Debt to the Devil

RECKONING

I was already beginning to realize, even before she did, that she was a wolf. And that seemed a problem.

I stood outside Cecelia’s door that evening, listening to the faint sound of her uneven breathing carrying through the wooden door.

To anyone else, it would’ve been nothing. To me, it felt Internally like a warning I couldn’t ignore.

It was everything. Heightened senses. Restlessness. The shift in her scent. Pain that didn’t belong to a human body.

My jaw tightened.

“She doesn’t know,” River said quietly from behind me.

I didn’t turn to look at him.

“Of course she doesn’t,” I replied, my voice low. “If she did… this would look very different.”

River didn’t respond immediately. He didn’t even need to. We both knew what it meant, the cause of her fear, panic and pain.

Worse, I knew that she would have to deal with the acceptance soon. But none of all those things bothered me as much as the fact that she reminded me strongly of someone.

Someone from my past.

And I wasn’t sure which outcome was more terrifying.

“She’s changing,” he added after a moment.

“No,” I corrected, my gaze fixed on the door. “She’s waking up.”

The difference mattered. More than he realized.

I pushed the door open without knocking. She was on the bed, curled in on herself, her body trembling like it was fighting something. Something it didn’t understand.

Sweat clung to her skin, her breaths shallow and uneven. And her now change scent… it hit me immediately. Stronger than before when she was just an ordinary human.

The truth settled gently in me that she was no longer human. Not anymore. But something told me I would have a harder time helping her settle her new reality.

“Marcus…” Cecilia whispered under the sheets, her voice breaking as her eyes found mine. “I think something’s wrong with me.”

Every instinct in me reacted at once, eager to protect her. But I knew I couldn’t protect her from what she was facing. She had to deal with it, I thought.

Slowly, I moved to her side, bending down beside the bed as my hand hovered over hers for a second before settling against her arm.

Her skin was too warm and her pulse was too fast.

“It’s just a fever,” I said calmly.

A deliberate lie.

Her brows furrowed weakly. “No… it’s not. I can hear things I shouldn’t be hearing. Feel… things I shouldn’t feel…” She gasped suddenly, her body tensing. “It hurts, Marcus… it feels like my bones are…”

“I know.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them. Her eyes widened slightly.

“You know?” she echoed, confusion cutting through her hurting expression.

I held her gaze tight. And then I did what I had done for centuries. Buried the truth.

“You’re just overwhelmed,” I said instead. “Your body’s reacting to stress.”

Another lie. Another shovel of sand over the actual truth. Because I thought that would destroy her if she wasn’t ready for it.

What was more important with me was how I was feeling within. It had been centuries since I felt this way.

Since something… or someone… had managed to break through the control I built so carefully over time.

I didn’t believe in fate. Didn’t trust it either, as I’d always thought I didn’t need it. But standing here, looking at Cecelia, it felt like something far more stronger than reason was playing a game I wasn’t prepared for.

And this was simply because… she looked almost exactly like her. The memory hit me without warning…

My Anya was standing in the forest, the sunlight against her face. Her laughter rang throughout the ancient place.

“You don’t have to be this cold all the time, Marcus.” Anya had said to me.

Her voice. God. How I missed it.

I hadn’t heard it in centuries, and yet it came back like it had never left.

“I lead,” I had replied back then, my tone sharper than necessary. “I don’t have the luxury of softness.”

She had smiled at that.

“Everyone does,” Anya said. “You just don’t allow yourself to.”

I remember watching her walk toward me, fearless in a way no one else had ever been.

Like she didn’t see the monster everyone else feared. Or like she simply didn’t care.

The memory shattered and another one replaced it. A much darker one.

I remembered the blood, the screams… the war. Rival factions tearing through everything in their path.

And Anya lying on the ground lifeless. Gone. Because I hadn’t been fast enough. I hadn’t been able to protected her like I promised.

My jaw clenched, forcing the memory back where it belonged. Dead and buried. Just like it was supposed to be.

But Cecelia made that impossible. She wasn’t supposed to exist. Not like this. Not with that same face of my old love

And not with that force that pulled relentlessly at my wolf from within… awakening a feeling I had long since killed.

Perhaps this was just to see if I would fail again, I thought. Perhaps it was happening because it was something I deserved.

I looked down at her now, her body still trembling underneath the sheets, and I felt that same need to protect someone fragile in a world that tried to destroy anything soft.

It was apparently a cruel joke. That’s what this was. Thrown at me by old cruel fate, which seemed to have brought back the same woman I’d loved in a different form.