CRESCENT BOUND

Life for a Life

Roderick's POV

​The door slammed.

​Kaelen didn't look back.

​Roderick waited until his son's heavy footsteps faded down the stone corridor until the echo of that pathetic argument died completely before he let go.

​His shoulders dropped. His jaw unclenched. The Alpha mask, that cold, iron thing he had worn for years, slipped and shattered on the floor of his office.

​He crossed to his desk. The office was dark, too large, and too quiet. The fire had died hours ago. The maps of the territory, the pack ledgers, and the kill orders are all blurred.

​His hand, a hand that had torn throat out, trembled as he picked up the frame.

​He sank into his leather chair and held it like it might break, like if he held it too tight, she would disappear again.

​Valeria.

​In the picture, she was laughing. Her head threw back. Her belly swollen round with Kaelen in the late summer. Her hair was wild from the wind on the North Ridge. She was barefoot in the grass. She was so beautiful it physically hurt to look at her. So alivso So unaware that her life would end.

​"Don't look at me like that, Val," he whispered to her, his voice raw and wrecked. "I did what I had to do. You would have done the same."

​His thumb traced her smile, her cheek.

​"I remember how cold your hands were that winter. Those useless old wol s, said you were too small. Too weak in the hips to carry an heir. That the Blackwood line, a thousand years of Alphas, would end with me because my Queen couldn't breed." He closed his eyes. "You heard them, didn't you? You cried for weeks. You wouldn't eat."

​He could still hear her voice in this empty room. Small. Broken. Give me a child, Rod. Give me anything. I'll pay any price. Don't let them take this from me.

​"So I went to them," he confessed to the picture, to the ghost in his office. "Me. Alpha Roderick Blackwood. I left my territory at midnight, and I knelt in the mud outside their circle. The Lunar Witches." His voice cracked. "I begged them. That old one, that High Priestess. She gave me a vial. Black as ink, thick as blood. She said, 'Magic always demands a price, Alpha.'"

​The silver frame creaked under his white-knuckled grip.

​"I said yes. Gods forgive me, I said yes without even asking what the price was. I thought she meant my life. I would have given it."

​He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, the picture pressed to his forehead. The scent of old paper and dust is not her scent anymore. He couldn't remember her scent any moreany more. That was the cruelest thing of all.

​"It worked. For nine months, you glowed. You were radiant. The strongest I'd ever seen. The pup kicked so hard he bruised your ribs, and you laughed. You laughed, Valeria."

​His breath hitched.

​"And then the birth. The blood. So much blood, Val. On the sheets. On my hands. On the floor." His voice dropped to a rasp. "You were screaming for me, and I couldn't do anything. The birthing specialist said the child was stuck. That the magic . . . the magic was keeping him alive inside you, but it was shutting your body down to do it. It was feeding on you. The potion kept him breathing while you bled out."

​He was shaking now. The ruthless Alpha who had ordered a g******e was shaking like a pup.

​"They tricked me. They gave me what I asked for, and they took you as payment. Life for a life. My son for my mate. That was their price all along."

​My heart didn't burn with grief. Hate. Pure, white-hot, world-burning hate.

​"So I took everything from them. I didn't even bury you before I shifted. I led the warriors myself. I burned their huts. I burned their sacred Moon Tree. I killed every last one of them: men, women and children. I watched that Priestess burn, and I thought it would bring you back. I thought if I wiped them from the earth, the pain would stop."

​A low, guttural whine echoed deep inside his chest.

​“You hurt, Roderick,” a weary, phantom voice rumbled in the back of his mind. “We both hurt.”

​Roderick’s breath hitched as his inner beast, Zephyr, stirred from the dark corners of his consciousness. It had been years since Zephyr spoke aloud since the day Valeria and her own wolf, Lyra, had been ripped from them.

​“Shut up, Zephyr,” Roderick thought bitterly, pressing his eyes shut. “Don't start.”

​“I miss her too,” Zephyr murmured, his voice heavy with an ancient, unbearable grief. “I hate this cold iron shell we've become. We let our cruelty kill the warmth inside us. They took Anika from me, too. They killed our other half, Roderick.”

​“I know,” Roderick choked out mentally, a tear finally breaking free to slide down his rough cheek. “They killed them all.”

​“I know you want us to be like this ruthless, unfeeling, an alpha of stone,” Zephyr growled softly, a deep sorrow underlying his words. “You think you are protecting the bloodline alone, but you are not the only one suffering in this silence.”

​Zephyr’s presence shifted in the mist of my mind, growing softer, echoing a memory of golden fields and bright laughter.

​“Remember what she used to tell us, Roderick, whenever the pack weight grew too heavy for our shoulders?” Zephyr whispered gently. “Val used to look at us with those bright eyes and say . . . ‘Even in the dead of winter, love is the sun that teaches the earth how to bloom again, my Alpha.’”

​The phantom weight of Zephyr faded away into the shadows of his mind, leaving Roderick alone once more in the freezing silence.

​He stood abruptly, pacing towards the window, the picture still in hand. The Blackwood territory stretched dark and endless below him.

​"Valeria..." he muttered to the empty air.

​" Love only makes us weak."

​"A curse. That witch put a curse on me with her dying breath. For years, I've waited. I've hunted. I've had trackers in every territory, killed every girl with even a flicker of Lunar blood. Because I will not let it come true. I will not let some prophecy destroy the legacy of my fathers."

​"I know I am hard on him. I treat him like a servant more than my son. I love him, Val. I see you in him each day. Lila is perfect for him. I know she is. She is going to bear an heir to the pack. A great one."

​Roderick's voice dropped to a whisper, full of a father's desperate fear.

​"I need to protect the pack even if it takes the lives of others."

​He sat back down, holding Valeria's picture with both hands now, as if she could give him an answer.

​"What do I do, Val? Tell me what to do." His hands trembled. "If I kill her, I lose him. I miss your voice, Val."

​The office was silent again. Except for the low, broken sound of a man who had built an empire on vengeance because he didn't know how to grieve.

​"I told Kaelen to keep his distance from that girl today . I dont want him to have any business with humans. He seems to be growing fond of her . If he falls in love... Gods, Valeria, if he falls in love and I have to be the one to rip it from his chest, the way fate ripped you from mine... it will destroy him. It will make him a monster just like his father."

​He pressed a hard kiss to the glass over her laughing face.

​"So I will find her first. That girl was destined to bring our fall. That last witch. I will find her. I will do anything to burn the world down a second time."

​His voice broke on the last words.

​He pressed the frame to his chest. "Don't hate me for protecting us, Val. Don't hate me."

​The firelight flickered across the office.

​The Alpha mask stayed on the floor.

​And for one night, just one, Roderick Blackwood allowed himself to be a man.