Chapter Three: The Monster Bleeds
"Who is there?" I asked, voice shaking, but the hall answered only with silence.
I opened the door, peered out, and found nothing. Only the cold emptiness of the corridor stared back at me.
There were no footsteps, no shadows, nothing at all.
But the silence didn't make me feel safer.
It made the house feel… wrong.
Someone had been there. I knew it.
And suddenly the walls of the pack house felt more dangerous than the dark forest outside.
I closed it and sank onto the edge of the bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle.
My thoughts spiraled, relentless. Kael Cinderclaw. His fortress. The stories of his wives. The inevitability of my death.
Sleep didn't come. Not that night.
I pulled on my cloak and slipped outside, letting the cold bite at my lungs.
I walked without thinking, letting my feet carry me wherever they wanted, away from the walls pressing in, away from everything I had once called life.
Trees thinned, the ground rose unevenly, and then I realized I'd wandered into the mountains.
That's when I heard it, a low, broken sound, unmistakably human.
I froze. My pulse quickened.
Following it, I found a man slumped against a jagged rock. Blood soaked through torn fabric. Shallow, ragged breaths.
Whoever had done this meant to leave him to die. No guards. No witnesses.
Instinct overtook fear. I knelt beside him, pressed my hands to the wound, and let the magic inside me flow. Warmth stirred beneath my skin, alive and humming with quiet power.
The warmth quickly turned to heat, and then to something far more dangerous—fire.
I gasped as the burning started, not in my hands, but beneath them. Along my ribs. Sharp, searing points of pain that made my breath catch.
The burns came one after another, one, then two, then three.
The burns came in rapid succession, like embers pressed into my skin from the inside out.
Four… then five.
I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out. The wound beneath my palms knitted together, flesh mending, blood flow stopping.
The magic poured out of me in a torrent I couldn't control.
Five marks in total.
When the healing finally stopped, I pulled my hands back, trembling. My fingers found my ribs instinctively, pressing against the fabric of my dress. I could feel them five small points of heat, already cooling.
Five more of the small marks I'd carried my whole life, now burned black.
I'd felt this before. Small healings left one or two burns. This... this had taken five.
I looked down at the stranger's chest. The wound was gone. His chest rose slowly, proof that he was breathing again.
I sat there shaking, exhausted and hollow.
For the first time, I didn't use my strange power to protect myself, but to save someone else.
Healing was a forbidden ability, one I had hidden for as long as I could remember and carried alone like a quiet curse.
No one could ever know. Ivy especially could never know.
I couldn't risk her being dragged into my chaos, couldn't let my secret become another danger circling her life.
It was mine to bear and mine to conceal, no matter the cost.
His body jerked violently.
Before I could react, a hand shot out, fingers clamping around my wrist, yanking me forward. Slammed against the stone. Breath knocked out of me.
Another hand gripped my throat.
"Don't move," he snarled. "Don't scream."
I froze. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark, sharp and predatory.
They swept over me, taking in every inch, before narrowing. Then recognition flashed across his face.
"Liora," he said slowly, almost as if the word carried the weight of a sentence.
My heart stuttered.
Alpha Kael Cinderclaw. My husband—the man I had been forced to marry.
The stories said Alpha Kael Cinderclaw was untouchable.
A monster, they said, a king among wolves.
But monsters, at least in the stories, weren't supposed to bleed.
And tonight… I had seen his blood.
"You healed me," he murmured, disbelief threaded in his voice. "A wolfless girl with forbidden power."
Fear coiled in my stomach as his gaze hardened, lethal and cold.
"You should never have touched me," he said.
I didn't struggle. I didn't scream. I only breathed shallowly, heart hammering.
"You should explain," he said, voice low, controlled. "Why a wolfless girl is using black magic on an Alpha."
"I didn't use black magic," I said, voice thin but steady.
"If not magic,then what?"
