The Ashes of The Rejected Queen

Chapter 8 — The Thing I Could Do

Speed came naturally.

That was the first revelation. Mara set up markers across the training ground and had me run them simple enough, something I had done before in the pack's basic fitness drills. Except that within three runs I was moving at a pace that made Juno, watching from the fence, stand up slowly with her mouth open.

By the fifth run I was moving fast enough that Mara held up a hand for me to stop and stood very still for a moment.

"Do it again," she said. "Slower."

"That was slower."

She looked at me. "Sera. That last pass you left the starting marker and arrived at the end marker before the sound of your first footstep reached me."

I stared at her.

"That is not normal wolf speed," she said. "That is not even normal Black Luna speed. That is something else."

"What something else?"

"I don't know yet." She was quiet. Thinking. In a way that was, I was realizing, very unlike Mara she was someone who always seemed to know. Watching her not know something was unsettling. "Do it again. Normal pace this time. And pay attention to what you feel in your body when you move."

I ran it at what felt like a jog to me. Came back. Looked at her.

Mara was frowning. "You feel nothing? No effort?"

"Nothing."

"Not even from Nyx? No sense of her pushing?"

I checked. Felt inward for Nyx the way I was learning to that specific interior attention. She was there, easy and calm, barely engaged.

"She's barely doing anything," I said. "It's like it's like the speed isn't coming from her."

"Where is it coming from?"

I thought about it. Paid attention in a way I hadn't before. The speed, when it came, felt like it originated from somewhere in my chest — the same place the bond used to be. The same place Nyx lived, but not Nyx exactly. Something underneath Nyx. Something older.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

Mara turned toward the tree line and called "Dax."

The man on the fence post didn't move.

"Dax, come here."

A long pause. Then he stood, tucked away whatever he was whittling, and walked over with the energy of someone doing you an enormous favor by existing in your direction.

He looked at me. "Run to the far marker and back."

I looked at Mara. She nodded.

I ran.

When I came back, Dax was looking at me with his head slightly tilted and his stone eyes doing something that was not quite alarm but was adjacent to it.

"Hm," he said.

"Very helpful, Dax," Mara said.

"I've seen that once before," he said. "Twelve years ago. Wolf named Torren. He could move like that." He looked at me steadily. "He also had a gift that wasn't speed."

"What gift?" I asked.

"He could feel lies." Dax said it flatly. "Like a physical sensation. Someone lied near him and he felt it as pain." He paused. "Useful. Also exhausting."

I looked at Mara. "Is that what I have? Some kind of secondary ability?"

"I am not certain," she said. "The Black Lunas before you all had primary and secondary gifts. The primary is always some combination of speed, strength, and the shield. The secondary" she shook her head slightly "varies. Calla could speak to the dead. Not often. Not clearly. But on certain nights, under certain circumstances."

I absorbed that. "What do you think mine is?"

She met my eyes.

"I think," she said carefully, "that we need to test something. And I want you to be prepared for the result to be uncomfortable."

"Tell me."

"The bond system. I said the Black Luna has a connection to it can sense violations, broken bonds, forced bonds." She paused. "I want to see if yours goes further than sensing."

"Further how?"

She was quiet for a moment. "Calla could not only sense broken bonds. She could reach into them. Influence them. Not control them free will always remains. But she could strengthen a bond that was being suppressed. Or"

"Or weaken one," I said slowly.

"Or, in extreme cases of violation" Mara's voice was very careful "sever one cleanly. Without the damage a normal rejection causes. A true severance. Merciful."

The training ground was very quiet.

I thought about the bond scar in my chest. About how a normal rejection felt like being ripped open. About what it might mean to be able to do that cleanly instead.

"How do we test it?" I asked.

"There are two wolves in the Sanctum living with a suppressed bond. They are mates who cannot acknowledge each other one comes from a pack that forbade the match for political reasons. They have been in pain for eight months." Mara looked at me carefully. "I want you to sit with them. See if you feel anything. Do not try to do anything just feel."

"And if I can help them?"

"Then we will know what your secondary gift is."

I nodded. "When?"

"This evening."

She turned back to the training ground. "Until then" she glanced over her shoulder "let's find out how high you can jump."

I looked at the trees surrounding the ground. The tallest one was maybe thirty meters.

"You're not serious," I said.

She was absolutely serious.

Six hours later I was sitting across from two wolves who hadn't been able to touch each other in eight months, and something inside me was waking up that made Nyx go completely, reverently still. Like she was in the presence of something she recognized from a very long time ago. Something sacred. Something that was going to change everything.

I hadn't touched them yet.

I hadn't said a word.

And already the air between those two wolves was beginning to shift.