CHAPTER 12 The Prophecy
997 Words
Getting out of the Hollow Woods after shifting naked with four Alphas watching was... an experience I never want to explain to anyone ever again.
Kieran had taken off his own shirt without a word and thrown it at me, then turned around so fast his shadows cracked a tree. His ears were red. The terrifying Alpha of Shadows had red ears.
Jax had stared, openly, until Silas smacked the back of his head with his mind and he yelped.
Rhys had been the gentleman — eyes firmly on the canopy, handing me his jacket like a butler while his own red wolf whined in his head mate mate mate so loud I could hear it through our new bond.
Silas had simply looked, memorized, and whispered "Beautiful" so reverently I forgot to be embarrassed for a second.
Now I was back in the Bone Archive, wearing four different jackets tied together like a crazy quilt, trying to read while my legs still shook from my first shift.
The Archive was different after my shift. The books didn't bite me anymore. They floated to me.
One book, bound in what looked like actual bone, slammed onto the table in front of me and fell open. No dust. The pages were silver.
On the first page, a drawing that made my blood freeze: Four wolves — black, grey, silver, red — tearing apart a white wolf. Under it, text in Old Wolf, which I suddenly could read.
When the moon turns to bone and cracks, five will be born. Four to carry the elements, One to carry the grave. The Fifth must die at twenty to birth the God Ossara anew, or the Four die with her.
"That's us," Silas said from behind me. I jumped. I hadn't heard him come in. His mind was silent now, around me. "Four to carry the elements. One to carry the grave. You."
He sat next to me, close enough that our knees touched. His silver eye mark on my wrist tingled.
"Look at the footnote. It's fresh ink. Not old."
At the bottom of the page, in messy, hurried handwriting I recognized from the photo Mama Agatha showed me once — my mother's handwriting.
There is a third way. We break the chain. We share, not take. Ossara lied. He was never a God. He was the first Vessel who refused to die.
I traced the words with a shaking finger. "My mother wrote this."
"She was here," Silas said softly. "Lucien said she was the strongest Vessel in 300 years. She must have found this book. She figured out Ossara isn't a God. He's the first failed Vessel. He died on the altar, his soul got trapped in the moon, and now he wants a body back."
"So he makes four cursed Alphas and one girl to die for them, over and over?"
"For a thousand years," Silas whispered. "Every Bone Moon. Five born. One dies. The Four live to 25. Then new Five are born. It's a cycle."
Nyx growled low. He eats us. He eats the Fifth every time.
The bone book flipped a page on its own. Now it showed a ritual: A white wolf on an altar of roots — the bone-white tree in Lucien's office — four wolves biting her throat at once.
Under it, my mother's handwriting again, this time bloody, smeared:
If you are reading this, little bone, it means I failed to seal you well enough. It means you are alive and you have found your Four. Don't let them bite you on the altar, baby. Make them bite you because they love you. That changes everything. Love is the only thing that breaks a God.
Tears dripped onto the silver page and sizzled.
Silas took my hand. "Kaia —"
The Archive doors exploded inward. Not opened. Exploded.
Kieran stood there, shadows raging, holding a struggling Lira by her collar.
"We have a problem," he snarled. "Her father just declared you a rogue Vessel and put a bounty on your head. Fifty million and a Luna title to whoever brings you alive to the Moon Temple."
Lira was crying, mascara running. "I didn't know! He said he would kill me if I didn't send the video! He said you were supposed to be his Luna, not hers!"
Jax and Rhys appeared behind Kieran, both already half-shifted.
"Who?" Jax growled.
"Alpha Gregory Ashworth," Kieran said, looking directly at me, his blue eyes full of something like pity. "Your adopted father. He just told the entire continent that his daughter Kaia Thorne is the first Prime in 1000 years and he is offering her to the highest bidder."
Silas's hand tightened on mine. "That's not all. Look."
He projected his mind outward, letting me see what he saw — the Academy courtyard through the eyes of a crow.
Enforcers. Not six. Sixty. All in bone masks. And behind them, a man in a white Alpha coat. Gregory Ashworth. And next to him, a woman in white who looked exactly like me but older, her eyes sewn shut with silver thread.
Mama Agatha's voice crackled through the bond, though she was miles away: Kaia! That's not Gregory! That's Ossara wearing him! The Bone Moon came early! It's tonight!
Outside, the purple sky cracked.
The Bone Moon rose in the middle of the day, white and huge and staring straight through the volcano glass, straight at me.
And it spoke, using Gregory's mouth, voice heard by every wolf in Nocturne:
"MY VESSEL. YOU HAVE KEPT MY SONS WARM FOR ME. NOW COME HOME AND LET ME BE BORN."
My four marks burned like fire.
Nyx howled inside me, not in fear — in rage.
No one wears my little bone but me.
The bone book on the table bled silver, and a new line wrote itself in my mother's bloody handwriting:
Tonight. You turn 20 tonight, Kaia. Happy birthday. Now go kill a God.
- Writer
