10 Chapter 10
For killing a pack member (even though Seraphina deserved it) and causing chaos in the pack, Damien was temporarily stripped of some of his Alpha powers by the council of elders and imprisoned in the pack’s forbidden zone to reflect.
As for Seraphina, her wolf spirit was completely gone, with no chance of revival.
The distant pack elders, having experienced a rollercoaster from hope to despair in a short time, hastily left this place of trouble, filled with a complex guilt towards me as they departed.
On her way to visit Damien in the forbidden zone, Damien’s mother received a somewhat worn, moon–grass woven knot from one of the distant pack elders.
They couldn’t face Damien now, nor did they know how to face my spirit, which might have already dispersed.
But they knew Damien alone wasn’t the sole cause of all this.
It was also their years of neglecting me and indulging Seraphina.
So, they couldn’t forgive themselves even more.
They would live in pain and guilt for the rest of their days.
Damien looked at his mother across from him.
She looked like she had aged ten years in an instant, her hair losing its shine.
His mother took the knot from her pouch and handed it to Damien.
Damien’s eyes, which had been dead and empty moments before, flared with an intense light upon seeing the knot, only to dim again, filled with endless pain.
It was a Moon Goddess’s true–love knot.
When I first came to the pack, during my first Moon Festival, the priestess had given them out as blessings.
Inside, I had secretly hidden a strand of Damien’s wolf fur and prayed under the moon for our souls to be forever bound.
So, from our very first meeting, I had already carved him into the depths of my soul.
But Damien hadn’t known.
Back then, he only knew he instinctively wanted to be near me, that my scent calmed him.
He couldn’t understand the way I looked at him.
10 Chapter 10
Even knowing half of her Soul–Spark was tied to him, I never asked for anything.
Damien suddenly remembered me once gently placing my hand on his heart.
Whispering to him.
“It’s so good. If it’s you, that’s more than good, my Alpha.”
Damien hadn’t understood the depth of her words then, but now, he finally did.
But it was all too late.
The once all–powerful Alpha now cried like a lost, wounded pup.
He repeatedly slammed his head against the cold stone wall, letting out choked, desperate roars, begging me to come back.
In the empty, forbidden zone, only Damien’s anguished cries and the backlash from the severed. soul–bond remained.
Damien’s mother watched her son, helpless.
She knew the whole story.
But for her son’s past safety, and for the family’s honor, she had hidden everything.
“It’s just one Soul–Spark, Elara. How can you be so selfish?” That sentence echoed like a curse in Damien’s and his mother’s minds.
Damien’s mother had once begged me not to mention that forbidden childhood ritual.
I had agreed.
But in the end, Damien found out anyway, in the most brutal way possible.
That night, word came from the forbidden zone that Damien’s wolf spirit had faded.
Elder Lyra, the High Priestess, determined it was due to the soul–bond backlash combined with his own will to die.
It seemed that once Damien learned the whole truth, especially the truth about my Soul–Spark being tied to his, he had lost all desire to live.
Damien’s mother prepared her son’s remains.
Among his belongings, she found the moonstone bracelet, stained with blood and dirt, and that
true–love knot
Inside the knot, carved with extremely fine lines, was a sentence in the ancient wolf tongue: To win a wolf’s heart, forever together under the moon’s start.”
