Chapter 7 – The Marked One
508 Words
Lira didn’t expect betrayal to come from someone she trusted.
But it did.
The next morning, she woke to find her healer’s hut ransacked. Herbs thrown everywhere. Her patient records burned. And the folder — Kael’s folder — gone.
Panic hit her chest like a stone.
She ran straight to Kael’s cabin.
He was gone.
So was Torran.
A cold sweat broke over her skin.
She rushed to the border, instincts screaming. If Torran had figured out she’d found the truth, he’d never let her walk away. But why take Kael? He needed him alive — didn’t he?
She stopped dead when she saw claw marks in the dirt. A scuffle. Dragged footprints.
And something else.
A symbol carved into the tree bark.
A circle with an eye in the center.
Lira’s breath caught. It was a witch’s mark — a warning, not a summoning.
They’re watching.
She turned and ran.
⸻
By nightfall, she reached the hidden glade — a place Kael once mentioned in his journal. A place witches used to gather before they were driven out by the old Alpha.
The glade was silent. Moonlight spilled through the trees like silver fire.
Lira stepped into the clearing, heart pounding. “I know you’re here!” she shouted. “I need help. Please!”
Wind rustled the trees.
Then a whisper.
“You shouldn’t have come alone, girl.”
A woman stepped from the shadows. Pale as ash. Eyes silver. Another followed. And another.
Three witches.
“We warned your pack not to touch the blood magic,” one of them hissed. “But your Beta did more than touch it.”
Lira bowed her head. “Torran used Kael. He brought something back inside him. Now he’s trying to make another.”
The witches studied her, heads tilting like curious crows.
One spoke. “And what will you do, little healer? Cry at his feet and beg him to remember?”
“I’ll stop him,” Lira said.
The witches smirked.
“I want to break the binding spell,” she continued. “Free Kael from whatever’s inside him.”
“Foolish,” another witch said. “The soul-binding is permanent. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
They circled her now.
“Unless the marked vessel chooses to reject the bond. To fight it.”
“He’s trying,” Lira said.
“Then you must help him win,” said the lead witch. “Before Torran feeds him to the Shadow Root. That is how the second vessel will be born.”
“What’s the Shadow Root?”
But the witches were already fading into mist.
“Wait!” she cried. “Where is he?”
Only one voice answered — faint and cold.
“Follow the blood.”
⸻
Lira didn’t sleep.
She didn’t cry.
She packed herbs, a blade, and Kael’s journal.
And as the sun rose, for the first time, she didn’t feel like a girl hiding in the background.
She felt like someone who could save an Alpha.
Or die trying.
- Writer
