Chapter 3:Blood and Bond
1091 Words
“No!” Tanya screamed, her voice cracking the silence like thunder.
The bolt sliced through the air toward Shadow.
She didn’t think; she ran.
Barefoot, breathless, she bolted from the room, down the stone corridor, her heart pounding like war drums. She didn’t care who saw her. Didn’t care that she was still a prisoner in this place.
All she knew was, he was out there. And they were going to kill him.
Shadow.
Her brother. Her only family. Her cursed half.
She burst through the castle doors and into the night, wind slapping her face as she sprinted toward the treeline.
The moon lit the field in ghostly silver. The hunters were closing in, circling the large black wolf.
He was wounded.
The bolt hadn’t pierced his heart, but it had grazed his side, blood darkening his fur.
And now he was snarling, back against a tree, cornered.
“Stay back!” she shouted.
The hunters didn’t listen. Their crossbows reloaded. One moved to fire.
Tanya flung herself between them. “Don’t you dare!”
“Tanya!” one barked. “Move!”
She raised her arms, trembling. “You’ll have to shoot through me.”
“Then so be it.”
“Stand down!”
The voice cracked like lightning.
Kael.
He strode from the castle, shirt half-buttoned, eyes burning silver in the moonlight. The wind coiled around him like power itself.
The hunters hesitated.
“Drop your weapons,” Kael ordered.
“But your highness…”
“I said drop them!”
The weapons fell to the ground with scattered thuds.
Kael stopped beside Tanya, chest heaving. “He's your brother.”
She nodded, chest tight with fear. “He’s hurt.”
Kael walked slowly toward the wounded wolf. Shadow growled, blood dripping into the grass, teeth bared.
Kael didn’t flinch.
Instead, he lowered himself to one knee and met Shadow’s eyes. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Shadow’s body shook, torn between fight and flight. Tanya stepped beside Kael and reached out.
“Please,” she whispered. “Let us help you.”
The wolf took a slow, shaky step forward, then collapsed.
Tanya fell to her knees beside him. “No…No….please stay with me!”
Kael was already at work, tearing cloth from his sleeve and pressing it to the wound. “It missed his heart. But he’s losing blood fast.”
“Can we save him?”
“If we move now,” Kael said, lifting Shadow into his arms like he weighed nothing. “But he needs more than bandages. He needs a healer, and no ordinary one.”
Moments later, they were in the secret healing chambers beneath the castle.
They laid Shadow on the stone table as the castle’s secret healer, an ancient woman named Myra, moved her hands over his wound.
Tanya stood by, trembling. Her fingers dug into the arms, trying to keep from collapsing.
“What is he?” Myra whispered to Kael.
“A curse,” Kael replied. “A miracle. Her brother.”
Myra’s lips thinned. “He has magic in his blood, old magic. Born of wolf and human. Such creatures…… should not live.”
Kael glared. “Then let this be the first exception.”
Myra hesitated, then nodded, hands glowing faintly. Sh chanted in a forgotten tongue as Tanya watched, heart in her throat.
Slowly, the bleeding stopped. The flesh began to close.
“He’ll survive,” Myra whispered at last.
Tanya exhaled a sob of relief.
Kael turned to her, watching the tears stream down her face. “You love him.”
She nodded silently.
He stepped closer. “You stood between my guards and death, for a wolf.”
“He’s not just a wolf,” she rasped. “He’s my twin. My blood.”
She looked up at him, startled.
Their eyes locked.
Tanya didn’t speak, but her silence said everything.
Kael swallowed hard. “I’ve killed people like him. Like you.”
“And yet you saved me,” she whispered.
“Maybe the bond……is stronger than hate,” he murmured.
Or maybe guilt, she thought, but didn’t say it.
Kael couldn’t sleep later that night. He sat on the balcony outside Tanya’s new chamber, watching the stars, listening to her quiet breathing from within.
Shadow lay at her feet, still unconscious, but healing.
He was afraid.
Not of Tanya.
But of himself.
Of what he was beginning to feel.
She was nothing like the fiery she-wolves who chased him at court. She didn’t talk back, she didn’t scheme. She barely spoke at all.
But her eyes. Her eyes were oceans full of sorrow and secrets and pain he couldn’t begin to imagine.
And still, she hadn’t broken.
She’d faced a sword for her brother. She’d screamed for a wolf. She’d made him, Prince Kael of the Blackfangs, question everything he thought he knew.
It was true.
And Kael wasn’t sure he could live with it.
It was a very long night, and by morning, Shadow was awake, weak but breathing.
Tanya smiled through tears and fed him meat by hand. He licked her fingers, tail thumping lightly.
Kael watched them form the doorway. “He’s strong.”
Tanya looked up. “So are you.”
He raised a brow. “You think I’m strong?”
She nodded slowly. “You didn’t have to save him. But you did.”
Kael stepped inside. “And now the entire court thinks I’ve gone mad.”
She smiled faintly. “Maybe you have.”
He chuckled, but it faded quickly. “There will be consequences. They’ll call for your blood again. For his, I can’t protect you forever.”
“Then teach me to protect myself,” Tanya said, voice firmer than before.
Kael blinked. “What?”
“Train me,” she said. “Make me more than a prisoner. More than the girl everyone whispers about. I want to fight.”
He stared at her, then nodded once.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “At dawn.”
That night, in the shadows. Far beyond the forest, a cloaked figure stood before a circle of black stones.
“He is awakened,” the figure rasped. “The cursed twin still lives.”
Another voice answered from the darkness. “Then the prophecy is real.”
“The prince has bonded with the girl. The bloodline is complete.”
“What shall we do?”
The first voice hissed. “Kill them both. Before they fulfill the curse.”
- Writer
