The Fallen Moon: Predestined Sin

Chapter 10: The Witch Doctor's Whisper

The sword wound on Caine's left shoulder was deeper than it appeared.

By the time Marcus stopped me at the base of the watchtower, the sun had fully risen. He told me the Alpha had returned to the main tent and the witch doctor was suturing the wound, but he had lost more blood than anticipated. Victor’s sword wasn’t silver—it was forged of steel, and it took werewolves much longer to heal from steel wounds. I asked what I could do. Marcus glanced at me and said I could go to the stone well; the old witch doctor was waiting for me.

The old witch doctor was grinding medicine. Just like every other day over the past nine days, she sat on her stone bench, her stone pestle crushing herbs inside a mortar, the bone bells jingling softly with her movements. But today, two clay cups sat before her, filled with hot tea. This time, she wasn’t drinking alone.

"Sit."

I sat down. She pushed one of the cups toward me. The bitter aroma of tea was laced with the scent of mint—not the usual herbal brew favored by werewolves, but rather a human recipe. A hunter's recipe.

"You knew my mother," I said.

The witch doctor's grinding hands paused for a brief second before resuming their steady, rhythmic motion. But she did not deny it.

"Hunters of the Ashton family drink this mint tea to steady their heart rates. Your mother taught me that." She set down her stone pestle and looked up at me. The cloudy eyes no longer held the mockery from nine days ago outside the silver cage, nor the tension from Judgment Day. Instead, they held something far older. They held memory. "Thirty years ago, your mother was still a young hunter. Her patrol clashed with the Bloodspear Pack at the border, and there were casualties on both sides. She was the only hunter who stopped to staunch the bleeding of a wounded, young werewolf."

"That werewolf was you?"

"It was my son," she said, her bone bells chiming softly. "He died later anyway, silver poison running deep into his bones. But your mother was the only hunter who had ever tried to save him. So thirty years later, when her daughter was locked in a silver cage, I was the one who left that very first Moondrop flower."

I froze. "It wasn't Caine?"

"The Alpha only placed the one on the first night. The rest... were left by me." She picked up her clay cup and took a sip. "He doesn't know. He believed you endured it entirely on your own."

Those flowers. The silent kindness I had assumed Caine had hidden behind the label of "spoils of war"—it had actually been hers. A mother who had lost her son, paying back a thirty-year-old debt of gratitude to a long-dead hunter.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"Because you believed your destined bond was a joke. You believed Caine protected you only because the Moon Goddess forced him to. But you were wrong." The old witch doctor stood up, walked over to me, and tapped her finger—stained with herbal juice—against my left wrist. "The destined bond is the Goddess's design. But what the Goddess ordains can still be rejected. Your mother was once saved by Caine's father; she could have chosen to hate him, but she chose to remember. Caine could have chosen to kill you; he chose to protect. You could have denied the mark before the Council; you chose to acknowledge it."

She withdrew her hand, her bone bells clanking in the quiet air.

"Not a single path was chosen for you by the moon. You chose them yourselves."

I looked down at the mark on my wrist. The silver light pulsed faintly in the morning glow, like a moon trapped beneath my skin. Then, I stood up.

"Victor said I was manufactured. That a pureblood of the Abyss used a forbidden ritual to put me inside my mother's womb. You knew my mother for thirty years. How much of this do you know?"

The old witch doctor fell silent for a long time. Long enough for the morning mist around the well to completely dissolve, leaving the sunlight to hit the totemic markings on her face directly.

"Before your mother married the Ashton patriarch, there was a year where she went missing. The Hunter Council claimed she was on a secret mission. A year later she returned, pregnant, and married the Ashton patriarch. No one asked who the child belonged to. The Hunter Council sealed the files. At their wedding, your adoptive father declared—This is my daughter."

She looked at me, the cloudiness in her eyes shifting into a sharp, piercing clarity.

"The year your mother went missing was the exact same year the last pureblood of the Abyss Clan went rogue. That pureblood was named Seville. Before his defection, he was the most powerful blood warlock of the Abyss, specializing in a forbidden study—fusing the lineage of a Moon Priestess with pureblood genetics to create a being that could end the war between wolves and vampires. He called it... the Child of the Blood Oath."

"I am not a weapon," I said. "I am a judgment."

"You are. But judgment comes with a price. The stronger the awakened power of the Child of the Blood Oath, the greater the toll the physical backlash takes on the body. The princess bound to the pyre three hundred years ago..." She paused for half a second. "...was not burned to death. She chose to die. She did it to seal a power away, so it wouldn't consume the one she loved."

I stood frozen. The sun beat down on my back, warm, but my blood ran cold.

"Does the Alpha know?"

"He knows Seville's name. Before he told you, he came to see me and asked a single question: If the Child of the Blood Oath awakens, will she die?" Her bone bells jingled softly. "I told him I didn't know. But I told him about the princess."

"What did he say after he heard it?"

"He said—Then this time, I will pay the price."

