Chapter 130
Jiselle
My younger self disappeared after she spoke those words.
You can still choose.
She didn’t fade. She stepped backward into the dark, into the stillness beyond the fractured room of memories, as if her part was done and now the rest was mine. Her presence left something behind though–clarity. A direction, however faint.
The ground beneath me steadied.
The air shifted.
And I felt it.
Not fire. Not the bond. Not Eira.
My wolf.
Faint, distant, but unmistakable. The way a heartbeat returns after being muffled for too long. A rhythm that belonged only to me. The part of me that had gone silent after the mark. That had curled in on itself after the pain. I hadn’t realized until now just how long I’d lived without her voice in my chest.
She wasn’t gone. She was hidden. Caged.
I turned toward the pull.
The walls peeled back like smoke. The hallways of memory narrowed. Shadows thinned. I walked without hesitation, no longer trying to change the path but follow it. It led downward–deeper into the version of myself I had spent the last year avoiding. Past the girl who had flinched under Kael’s touch. Past the warrior I had pretended to be. Past even the Sovereign I could have become.
At the end of a corridor of scorched glass, I found her.
My wolf.
Half in shadow, half in light, pacing inside a cage not built of steel, but of memory.
Bars forged from shame.
Chains twisted from betrayal.
And a lock sealed by fear.
She looked like she hadn’t moved in months–eyes wild, fur scorched at the edges, but her posture hadn’t slumped. She hadn’t bowed. She had waited.
She had endured.
And when she saw me, she stilled.
Her eyes were mine.
Recognition flickered between us–not instant, but real.
You came, I felt her say, though no words passed.
I stepped closer. My hands hovered at the edge of the cage, heat pricking at my fingertips.
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“I didn’t know how to find you before,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to see what they did to us.”
She didn’t move. But she didn’t turn away.
Behind me, I felt the presence stir.
Eira.
I didn’t need to look to know she was watching.
She had built this cage.
Not by force, but by erosion. She had fed it my doubts. Strengthened it with the silence of the people who should have defended me. She had reinforced it every time I’d told myself I was better off numb
“I won’t leave you here,” I told my wolf.
I reached for the lock–memory seared my hand the instant I touched it. The image of Max’s mark flashed before my eyes. The pain. The freezing. The
silence.
I hissed but didn’t let go.
My wolf stepped closer, her paws soundless on the memory–warped ground, fur glowing faintly where shadow met light. Her head lowered, eyes never leaving mine. When her nose brushed the inside of the bars, a shiver moved down my spine–subtle, instinctive, electric.
It was the first time we’d touched in what felt like forever.
And something sparked.
Not from pain. Not from power.
From recognition.
That ancient pulse flared again–wild, unrefined, mine. The bond we once shared reignited like old flint catching breath. It wasn’t Eira’s magic. It wasn’t the Sovereign’s fire. It was something older. Truer.
Ours.
Then, faintly–threaded through that pulse like a hidden note in a song–another presence flickered.
A voice.
Not mine. Not hers.
Nathaniel.
It moved through the bond like a gust of wind in still air. Not a full voice, not words carried clearly across the tether. But enough to feel. Enough to know.
You’re not alone, it whispered.
You never were.
My throat tightened.
And for the first time in what felt like lifetimes, I believed it.
That was all I needed.
My hand wrapped around the lock that bound the cage, and I squeezed. Not with magic, but with conviction. The kind that comes from choosing to fight
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Chapter 130
for yourself for all your broken, ecarred, imperfect pieces.
The lock pulsed under my grip. Warm. Alive
Then it cracked.
Once.
Twice
A shudder rippled through the bars. The cage groaned as if realizing it no longer had a purpose.
And with a sharp burst of white hot light-
The chains disintegrated.
The bars crumbled to dust.
And the cage fell away.
She didn’t lunge. Didn’t sprint out like something freed in a frenzy. She stepped forward slowly. Carefully. Eyes locked with mine as if testing the
moment.
1 braced, part of me still afraid. Afraid she’d vanish. Afraid she’d turn away. Afraid she wouldn’t want me anymore.
Afraid that after everything, we wouldn’t fit together again.
But she didn’t run.
She stepped closer, one pace, then another, until our bodies aligned–shadow to flame, instinct to soul.
And then, gently-
She stepped into me.
Not with force. Not with a crash of elements. Not as a collision.
But as merging
Two halves drawn back into one whole.
Not lost.
Not overwritten.
77%
Integrated.
Her power didn’t consume mine–it danced with it. Her breath became mine. Her memories curled against my own. Her pain settled into my bones like something I had always known.
One soul.
One heartbeat.
One wild, relentless force.
And in that moment, I felt it all.
The fracture.
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Chapter 130
The healing.
The breath I hadn’t taken in so long finally released.
I wasn’t perfect.
I wasn’t whole in the way people imagined.
But I was complete.
For the first time since the mark.
77%
Since the cage.
Since the Sovereign.
I was me.
Every sense sharpened. My lungs filled like they hadn’t in months. My skin burned, but it was mine. My claws flexed beneath the surface, ready to strike.. My eyes blinked open–not just human, not just wolf–both.
Power surged through me, not from Eira, not from Kael, not from prophecy.
From me.
I turned.
And Eira was there.
No longer regal. No longer shadowed. She stood in the empty room like a woman on the edge of defeat but unwilling to accept it. Her expression was unreadable–part fury, part grief.
“I gave you a place,” she said. “I carried what you couldn’t.”
“You caged what I was too afraid to face,” I replied, my voice steadier than I’d ever heard it. “And then you convinced me I needed you to survive it.”
“I did what had to be done,” she hissed. “Without me, you would’ve broken.”
“I did break,” I said. “But I healed around the cracks. And I didn’t need your fire to do it.”
Her flames flared again, desperate now. “You don’t understand what you’ve invited in. What it means to carry all of it alone.”
I stepped forward, my wolf rising inside me with every stride.
“I’m not alone.”
Her face twisted. “You think merging with your wolf makes
you
invincible?”
“No,” I said, stopping just a few paces from her. “It reminds me that I’ve always been something more than what you tried to make me.”
The room around us burned. Not with destruction/but renewal. My flame–new, different–rose around me, silver–white, streaked with deep crimson. It didn’t hiss. It howled.
I looked at her–at the woman I could have become. The one I almost did.
And I said, clear and final:
“I’m done borrowing your fire.”
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Chapter 130
She flinched.
“I have my own.”
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