Page 20

Chapter

Twenty

My inner wolf has been pushing to come out for the entirety of our trek back. I’m growing wearier by the moment, and it won’t be long before I can’t fight my other nature any longer.

The ruins rise around us in jagged spires as we move back toward camp, the now-smaller group walking in tense silence after what we pulled from the archive.

I lag behind, my bones aching with the intent to transform into a beast. Not only that, but my mind is also all over the place.

Too many pieces rattle around—what we’ve seen, what we’ve only begun to understand.

The cursed ritual, broken bloodlines. The creeping pulse of Courtsview that still lingers beneath my skin.

Lys drifts back beside me as if summoned by my thoughts. His steps are quiet, and he doesn’t speak right away. We walk in silence for a few minutes before he speaks. “It’s unsettling, isn’t it? When the foundation cracks beneath the story you were raised to believe.”

I glance at him. “You sound like someone who enjoys watching it happen.”

A faint smile curves at his mouth. “Not enjoy. Understand.”

“Same difference.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You would.”

The others keep walking ahead, giving us a strange pocket of privacy inside the sprawling ruin.

Lys’s voice lowers, coaxing. “You assumed you were born of two ancient bloodlines—one hunter, one wolf. But your mother…”

I freeze. “What do you think you know about her?”

He watches my face carefully. “She wasn’t born wolf.”

My heart skips. “What? No. She’s part of Harek’s pack.”

“She was bitten. Infected, and not by accident.” His voice is gentle, almost soothing.

“Not possible. She?—”

“The coven your pack still works with experimented for years—seeking ways to control the curse, to expand the bloodline’s strength. Most of their subjects died. Or worse. But your mother survived. Rare, exceptionally rare.”

“You’re wrong.”

He steps closer, voice tightening like a secret slipping loose. “She became something the pack never intended—something the witches feared. A wolf who carried human will. When she met your father, her altered blood mixed with his hunter line.”

The pulse in my ears drowns out everything else.

“Wait.” I stare at him, heart pounding at double speed. “Are you saying… I was never supposed to exist?”

Lys’s eyes gleam faintly in the dim light. “No. You were never designed to exist. There’s a difference.”

I swallow hard. The ground feels unsteady beneath my feet.

“You are not just hunter, Eira. Not just wolf. You are what the curse cannot predict.” His voice dips even lower. “That’s precisely why they fear you.”

A sick weight coils in my stomach.

Everything I thought I was—how I fit into this curse—shifts like sand. My mother’s nature, her choice to leave, everything I believed about how doomed this path was… suddenly it feels smaller.

And far, far more dangerous.

Lys watches my silence like a patient hunter. “You aren’t bound by the old rules. The question is, will you allow others to keep writing them for you?”

I don’t answer, and we manage to fall farther back from the others. Every so often, Lys glances at me with an expression I can’t quite read. It’s somewhere between concern and curiosity. I can’t tell where he lands.

If Harek were with me instead of him, he would comfort me. But obviously, I can’t expect that from a fae I’ve barely known.

We eventually reach the camp as dusk settles, but I hardly feel the cold.

Harek catches my arm the moment I stop. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

He studies me for a breath, like he can sense the storm swirling beneath my skin.

I can’t hold it back but am careful to keep my voice even. “Harek. Did you know my mother wasn’t born wolf?”

His brow furrows. “What?”

“Did you know she was bitten?” My voice tightens. “Turned. The pack’s coven experimented on her, and she survived. That’s why she survived… why I exist.”

His eyes widen, confusion flashing quickly into something sharper. “Who told you that?”

“Lys.”

“Of course he did.” Harek’s jaw clenches. “And you believe him?”

I search his face, willing him to deny it with certainty, but I see only hurt and frustration. And fear I’ve never wanted to put there.

“I don’t want to believe anything. I only want the truth.”

His voice drops. “My parents never told me anything like that. I swear to you, this is the first I’ve heard of it—if it’s even true.” He glares in Lys’s direction. “How would he know, anyway?”

“But it’s possible,” I press. “Isn’t it?”

He hesitates.

It carves a deeper crack than any lie.

“Anything is possible, but I don’t know what they kept from me. The one thing I can promise you is I’ve never hidden anything from you. Ever.”

His honesty stings more than if he’d lied. It means he’s as lost as I am.

“I just need to understand who I am.” My voice cracks. “And it feels like I may never know fully. The fact that my mother was forced to keep so much from me… it makes learning the full truth all the more difficult. Maybe even impossible.”

His expression shifts from wounded to fierce. “You are you . Not what they did, not what he says. And not even what happened to your mother. You get to decide who you are.”

