Chapter 16
1292 Words
The night after the procession, sleep refused to come.
I lay in my old bed — the one that once felt like home staring at the ceiling while golden threads of Kael’s power wove through my veins like liquid fire. Every heartbeat synced with his. Every breath carried the faint taste of shadow and ancient blood.
You’re restless, Little Moon, Kael murmured, his voice a low, intimate rumble that curled around my spine. Come to me in your dreams. Let me ease you.
I almost gave in. The pull was getting harder to resist. The bond wasn’t just strength anymore. It was hunger. Craving.
A dangerous addiction that made my skin burn and my wolf — his wolf — pace restlessly inside me.
But something felt… off.
A faint whisper lingered at the edge of my mind. Not Kael’s. Something colder. Older. Watching.
I sat up, shadows automatically coiling around my fingers like protective pets. The room was silent.
A soft knock broke the quiet.
The Beta.
I opened the door before he could knock again. He stood there in plain clothes, no lantern, face drawn with exhaustion and something sharper — urgency.
“We need to talk,” he said quietly. “Now. Away from the estate.”
I didn’t hesitate. Wrapping a dark cloak around the white sacrificial robe, I followed him through the back corridors, the ones servants used. The pack was still celebrating in the distance, drunk on relief and wine. No one noticed two shadows slipping toward the old training grounds.
The moment we reached the empty field, the Beta turned to me.
“I’ve been investigating since the tremors began,” he said, voice low. “The sealed records. The night your father brought you home during that blood-moon storm. Seraphina… you weren’t just found.”
He pulled out a small, ancient-looking scroll from his coat — edges burned, seal half broken.
“You were taken from the Northern Cliff itself.”
The words landed like a stone in still water.
I stared at him. “What?”
Kael went unnaturally silent in my mind. Too silent.
The Beta continued, speaking faster. “The official story says Alpha Magnus rescued an abandoned pup glowing with power. But the truth in the forbidden archives is different. You were offered as a sacrifice twenty years ago — by your real parents — to seal the Abyss. But something went wrong.
The darkness rejected you… or chose you. Magnus took you instead. He claimed you as his own to hide what happened.”
My hands trembled. Shadows exploded outward, cracking the ground around us.
“All this time,” I whispered, “they knew I was connected to it?”
“Not all of them,” the Beta said grimly. “But your father did. And Lyra…”
He hesitated.
A sick feeling twisted in my gut. “What about Lyra?”
The Beta looked haunted. “Lyra isn’t your adopted sister by chance. She’s your blood cousin. Your real parents’ niece. She was sent here years later as a ‘gift’ from a distant pack. But I think she knows the truth about you. I think she’s been suppressing your wolf deliberately. There are rumors of old forbidden rituals… moonstone artifacts that can bind power.”
The moonstone necklace.
The one Cassian gave her. The one she wore so proudly.
Rage, pure and blinding, surged through me. But beneath it, a colder realization.
Kael finally spoke, his voice careful. Too careful.
Interesting.
That single word made me freeze.
“You knew,” I said silently to him. “You knew I was connected like this.”
A pause. Then his presence wrapped around me tighter, almost apologetic but still possessive.
I knew pieces, Little Moon. I did not know everything. The Abyss keeps its own secrets. But this changes nothing. You are still mine.
The Beta stepped closer, misreading my silence. “Seraphina, if Lyra is actively working against you — if she’s the one who made you wolfless — then the sacrifice might be a trap. For both you and the pack. What if she wants you to jump so she can steal whatever power comes back from the Abyss?”
The twist hit me like a blade between the ribs.
All this time I thought I was the victim of simple jealousy.
But what if Lyra had been playing a much longer, darker game?
A sudden, violent tremor shook the training field. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ground. From the direction of the Northern Cliff, a low, unnatural howl echoed — not wolf, not wind, but something ancient and furious.
The Beta grabbed my arm. “We have to go back. If they find us—”
Too late.
Footsteps.
Lyra emerged from the tree line, flanked by two of her loyal wolves and — my stomach dropped — Cassian.
She smiled, but it was sharp and knowing.
“Well, well,” she said sweetly. “Secret meetings in the night? How touching.
The wolfless disgrace and the loyal Beta plotting against the family.”
Cassian looked conflicted, eyes darting between us. “Lyra, maybe we should—”
“Quiet,” she snapped. Then her gaze returned to me, glittering with triumph. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know you were digging into the past? I’ve always known what you were, cousin. The rejected sacrifice. The key to the Abyss’s power.”
She lifted the moonstone necklace. It glowed faintly — not silver, but a sickly, binding red.
“I’ve kept you leashed for years,” she whispered. “And now you’re going to jump nicely, hand me everything that should have been mine, and disappear. Just like your real parents intended.”
The Beta moved to shield me, but I stepped forward.
Power — raw, unrestrained — exploded from me.
Shadows lashed out like whips. Frost covered the ground in seconds. Lyra’s two wolves were thrown back, slamming into trees.
But Lyra only laughed, holding up the glowing moonstone. It pulsed, trying to suppress me.
It hurt. Like chains tightening around my soul.
Kael roared in my mind, furious.
She dares use that against you?!
For the first time, I felt Kael’s power clash directly with something else. The moonstone. An old counter-magic designed to control beings like him.
Pain flared in my chest, but I pushed through it, stepping closer to Lyra.
“You wanted me broken,” I said, voice layered with Kael’s darkness. “But you forgot one thing.”
I smiled as blood trickled from my nose.
“I was never supposed to be saved.”
The ground split open between us with a deafening c***k. A tendril of pure abyss energy shot upward, wrapping around Lyra’s wrist. She screamed as the moonstone cracked.
Cassian lunged forward — not toward her, but toward me, eyes wide with sudden realization.
“Seraphina, wait—!”
The Beta pulled me back just as more wolves arrived, drawn by the commotion.
In the chaos, Lyra clutched her burned wrist, hatred and fear twisting her perfect face.
“This isn’t over,” she hissed. “In eight days, you’ll still jump. And I’ll be waiting at the top.”
As the pack guards surrounded us, Kael’s voice burned with new fury and something dangerously close to worry.
She has the Binding Stone, Little Moon. We must be careful. There are things even I haven’t told you yet…
I stood tall in the center of the gathering wolves, blood on my lips, shadows swirling.
Lyra wasn’t just a jealous sister.
She was a rival player with her own claim to the Abyss.
And I was no longer just a sacrifice walking to her death.
- Writer
