.
"Smart girl," he said quietly.
Nobody had ever called me smart before.
That night, under a sky full of northern stars, Kylan Sinclair slid a ring onto my finger. A jade stone set in dark silver. Heavy and real in a way that nothing in my life had ever been.
When Lucien married me, he gave me a plastic band and told me to be grateful.
Kylan's mark went on my neck. Two sharp punctures that sent a strange warmth flooding through my veins. Not the spark of a fated bond. Something different. Chosen. Deliberate.
Then a movement in my stomach made me gasp.
Kylan's hand was still resting there from the oath. He felt it too. His eyes went wide.
"Was that..."
I grabbed his wrist and pressed his palm harder against my belly. The flutter came again. Stronger this time. Insistent. Like the tiny life inside me was reaching out toward the warmth of his hand.
"Impossible," I breathed. "The baby. It just responded to your imprint."
Kylan stared at me. Then at my stomach. Then back at me.
And for the first time since I had met him, the calm in his grey eyes cracked.
Something ancient and enormous moved behind them.
Something that looked like fear.
- Writer
