Chapter twelve
907 Words
We left the Sanctuary before dawn.
Kael hadn’t spoken much since the Seer’s warning. Three nights. That was all the time we had to change fate—or die trying.
The forest was quieter now, but it wasn’t peace. It was the calm before a slaughter.
“I have to speak to them,” Kael said as we neared the edge of his territory.
“The Council?” I asked.
He shook his head. “My pack. They deserve to know what’s coming.”
I swallowed hard. “And what if they want me dead?”
His jaw clenched. “Then they’ll have to go through me.”
We arrived at Kael’s compound by midday.
Warriors lined the walls. They looked tired. Suspicious. Afraid.
But when Kael walked in, their spines straightened.
He was still their Alpha.
Barely.
Inside the Great Hall, his Beta—Damon—stood waiting, arms folded. His expression was thunder.
“You vanished,” Damon said. “Then we hear rumors from the Council that you’re protecting the girl marked by the Hollow.”
“She has a name,” Kael snapped. “And she’s standing right here.”
All eyes turned to me.
I felt the weight of their judgment like a blade pressing to my throat.
“She’s a threat, Kael,” Damon said. “You know it. The Council says she carries a bloodline cursed to destroy us.”
“She carries the blood of our past,” Kael growled. “And maybe our future.”
“Are you mating her?” Damon asked. “Is that what this is about?”
Kael didn’t answer.
But he didn’t deny it either.
Gasps echoed around the room.
“She’s the reason the Council is threatening war!” Damon shouted. “And you would put her above us?”
“I didn’t choose this,” I said suddenly, stepping forward. “I didn’t ask for a bond. I didn’t ask for prophecy or bloodlines or kingdoms.”
I looked around the room, heart pounding.
“I’ve been hunted. Hated. Rejected. But I’m still standing. Because I won’t be used as a weapon by men in thrones.”
The warriors watched, silent.
I stepped closer to Damon. “You want me gone? Kill me. Right now. I won’t fight. But just know—when they come for you… and they will… you’ll wish you had someone like me.”
Damon stared at me.
Then, quietly, he stepped back.
“I don’t trust her,” he said to Kael. “But I trust you.”
That night, we stayed in Kael’s old cabin—the one hidden deep in the woods, where no one else dared go.
He barely looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?”
“For being the reason you might lose everything.”
Kael looked at me like I was the only thing anchoring him to this world.
“I never had everything,” he said. “Not until you.”
We sat in silence for a while, then he spoke again.
“I’ve been thinking about what the Seer said. About the prophecy.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
“She said you were the key to uniting the bloodlines.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m the Wolf of Ruin.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
“I don’t want to ruin anything,” he said. “Especially not you.”
I touched his face gently. “Then maybe ruin’s not the end. Maybe it’s the beginning.”
Kael’s eyes burned. “There might be another way.”
He pulled a book from beneath the floorboard—old and wrapped in black leather.
“The Riven Codex,” he said. “Your mother left it here the night she ran. I never opened it. Until now.”
I stared at it. My heart thudded wildly.
We flipped it open together.
Inside were pages written in ancient runes—but I could understand them. Somehow, I knew this language.
On the third page, a ritual was drawn in blood ink. Symbols circled around two figures, bonded by fire.
“When the bond is complete, their power becomes one. But it comes with a cost—one must die for the other to live.”
My breath caught.
Kael’s fingers gripped the edge of the page.
“You think this is our way out?” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “I think this is our way in.”
I frowned.
“If we can bond completely,” he explained, “we can become stronger than either of us alone. Strong enough to fight the Council. To survive the war.”
“But the cost—”
“We’ll find a way around it.”
His voice trembled, but his eyes were fierce.
“I won’t lose you, not to a prophecy. Not to a curse.”
We sat in silence, the book between us.
And then, with only the stars above, he asked the question that changed everything.
“Will you complete the bond with me?”
My throat closed.
This was more than love.
It was war.
“Yes,” I said. “But not because I want power. Because I want you.”
And that night, in fire and starlight, we began the bond.
Not just of wolves.
But of fate.
Of war.
Of survival.
Together.
- Writer
