To Break a Wolf

Chapter 23: In Her Blood

The door shut softly behind Mira, but the weight of breakfast and everything left unsaid clung to her shoulders, a fog that wouldn’t lift. They hadn’t lied when she asked about Artemis, though they hadn’t told her the whole truth either. Not even close.

Bastian’s warning still echoed in her mind.

You’re asking questions you’re not ready for.

The hell she wasn’t.

She crossed the room barefoot, the chill of the floor grounding her as she walked straight to the stack of books on the desk. Heavy tomes, reverent in their quiet, their age, and their secrets. They’d clearly hoped she’d read slowly, carefully, on their timeline. She picked up “The History of Wolf Shapeshifters” again and flipped past the chapter on the Moon Goddess, eyes landing on the dog-eared pages she hadn’t dared look at last night. Her fingers stopped on three phrases.

Bloodlines. Marks. Divine Gifts.

A tremor started low in her gut.

She turned to the chapter titled “The Marked Line.”

There have been stories, whispers more than records, of a lineage chosen not to hunt, but to judge. The goddess, in her dual nature of protector and executioner, blessed a single bloodline with the ability to unravel the very essence of the wolf within a man.

Mira’s pulse kicked, the words sharp and clear, the ringing of a bell no one else could hear.

Known as the Anchor, this bloodline’s power remained dormant for centuries, often silenced by strategic mate pairings or protective curses. Without the stabilizing force of a bonded Alpha, the power proved fatal once awakened.

Fatal.

The word landed as a punch to the chest, and too suddenly, everything clicked into place regarding her mother: the pain, the fear, the silence surrounding her death. Ellie had all but spelled it out in her quiet way, always hovering at the edges of truth as if she were afraid of what Mira might do with it. But this… this information was the missing piece.

Her mother hadn’t just died.

She’d burned from the inside out.

Because her anchor, Bastian’s father, hadn’t been bonded to her. Maybe, as Mira now was, her mother had been thrust into something far greater than anyone had prepared her for. Without that bond, the stabilizing force of an Alpha fully claiming her, her mother’s power had turned inward, consuming her.

Mira’s breath hitched, her throat tightening upon the realization.

Her mother hadn’t stood a chance.

She sat back, the weight of it all pressing her spine into the chair. That legacy wasn’t ancient history. It was written into her bones, passed down as a curse wrapped in divine purpose, and if not for Bastian and his mark, that moment when instinct overtook reason, she’d be ash and light, too.

Tears pricked behind her eyes, but she didn’t cry.

She just whispered the words from the margin aloud, as though they were a prayer. Or a eulogy.

“Marked by Artemis. Power through blood, balanced by bond.”

The words anchored inside her.

Balanced by bond.

Without Bastian that night, without his mark, she would have burned from the inside out. There would have been no ceremony, no slow awakening—just fire and excruciating pain.

She shoved the book aside, her skin too tight for her bones, her thoughts too loud. Another book caught her eye, thinner and buried beneath the others, as if someone had wanted it forgotten. The spine was blank, the leather cracked. She pulled it free.

Inside the cover, written in faint silver ink:

Children of Night and Memory: Lost Histories

Her breath caught. She turned the page.

The Forgotten.

The Forgotten were not born of the mortal plane. Forged from the primordial dark, they are creatures of thirst and hunger, feeding not only on flesh but on memory, stripping the soul thread by thread until nothing remains.

Her blood turned to ice.

Once kin to wolves, they turned against the Moon’s call, driven by envy of the bond gifted to shapeshifters. Their hunger altered them, corrupted them. They learned to drain the life force of others, leaving behind hollow vessels, obedient shells of what once was.

Her heart thudded louder. No, this wasn’t a myth, either. These words contained a warning.

The old ones say the cold marks the Forgotten. Where they walk, the air thins. The mind clouds. In their wake, they leave silence and the absence of all that was sacred.

She saw it again, the clearing, the eerie stillness, the way the shadows felt wrong. The unnatural hush before everything went sideways. She had felt it. She hadn’t been stalked by just rogues that night.

She turned another page, her hands now trembling.

There are whispers that the Forgotten inspired the mortal fear of those called “blood-drinkers.” Legends misnamed them, but the hunger remains the same.

Vampires.

Her chest tightened as the truth clicked into place, brutal and undeniable.

Not the fictional versions with tortured souls and romantic gazes. These monsters fed on who you were, draining your courage, cheating you of your memories, and your ability to be. They didn’t just steal your blood. They erased you.

Her stomach roiled. She closed the book with a quiet thud and pressed it to her chest, trying to anchor herself with the weight of it. The cabin felt colder now. Too still.

And then, a whisper, low and steady, brushed against the inside of her mind.

You’re not alone in this, Mira.

Her breath hitched.

She hadn’t imagined that. She knew her own thoughts, and this voice hadn’t been one of them. It had curled inside her with quiet certainty, not as a thought, but a presence.

Bastian.

She should have rejected the idea outright, dismissed it as wishful thinking. But she didn’t. Because beneath her skin, in that place where the bond pulsed soft and steady, she could feel him. The thread of his calmness held weight.

Maybe it was real, then again, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it helped, and right now, she’d take whatever she could get.