chapter 15
653 Words
Chapter Fifteen: The Pull Beneath Her Skin
The dream came again.
But this time, it wasn’t a dream.
There was no forest.
No silver-eyed stranger reaching through the veil.
No riddles in moonlight.
There was only a heartbeat.
Not her own.
But within her.
Heavy. Measured. Possessive.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
And with each pulse, her mark burned brighter.
---
Seraphina sat up in bed, drenched in sweat.
She clutched her chest, breath shallow, as if her own lungs couldn’t hold the weight of what was inside her.
The bond.
The one buried.
The one sealed.
It wasn’t distant anymore.
It was inside her now—coiled behind her ribs, waking like fire through bone.
She pressed her palm to the mark at her collarbone.
It glowed softly in the dark.
Not gold.
Not blue.
But silver-shot obsidian.
The color of the fourth.
---
She stood.
Her body didn’t feel like hers.
It wasn’t possession.
It was expansion.
Like she was growing beyond the shell fate tried to force her into.
Everything was too loud. The wind outside. The thudding of Richard’s boots two floors down. The way Almond breathed when he meditated in the east wing. The way Alfred thought in silence near his war maps.
She felt all of it.
And something else.
Watching.
Waiting.
Calling her home.
---
She staggered to the mirror and stared.
Her eyes looked the same—but deeper. Like someone else had lived through them and returned.
“I’m not ready for this,” she whispered.
But the bond replied.
You were born ready.
---
Miriam’s warnings came back, but they sounded distant now. Hollow.
This didn’t feel wrong.
It didn’t feel dark.
It felt honest.
The other three—Alfred, Almond, Richard—they each made her feel wanted.
But this?
This made her feel known.
---
She touched her face.
Her skin was warmer.
Her pulse... slower.
Like her body was syncing to something ancient. Something older than the prophecy itself.
> “What if I’m not meant to choose?” she whispered to the empty air.
> “What if I’m meant to become?”
The realization hit her hard.
This wasn’t about desire.
It was about transcendence.
About breaking the chains the Moon placed around her life.
About claiming her birthright.
---
She stumbled back toward the window, needing air.
The sky was clouded.
The Moon hidden.
And yet, the stars shimmered harder than ever.
As if they, too, remembered her.
And him.
Her fingers gripped the sill.
She thought of Alfred—how he watched her without saying what he truly felt.
She thought of Almond—how he understood silence like it was a second language.
She thought of Richard—how he burned for her like a wildfire waiting to swallow everything in his path.
And then she thought of Theseus.
She had never touched him.
Never heard his voice in the waking world.
But she felt him.
Already inside her.
Already claiming space in her soul as if it had always belonged to him.
And the most terrifying part?
It didn’t scare her.
---
Her knees hit the floor.
Tears welled in her eyes—not from pain.
But from recognition.
She had spent her whole life feeling out of place.
Even around those who cared.
Even in the arms of those who wanted her.
But now?
Now she understood.
She had never belonged because part of her had been waiting.
For this moment.
For this rise.
For him.
And for herself.
---
“Gods help me,” she breathed.
“Because I’m not sure I’ll choose him.”
A pause.
“But I know I’ll never forget him.”
---
In the shadowed forest beyond the manor, Theseus stopped mid-step.
He smiled.
Not because she called for him again.
But because for the first time…
She stopped fighting.
And that meant everything was about to change.
---
- Writer
