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. Just the cold emptiness of the corridor.
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 him 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, alive, humming beneath my skin.
The warmth turned to heat. Then to 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.
One. Two. Three.
The burns came in rapid succession, like embers pressed into my skin from the inside out.
Four. 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.
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. He was breathing.
And I was shaking, exhausted, hollow.
For the first time, I didn't use my strange power to protect myself, but to save someone else.
Healing. A gift I'd hidden for as long as I could remember, carried alone like a quiet curse.
No one could know. Not even Ivy. Especially not Ivy.
I couldn't risk her being dragged into my chaos, couldn't let my secret become another danger circling her life.
This power was mine to bear, 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. Recognition.
"Liora," he said slowly, almost as if the word carried the weight of a sentence.
My heart stuttered.
Alpha Kael Cinderclaw. My husband.
"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 magic on an Alpha."
"I didn't use black magic," I said, voice thin but steady.
"Every kind of magic leaves a stain," he replied. "Every spell has a cost."
"I didn't cast a spell. I healed you."
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.
One more mark.
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. Voice flat. 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.
"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."
He studied me. Long, tense seconds where the air vibrated between us.
Then… something broke. Not entirely, but a tremor, a flicker of something forbidden, raw, impossible.
The bond.
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.
The bond didn't fade, it pulsed stronger, impossible and alive.
"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 continues .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, calm and lethal, "destroying your pack would take a single command."
The ground beneath me felt unsteady.
"I won't kill you tonight," he continued. "Not because you deserve mercy. Because watching you struggle, because seeing this… bond…" His eyes flickered, almost hungry. "…it teaches me far more."
"Watching you struggle will be far more informative."
Then he turned away. A shadow among shadows.
And he disappeared into the night, leaving the pull of the bond lingering like fire across my skin, impossible to ignore.
My chest ached. I had no idea what it meant, only that it was dangerous, forbidden, and utterly out of my control.
Then, finally, he vanished into the shadowed trees.
I remained pressed to the cold stone, chest heaving, hands tingling with the lingering heat of him, the impossible bond between us.
But beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, there was something else.
Pain.
I pressed my hand to my ribs, felt the six fresh burns throbbing beneath my skin. They'd cooled now, hardened into scars.
I thought of all the other marks scattered across my body.
The ones on my wrists from healing Ivy's scrapes.
The ones along my spine from mending my own broken bones.
The cluster on my left shoulder from saving that village child years ago.
I'd never counted them, Never thought to.
They were just... there. Part of me. Like freckles.
But now, standing alone in the cold mountain air, Kael's words echoed in my mind