I pushed open the door of the main tent. Caine sat bare-chested on the edge of his cot, his left shoulder stitched with over a dozen black silk threads, looking like a dark, sealed rift across his skin. He was clumsily but focusedly trying to slip into a new battle coat with his one good arm. He looked up when the door opened.

"The witch doctor told you."

"Everything."

He stood up, his coat only halfway on, the other sleeve still hanging loosely at his side. He looked straight into my eyes, offering neither evasion nor excuse.

"Seville's purpose in creating you was to pass judgment on purebloods who violated the blood oath. The princess three hundred years ago was the first Child of the Blood Oath. To prevent the backlash from harming her mate, she sealed her power—at the cost of her life. I have no intention of letting you pay any price."

"So you decided that this time, you would pay it?"

He didn't answer.

I walked up to him, reaching out to help him pull his remaining sleeve over his arm. The coat fabric was coarse, and there was a loose thread near his collar. I smoothed it down, my fingers brushing the skin just above his collarbone. There was an old scar there—not from tonight’s blade, but from much earlier. Six years ago? Or even before?

"I am not that princess," I said. "She had her choices. I have mine. You said yourself that the mark and the choice are two different things."

"I know."

"Then why did you still go to the witch doctor to ask that question?"

He fell silent. Outside the tent, the camp was settling back into its daily routine. The thuds of young wolves sparring drifted over from the training grounds, and the rhythmic beat of hammers echoed from the armory once more, as if last night’s march had been just another ordinary evening. Then, he spoke, his voice low and steady.

"Because I needed to know what the worst-case scenario was. I needed to know—if a price must be paid, what it would be."

"And once you knew?"

"Once I knew, I could find a way to ensure you never have to pay it."

He raised his right hand, gently touching a stray lock of hair near my ear. He withdrew it almost immediately, as if he had been burned. It was just like the first night, when his fingers had trembled like autumn leaves after brushing against his collar.

"Tomorrow, Victor will be transported to the Hunter Council to stand trial. The observer, Irene Ironblade, sent word that the Council wants to see you. Not for an interrogation, but an inquiry—about Seville, the forbidden ritual, and the files they've kept sealed for thirty years. I am going with you."

"Your injury—"

"It needs three more days to heal." He stood, the bandage over his left shoulder blooming with a small patch of crimson, but his expression didn't flicker. "But walking doesn't require a shoulder. Speaking doesn't require a shoulder. And standing by your side..." He paused. "...requires even less."

I stared at him for a long time. From the first night when he declared before the bonfire, "She is my prisoner," to the morning of the ninth day when he said, "standing by your side requires even less." Nine days and nights. From enemies to allies. From a prisoner of war to a clan leader. From a dagger aimed at his spine to the backs of our hands resting together.

"Caine Bloodspear."

"Yes?"

"That time, you wanted to pay the price. This time—" I placed my hand on his right shoulder, avoiding the injury on his left. "—we pay it together."

He didn't answer. But his right hand rose from his side, covering the back of mine. Incredibly gentle. He didn't pull away.

That evening, I went to the silver oaks. The Moondrop flowers before the headstone had completely carpeted the roots—new petals pressing against the old, withered layers cushioning the fresh ones, layered over each other like a field of shattered moons. I laid down a new Moondrop flower before the stone.

This time, I had plucked the flower myself.

Not to mourn his mother. But to thank her. To thank her for giving birth to a son who chose to protect, rather than cast away.

When I stood, Caine was standing beneath the old pine. He said nothing, simply watching me from three paces away. The waning moon rose from the east, not as bright as the full moon, but enough to illuminate the bandaged silhouette of his left shoulder, enough to light up the quietly burning mark on my wrist, and enough to bridge the three-pace distance between us. Nine days ago, that distance had been an abyss; now, it was a single step.

As I turned to leave, the soft clatter of bone bells sounded behind me.

"Seline."

The old witch doctor called my name. Not "hunter," not "prisoner," not "the Ashton girl." Seline. For the first time in nine days.

I paused, but did not turn around.

"When your mother saved my son back then, she asked for his name too. Not 'that werewolf,' but 'what is your name?' He was named Allen—the same name as the young werewolf behind you. It was no coincidence. I begged the Alpha to let that child inherit the name."

The night wind died down. The leaves of the silver oak no longer rustled. Allen Greymane. The young werewolf who had escorted me three times. The werewolf who had left a whetstone beneath my blanket. The werewolf who had personally brought his own uncle's evidence to the trial table. He inherited the name of a dead man, and that dead man was remembered only because my mother had asked for his name thirty years ago.

"Thank you," I said, unsure if I was thanking her for leaving the flowers, for sharing my mother's past, or simply for calling my name.

"Do not thank me," the bone bells jingled softly. "Thank your mother. She saved a name. I am merely paying her back."

I walked back along the pine needle path. When I passed the fork, the waning moon had already reached its zenith. Caine walked three paces behind me, keeping silent. The chime of the witch doctor's bone bells drifted from far behind, like the echo of moonlight catching the water.

And tomorrow, we would go to the Hunter Council together. Together, we would face the Council that had sealed my lineage for thirty years. Together, we would confront every secret left behind by Seville.

Together.