Curse Magnet
1880 Words
I don’t sleep.
How could I, with that word still echoing in my skull — mine — in a voice that wasn’t entirely Damon’s? It was something older in him, something that rose like a tide when his control slipped.
And the worst part is my body believed it.
My wristmark is warm all night, pulsing under my sleeve like it’s proud. Like it’s satisfied. Like it’s finally heard what it wanted to hear.
By morning my eyes feel sanded raw. I stare at my reflection and don’t recognize the girl staring back. She looks like she’s been claimed by a storm and is still deciding whether to drown or learn to swim.
When I step into the corridor, the pack house is already awake. Boots on wood. Voices low and urgent. The smell of sweat and metal and something sharp—blood, fresh enough to raise the hairs on my arms.
The sound reaches me before the words.
“Patrol’s back!”
“Medic, now—”
“Where’s the Alpha?”
My stomach drops.
I follow the noise, keeping to the wall like I always do, except now I’m not sure hiding is possible. People look up as I pass. Their conversations dip. Their eyes flick to my wrist, to my face, to the space around me as if waiting for glass to shatter.
A few steps later, the scent hits harder.
Blood. Iron. Fear.
The foyer is chaos. Warriors pour in through the main doors, carrying two injured pack members between them — hunters’ work: one with a silver‑sheened bandage wrapped around his shoulder, another with pants soaked dark at the leg.
My throat tightens.
Damon is there, of course. In a black shirt instead of a suit, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He stands at the center of the storm with the calm violence of a man who refuses to be surprised. His eyes are wolf‑bright. His jaw is clenched.
He doesn’t look at me.
“Where?” he demands.
“Eastern border,” one of the warriors pants. “Near the old service road. They were waiting.”
“How many?” Damon asks.
“Six. Maybe more. We only saw the front.”
“Silver bullets?” Damon’s voice is flat.
The warrior nods. “And traps. Sonic grenades too. They hit us hard and tried to pull Jace into the tree line.”
A small black device lies on the stretcher beside Jace's leg — no bigger than a thumb, cracked along one edge, a pinprick red lens staring up at the ceiling like a dead eye.
The injured wolf groans as if his name hurts.
My skin goes cold. Near the service road. Near the back porch. Near where I’d stepped out to breathe.
I can feel eyes shifting toward me like a slow turn of knives.
“Of course,” someone mutters. Not loud, but the words carry anyway. “It’s always near her.”
Another voice, sharper: “She drew them here.”
My wolf bristles in my chest, a low, furious pressure. I take a breath, tasting blood and accusation.
“Stop,” Damon says, and the single word cuts through the foyer like a blade. “If you have something to say, say it to me.”
Silence snaps tight.
Garrick appears from a side corridor, expression carved from stone. Elders follow him like shadows. Rowan is among them—Elder Rowan, face pale, eyes hard.
“This is getting worse,” Garrick says. “Every day.”
“Then increase patrols,” Damon replies.
Garrick’s gaze flicks past him to me. “Or remove the variable that keeps attracting them.”
The foyer goes even quieter.
No one says my name.
They don’t have to.
Damon’s shoulders square. “Enough.”
“It is not superstition to recognize patterns,” one elder says. “The hunters strike where she is. Where her curse flares.”
“My curse didn’t fire a silver bullet,” I say. My voice is rough. “A human did.”
Heads turn. Surprise flashes, then anger.
“You don’t speak in council matters,” another elder snaps.
“I’m not speaking in council,” I shoot back. “I’m speaking in reality.”
Garrick’s lip curls. “Reality is that my warriors are bleeding because our Alpha‑to‑be insisted on keeping you here.”
The words slam into me. Damon doesn’t flinch.
“My warriors are bleeding because hunters crossed into our territory,” Damon says. “If anyone is to blame, it’s the humans who made the choice to hunt us.”
“Humans who know exactly what they’re hunting,” Elder Rowan murmurs.
My wristmark pulses, hot under my sleeve. The sensation crawls up my arm like a warning.
The injured wolves are carried toward the medic wing. The foyer’s attention shifts with them, hungry for gossip and fear. I stand there, useless as always—until Damon’s hand clamps around my forearm.
Not gentle. Not cruel. Possessive in a way that makes my wolf growl.
“You,” he says quietly, only for me. “With me.”
I open my mouth, ready to refuse out of habit.
His eyes flick up, wolf‑gold still there, and my refusal dies.