“Except I have no say in what happened to my past, or how it forges my future.” I step back. The more I feel the weight of Lys’s words, the more I feel the terrifying pull of something new—something neither Harek nor my father understands.

And I don’t know how to explain that without shattering us both.

Instead, I turn away. “I need space.”

I walk away from him with heaviness pressing on every side. But I barely have time to process any of this before we reach the enclave and begin unraveling scrolls.

The last one crackles softly beneath my fingertips as we unseal it.

Einar leans close, brow furrowed, his voice low as we translate the fractured script word by word. Lys stands slightly behind, watching with unsettling patience.

Harek waits off to the side, clearly annoyed by being pushed to the side. Every time our gazes meet, we both look away. This new revelation about my mother has clearly put even more distance between us than before.

The scroll’s ink is unsurprisingly faded, but the message is clear.

The Pact of Binding

The wolves and witches, joined with the old blood of hunters, in defiance of the High Fae Lord of Courtsview. Power drawn from three lines. Strength sealed by shared oath.

A hunter born from unity to destroy tyranny.

I exhale slowly. “It was supposed to be shared. A mantle, passed willingly.”

“A rebellion forged in balance,” Einar agrees, tapping the next section.

But the text shifts as we read on.

Yet power gathered breeds fear. The witches wove a safeguard. The wolves demanded control.

The oath split. The sacrifice bound. One life feeds another. Blood roots deep.

The hunter’s rise demands death.

My stomach twists. “They corrupted it and turned unity into sacrifice.”

Lys’s voice is soft directly behind me. “Fear of losing power always births corruption.”

Einar’s jaw tightens as he reads further. “The witches feared the hunter might turn against them once the tyrant fell, and the wolves feared retaliation. So they locked the mantle into a blood-claim cycle.”

I nod, understanding. “The curse of parent and child fighting to the death.”

“And so it repeats,” Lys murmurs.

The final fragment seals it.

Only through severing lineage or death may the mantle pass.

Balance broken cannot restore itself.

I close my eyes, sick with the weight of it. The loophole I hoped for—cooperation, unity, shared strength—it was never written into the binding. My hope was built on a story they rewrote long ago.

This isn’t just a curse. It’s betrayal, calcified into blood.

My voice is barely audible. “We aren’t victims of fate. We’re victims of greed.”

Beside me, Einar’s face darkens, but he places a hand gently on my shoulder, a silent echo of my grief.

Lys speaks again, voice quiet but heavy. “But you aren’t bound by their rules, Eira. You were born from what should never have mixed. You stand outside their intent.”

His words feel like both a lifeline and a trap.

I don’t reply. Because I don’t know if I should feel relief or terror.

The chamber feels even colder now. Flickering wards cast long, shivering shadows across the ancient stone, but I barely see them. The words on the scroll loop through my mind like a chant I can’t silence.

One life feeds another. Balance broken cannot restore itself.

I stand near the edge of the archive, gripping the cool stone ledge, breath unsteady.

Harek watches me from across the room, but I can’t meet his gaze yet. I’m not ready for the weight I’ll see in his eyes. The disappointment and grief I know mirrors my own.

Not now, not after this.

Soft measured steps approach behind me.

Lys speaks without preamble, his voice like silk sliding across glass. “They chose to bind their power to sacrifice because they lacked vision. They feared losing what they built.”

I say nothing.

“But you,” he continues, “stand outside their fear. You were not shaped by their rules—you’re their fracture made flesh.”

I swallow hard. “I’m still part of them.”

“More than that.” He steps closer, close enough that I feel the warmth of him behind me, but he doesn’t touch. “You’re hybrid. The first of something neither hunter nor wolf intended.”

His voice dips lower, almost a whisper against the back of my neck.

“They tried to bind power to blood. But you? You’re living proof that power can evolve . That it can break free.”

I close my eyes, and my heart thunders. The words wrap around the part of me that’s terrified, not just of dying but of hurting the people I love under the weight of this cursed legacy. “If there’s no way to break it, then what am I supposed to do?”

“There may yet be a way.” Lys’s words are smooth and promising. “Not through balance or passive hope, but through reshaping the binding itself.”

I turn slightly, searching his face. “You mean rewriting the curse.”

His smile is faint. “It won’t come without cost. The kind of cost others might not be willing to face.” He leans just enough that his voice dips like a secret. “But I believe you could.”

My breath hitches. The pull is sharp and dangerous. In this moment, he sees the part of me I don’t dare admit to anyone else—the part that isn’t ready to surrender. Not yet.

Not to fate, fear, or even to love.

But transformation.