"With something I was born with." I said voice thin but steady
His eyes glinted faintly in the moonlight, sharp and searching. "Prove it," he said.
My pulse roared. Slowly, deliberately, I dragged my fingernail across my palm.
Warm blood welled, slick and real. I pressed it to my other hand, letting the magic move through me.
The burn came instantly. Sharp. Precise. A single point of fire on my left wrist, just below my palm.
I hissed through my teeth, but didn't stop. The magic flowed, warm and inevitable, knitting the flesh back together. The wound closed, absorbed as if it had never existed.
Another mark joined the others.
I pulled my hands apart, breathing hard. My left wrist throbbed where the fresh burn had settled into my skin.
Kael's eyes tracked the movement. His gaze locked onto my wrist.
"Give me your hand," he said. His voice was flat and commanding.
I hesitated.
"Now."
Slowly, I extended my left hand. He grabbed it, turned it over, his thumb pressing against the inside of my wrist.
Right where the burn was.
I flinched. The mark was still hot, hypersensitive. His touch sent a jolt of pain through me.
His grip loosened, not mercy, but understanding. "You were born with it," he said flatly.
"Yes," I whispered quietly
"That alone is enough to condemn you… and everyone connected to you."
My chest tightened, but I forced my voice steady. "Then kill me. Just don't touch them. My pack, my family, they didn't choose this."
"That's a lie," he said coldly.
"I'll do anything," I said instead. "Serve you, stay silent, let me be locked away if you want. Just don't touch them."
Several long, tense seconds passed while the air between us seemed to vibrate.
Then… something broke. Not entirely, but a tremor, a flicker of something forbidden, raw, impossible.
Then the bond snapped into place.
I felt it first, a pull, subtle, almost painful, threading through me. It called, whispered, tugged.
I realized in a heartbeat that he felt it too. That impossible, raw connection. Not for a wolfless girl. Not for a mateless woman.
Kael moved suddenly. Too fast. My body slammed against his as he pinned me to the rock.
Arms braced on either side, chest pressed to mine. Breath hitched in my throat. His strength held me flat, tight, contained.
"Clueless," he cursed, teeth grinding. "Worthless."
And then he spoke again, voice tearing through the cold. "What did you do to me?"
"What?" I stammered, heart hammering.
"Did you cast a spell on me? Try to bind us?" His grip tightened slightly. Eyes ablaze with confusion, rage, and something… else.
I froze, chest aching.
"I—I didn't…" I whispered, voice faltering.
Kael's dark eyes swept over me, measuring, calculating.
His body was tense, ready to kill, to destroy, to take.
Yet he didn't. His restraint was almost more terrifying than his fury.
He moved closer, dangerously close, his face inches from mine.
Breath warm against my cheek, eyes holding me like I was something alive and forbidden, something he couldn't destroy but couldn't touch.
My pulse thundered in my ears. My heart stuttered.
"I—" he began, lips brushing mine, stopping just short.
A sigh, sharp and ragged, left him. His jaw clenched. Something broke inside him and he cursed under his breath.
He pulled back slightly, just enough to ease the suffocating pressure, though the bond still hummed between us.
My hands tingled. Warm. Alive.
"You… feel it," he muttered, low, rough. "Do you have any idea what this is?"
I shook my head, helpless. "I don't understand. I just… saved you. That's all. I didn't do anything else."
Kael cursed under his breath, dark and bitter.
Then he turned away, storm barely restrained in every line of his body. My pulse thundered.
My pulse thundered as the bond between us refused to fade.
"A wolfless girl," he murmured to the night, voice almost strangled, "with forbidden power… and something I've never—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "Something I shouldn't want."
"I was never going to marry you," he continued .voice steady but dark. "Your pack made a foolish gamble."
My chest lurched. "Please—"
He looked back, just long enough to chill me completely.
"Now that I know what you are," he said quietly,
"destroying your pack would take a single command."
The ground beneath me felt unsteady.