He drags me down a side corridor and into a smaller room off the main hall—a briefing room, bare except for a table, a map pinned to the wall, and the faint smell of sweat.
He shuts the door behind us.
“Did you step outside again?” he demands.
I blink. “No.”
“Did you leave the house?” His voice drops. Dangerous.
“No.” I lift my chin. “I followed your ridiculous rules, Alpha.”
His gaze searches my face like he’s looking for cracks. “Then why were they near the service road?”
I laugh once, bitter. “Maybe because it’s a road. Roads are convenient for ambushes. Do you want me to apologize for existing in the same general region as the trees?”
He exhales through his nose. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I know.” My voice shakes on the last word, and I hate myself for it. “I know it isn’t. But you’re acting like I did this.”
His jaw flexes. “I’m acting like I don’t have the luxury of being wrong.”
He crosses the room and slams his palm on the table. The sound makes my wolf flinch.
“They’re escalating,” he says. “Silver bullets. Traps. Sonic grenades. That’s not random humans with old myths. That’s organized.”
“So we’re at war,” I say softly.
He looks at me, and for a moment the Alpha mask slips just enough for me to see the strain underneath.
“Not yet,” he says. “But we’re close.”
My mark warms again, not a pulse this time—more like a pull, a tugging line in my blood. It’s the same sensation Rowan warned about during the seal. The same feeling when the glass shattered.
Like something is trying to point me somewhere.
I swallow.
“What are you not telling me?” Damon asks.
I stare at him. “Excuse me?”
His gaze drops to my wrist. “Your mark. It’s reacting.”
I don’t look down. If I look down, it becomes real.
“It reacts to you,” I say. “Maybe it’s your fault.”
His mouth twitches, almost a smile, then hardens again. “Don’t.”
“Then stop accusing me,” I snap. “If you want truth, stop treating me like a criminal and start treating me like a partner.”
The word partner hangs between us like a dare.
Damon’s eyes darken. “You’re not ready to be a partner.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m ready to be a scapegoat. That’s what I’ve been trained for my whole life.”
His gaze shifts, sharp. “Who trained you?”
I freeze.
I shouldn’t have said that.
But the bitterness in my chest has teeth now, and it wants blood.
“Your pack,” I say. “Your father. Your elders. Every person who laughed when I didn’t shift. Every person who called me harmless while they waited for me to be useful.”
His expression goes still.
“And now,” I continue, voice shaking, “your warriors bleed and everyone looks at me like I’m the bullet.”
He takes one step closer. Then another. His aura presses in until breathing feels like work.
“Listen to me,” he says, low. “If you go down there right now with that face, they will eat you alive.”
“I’m already being eaten.”
His hand lifts, then drops, restrained. “Stay in your room.”
“No.”
His eyes flare. “Evelyn—”
“If they’re going to blame me, I want to see what I’m being blamed for,” I say. “I want to look at the wounds. The traps. The bullets. I want proof that this isn’t just your elders’ fear wearing a human mask.”
His stare is a war in itself.
“Fine,” he says finally. “But you don’t speak unless I tell you. You don’t touch anything. And you don’t wander.”
“So I’m still a prisoner.”
“You’re alive,” he snaps. “Try appreciating that.”
He yanks the door open and leads me down to the medic wing.
The smell hits first—antiseptic and blood and silver. Wolves lie on cots, faces pale, eyes glassy. The medic moves fast, hands stained red.
One injured warrior turns his head as we enter. His gaze lands on me and goes wide.
Fear.
Not the normal pack fear. Something more primal.
“No,” he whispers, voice cracking. “Not her.”
I stop.
“Easy,” Damon says, stepping in front of me like a shield. “You’re safe.”
The warrior’s eyes dart around the room. “They… they said—”
“Who said?” Damon demands.
The warrior swallows, throat bobbing around pain. “The human. Before we cut him down. He laughed. He said…”
His eyes lock on mine, and I feel the world narrow.
“The Second Luna,” he rasps, like the words burn his mouth. “He said the Second Luna would come back to finish what the first one started.”
Second Luna.
Not a slur. Not the way they’d thrown *wolfless* at me for years, careless and contemptuous. This was a designation — something they’d prepared, researched, assigned. A name from old documents, old knowledge, a role in a story they’d been tracking long enough to name it before I even knew it existed.
My wristmark flares hot enough to make me gasp.
Damon’s head snaps toward me.
And for the first time since the rooftop, I see real horror in his eyes—not at me, but at what the hunters know. Not just that I exist. That they know what I am supposed to become.
- Writer
