Chapter Three
1056 Words
Kael’s POV
"Search the perimeter again."
My voice cut through the mountain air, sharp and final. Fog clung low to the ground, curling around the ancient pines like a living thing. Blood stained the rocks where the rogues had fallen, dark and tacky, soaking into earth that had seen too much of it already. Blackmoor territory never forgot violence. It was memorable.
Silas inclined his head beside me. "We cleared them all, Alpha. Every last one."
I didn’t answer. Trust has never been my strength. Not since loyalty taught me how easily it rots.
I moved past him, boots crunching against stone and broken branches. The forest breathed around us—slow, heavy, watchful. The wind carried the scent of iron and decay, but beneath it lay something older. Something restless.
"It’s over," Silas said behind me, his voice cautious.
I kept walking.
The memory surfaced as it always did when night grew quiet—uninvited, unwelcome. My father’s blood smeared across the stone. His lifeless eyes staring up at a moon that offered no mercy. The way my hands shook as power I didn’t understand ripped free for the first time. The screams that followed.
That was the night the pack learned to fear its Alpha. That was the night the curse settled into my bones like a second spine.
I stopped abruptly. Silas nearly collided with me.
"What is it?"
I raised a hand, silencing him. The forest seemed to hold its breath. The scent reached me seconds later. Blood—too much of it. Fresh layered over old, sharp and overwhelming. But beneath it lingered something else. Something that didn’t belong here.
Herbal. Faintly sweet. Female.
My jaw tightened. "Do you smell that?"
"Yes," Silas replied, his posture tightening as his own instincts flared.
My hand slid to the dagger at my side as I followed the trail off the path. The trees thickened, branches closing in, shadows swallowing the moonlight until the world narrowed to instinct and breath.
Then I saw her.
She lay crumpled at the base of an oak, her body twisted unnaturally against the roots. Clothes torn. Skin bruised and swollen. Blood matted her hair and streaked her face.
And her back—
I inhaled sharply before I could stop myself. Whip marks. Deep. Precise. Deliberate.
Punishment.
"She’s alive," Silas said, a surprise flickering across his face. Barely.
I crouched beside her and pressed my fingers to her neck. A pulse met my touch—weak, uneven, but there.
"She was beaten," I said quietly. "Flogged."
Silas frowned. "That’s pack law. Someone wanted her to suffer."
I studied her face more closely. Pale. Too pale. Bruises blooming along her jaw and throat. Her lips were cracked, dried with blood. Too still for life. Too calm for death.
"Leave her," Silas said after a moment. "She’s not Blackmoor. She’ll bring trouble."
He was right. I should have stood. I didn’t.
Something tightened in my chest—sharp, unfamiliar. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, not with hunger or rage, but something dangerously close to recognition.
"We’re taking her," I said.
Silas stared at me. "Kael—"
"That wasn’t a suggestion."
Silence followed, heavy and loaded. I slid one arm beneath her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, lifting her carefully. She weighed almost nothing. Too light. Fragile in a way that didn’t belong in a world like this.
Her head lolled against my chest. For a split second, my grip tightened instinctively, as though something inside me refused to let her fall.
"Call the healer," I ordered. "Clear the lower keep."
Silas exhaled slowly. "As you command, Alpha."
She didn’t wake. The healer called it a miracle she survived the night. Blood loss. Internal trauma. Shock. And something else she wouldn’t name.
"She lost something," the healer said quietly, her hands still stained red. "Something important."
I already knew. I could smell it. The faint, bitter trace of life that should have been there—and wasn’t.
I said nothing. I watched.
Three days passed. I returned at dawn and again at night, standing in silence as her chest rose and fell beneath the blankets. Watching the subtle movements of breath. The twitch of fingers. Waiting for something—anything—to change.
I told myself to be cautious. That I needed to know what kind of danger she posed.
But every time I turned to leave, my feet carried me back.
On the third night, her fingers twitched. Then her lashes fluttered. She gasped suddenly, dragging in air like she’d been drowning. Her body jerked as she tried to sit up, panic flashing across her face.
Pain stole her strength. She cried out and collapsed back against the pillows.
"Easy," I said, stepping forward before I realized I’d moved.
Her eyes flew open, wild and unfocused, darting around the room.
"Where… where am I?"
"Blackmoor," I answered. "You’re safe."
The word felt strange on my tongue. Foreign.
She stared at me, her breathing uneven. "Who are you?"
"Kael Blackthorn."
Her breath hitched. Good. She knew the name. Fear sharpened her awareness, grounding her in reality.
"And you?" I asked. "What’s your name?"
She hesitated. Too long.
"I… don’t remember."
Silas shifted behind me, his suspicion thick in the air. I watched her closely—the trembling of her hands, the guarded way her gaze flicked away and back again. Pain lingered behind her eyes, raw and unresolved.
"You crossed into my territory bleeding and broken," I said evenly. "People don’t end up like that without a story."
Her lips parted, then pressed together. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.
"There was pain," she whispered. "Then nothing."
My wolf growled low in my chest, restless and unconvinced. A lie. Or a wound too deep to touch.
I leaned closer, letting my shadow fall over her. "Who did this to you?"
Her gaze sharpened despite the fear, something defiant flashing beneath the damage. "Why do you care?"
The room went still. Even Silas stopped breathing.
I straightened slowly, studying her—this broken, defiant woman who dared challenge me from a bed she should not have survived.
"That," I said quietly, "is what I intend to find out."
And for the first time in years, the curse inside me stirred with something that wasn’t rage. Something dangerously close to interest.
- Writer
