What Wakes With Me
1526 Words
Chapter 6: What Wakes With Me:
I don’t sleep after that.
Not really.
My body lies still, but my mind drifts somewhere dark and half-awake, caught between fear and something else that feels dangerously close to anticipation. The healer’s words echo again and again, sinking deeper each time.
Sealed.
Not gone.
Not broken.
Waiting.
I press a hand to my chest as if I might feel it there, some pulse beneath my ribs that doesn’t belong to my heart. Everything feels sharper now. The air. The silence. Even my own breathing sounds too loud.
Rhydian doesn’t leave.
He sits in the chair near the window, arms folded loosely, gaze fixed on the forest beyond the glass. He hasn’t said a word since carrying me back to the bed, since my knees gave out and my world tilted sideways.
I should be grateful for his presence.
Instead, it makes everything harder.
“What happens now?” I ask quietly.
He doesn’t turn. “Now we wait.”
“For what?”
For you to stop pretending you don’t feel it.
I flinch, more from the truth in his words than the sharpness of them.
“I don’t know how,” I whisper. “Everything inside me feels… wrong.”
Rhydian finally looks at me then. Not with judgment. Not with command. With something closer to recognition.
That’s because it isn’t wrong, he says. “It’s awakening.”
The word sends a ripple through me, heat curling low in my stomach, unfamiliar and unsettling.
I don’t want to hurt anyone,I say quickly. “If what the healer said is true, if they sealed my wolf because it was dangerous...”
They sealed it because they were afraid,” he cuts in.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.” He stands, crossing the room until he’s beside the bed. His presence presses against my senses, steady and grounding. “Fear does not make something evil, Liora. It makes it powerful.”
I shake my head. You don’t understand. I’ve lived my whole life being careful. Quiet, Small. I learned how not to take up space.”
His hand lifts, hovering near my cheek but not touching. “And yet here you are,” he murmurs. “Changing everything without trying.”
His fingers finally brush my skin, light but deliberate. The bond responds instantly, flaring warm and insistent, like something inside me leans toward him before I can stop it.
I pull back, breath catching. “This bond..it’s getting stronger.”
“Yes.”
“Why?
“Because you are.”
That should terrify me.
Instead, it feels like standing on the edge of something vast, something I don’t yet have words for.
By morning, the palace feels different.
Not quieter. More alert.
Guards line the corridors in doubled numbers. Their eyes track me openly now, no longer pretending indifference. Some look wary, Others… curious.
Dangerous curiosity.
I stay close to Rhydian as we move through the halls. Not because he asks me to, but because the bond nudges me there, a constant pull that tightens when I stray too far.
At council, the tension is thick enough to taste.
The elders sit stiffly around the stone table, expressions carefully neutral. None of them meet my eyes for long.
“She should not be here,” one finally says. “Not until we understand what she is.”
I stiffen.
Rhydian’s hand settles on the back of my chair, Possessive. Steady.
You understand enough, he replies coldly. “You understood it well enough to hide the truth.”
A murmur ripples through the room.
Another elder leans forward. “We did what we thought was necessary.”
“You did what was convenient,” Rhydian snaps. You sealed a child and hoped the problem would disappear.
My chest tightens. “Problem?”
The word slices deeper than it should.
The elder looks at me then, really looks, and something like guilt flickers across his face. “We didn’t know she would survive the sealing.”
The room tilts.
“What?” I whisper.
Rhydian’s grip tightens. “You never intended her to live?”
Silence answers.
That silence tells me everything.
My breath comes shallow and fast. I push back from the table, standing too quickly. The bond surges in response, wild and sharp, like something inside me snarls at the injustice of it.
“I need air,” I say, though it comes out thin.
Rhydian is beside me instantly. “Clear the room,” he orders.
No one argues.
The courtyard is cold stone and open sky.
I pace, trying to ground myself, but the more I move, the more restless I feel. My skin prickles, heat building beneath it, unfamiliar and unsettling.
“They never planned for me to exist,” I murmur.
Rhydian watches me carefully. “They planned for control.”
I was a risk, I say. “A mistake.”
“No.” His voice is firm. “You were a threat to their power.”
I stop pacing. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
He steps closer. “It should make you angry.”
Angry.
The word lands strangely, like something I haven’t allowed myself to feel in a long time.
“I don’t know how to be angry,” I admit.
Yes, you do, he says softly. “You’ve just been taught not to show it.”
A sudden dizziness washes over me. I grip the edge of the fountain, breath hitching as heat floods through my veins.
Rhydian’s eyes sharpen. “Liora.”
“I’m fine,” I lie.
I’m not.
The world seems brighter. Louder. Every sound presses in at once..the scrape of boots, the flutter of wings overhead, the distant heartbeat of the palace itself.
Something shifts inside me.
Not violently.
Purposefully.
I gasp, fingers curling as a pulse of energy ripples outward, subtle but undeniable. The water in the fountain trembles, surface rippling without wind.
Rhydian stills completely.
“Did you feel that?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says, voice low. Reverent. “So did the palace.”
My heart pounds. “I didn’t mean to...”
“You didn’t lose control,” he says. “You reached.”
The realization sends a shiver through me.
I’m not breaking.
I’m waking.
That night, the dreams return.
But they’re different.
I’m not running blindly this time.
I know where I am.
The forest bends toward me, not against me. The air hums, alive and responsive. I feel powerful,not wild, not excited, but balanced, Centered.
I look down at my hands.
They’re mine.
And not.
Golden light curls around my fingers, familiar and terrifying all at once.
A voice speaks behind me.
You are late.
I turn...
"And wake with a sharp cry.
Rhydian is already there, hand gripping my shoulder.
“You saw it,” he says.
I nod, shaking. “Someone spoke to me.”
His jaw tightens. “Did you see their face?”
“No,” I whisper. “But I felt them.”
“How?”
“Like they knew me.”
The bond tightens painfully, a warning flare.
Rhydian exhales slowly. “That’s not possible.”
“What isn’t?”
“That anyone else could reach you through the bond.”
Fear curls cold in my stomach. “Unless…?”
“Unless the sealing wasn’t meant to protect you,” he finishes grimly.
“Then what was it meant to do?”
His gaze locks onto mine, dark and serious.
“To keep something else asleep.”
A distant howl echoes through the night.
Not from the forest.
From beneath the palace.
And deep inside my chest, something answers.
The howl fades, but the silence it leaves behind is worse.
Rhydian doesn’t move. Neither do I.
My heart races..not just with fear, but with recognition. Whatever answered that sound knew me. I can still feel it, a low echo pressing against the inside of my ribs, like something testing the edges of my soul.
“Did you hear that?” I whisper.
“Yes,” Rhydian says. His voice is calm, but his scent sharpens..alert, Dangerous. “And so did every wolf in this palace.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes. Images flicker without warning, stone corridors beneath the palace, ancient seals carved into the walls, glowing faintly with gold.
My gold.
I gasp, gripping his arm. “There’s something down there. It’s not asleep anymore.”
Rhydian stills. “You shouldn’t be able to see that.”
“But I did,” I insist. “And it was waiting.”
“For what?” he asks quietly.
“For me.”
The bond surges violently, heat flooding my veins. Deep beneath the palace, something shifts slow, deliberate like a breath drawn after centuries of silence.
Rhydian pulls me against him, his arm firm around my waist.
“If the seal weakens again,” he murmurs darkly, “they won’t come for the throne.”
My breath catches.
“They’ll come for you.”
And somewhere below us, something ancient awakens..no longer willing to wait.
- Writer
