8 Chapter 8
Damien recognized the bracelet.
A small piece of moonstone was tied to it. We’d found it together under the moonlight, right. after I became his mate.
Damien grabbed the wolf’s hand, his grip so tight it nearly crushed the bones. “This bracelet! Where did you get it?!” he roared, sounding like a wounded beast.
The wolf he’d grabbed was an old she–wolf in charge of clearing debris.
She’d slipped it off my wrist, thinking it was pretty, and kept it for herself.
Seeing the raw Alpha fury in Damien, the old wolf was terrified and didn’t dare lie. “I… I took it from a dead young she–wolf. She… she was thrown into the ravine.”
Hearing this, Damien squeezed her hand even tighter. “Her body! Where is it?!”
The old wolf’s wrist made a sickening crunching sound from the pressure. “Long… long gonc…
The carrion wolves in the ravine… they would have eaten her… Bones… probably can’t even find the bones… Who knows where her ashes are now?”
When Damien heard “eaten,” his vision went black, and he collapsed on the spot.
The old wolf, terrified, quickly dropped the bracelet and scrambled away. “It wasn’t me! Don’t come after me! No one claimed the she–wolf’s body. We just followed pack rules!”
“Here’s your bracelet! Just leave me alone!*
And with that, she disappeared into the trees.
Damien stared at the bracelet lying in the mud before him. The moonstone still gave off a soft glow.
In his mind, he saw me under the moonlight, smiling shyly and happily up at him.
Damien’s fingers dug deep, bloody gashes into the earth, mud mixing with his blood.
“Elara… My Elara… What am I going to do?”
“I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. Forgive me. Come back to me, please?” he sobbed like a lost.
child.
“I was out of my mind. I just thought… I just thought if you gave your Soul–Spark for Seraphina, the whole pack would finally accept you, respect you.”
“Then you’d have what you always wanted–a real home, the love of all the wolves.”
|| Clubter fl
Damien didn’t know that ever since I met him, ever since I became his fated mate, I stopped caring about those empty honors.
He didn’t know that my heart had died on that altar, that I stopped struggling so fiercely not. because of the priestess’s enchantments.
It was because he, the one who had pulled me from the depths of my loneliness, had once aga
again pushed me into an even deeper abyss.
Until my wolf spirit faded, I never understood why everything I had, every bond I cherished, was so easily snatched away by Seraphina.
The pack’s attention, and now, even my Alpha.
Maybe I never should have been cursed with this “twin Soul–Spark” gift from the Moon Goddess.
Damien picked up my bracelet and stumbled back to Seraphina’s recovery den.
He had questions for Seraphina. He needed answers.
After Seraphina “woke up from her faint, she saw the distant pack elders and Damien’s mother looking worried and preoccupied.
When they saw Seraphina was awake, they didn’t rush over to her. Instead, they just sat to the side, sighing.
Damien’s mother was also silent, her expression complicated.
Seraphina wondered, Did Elara suddenly show up and tell them something?
But that couldn’t be right. If Elara appeared, the elders would definitely force her to apologize
to me.
After all, I had “left without reason” for so long and hadn’t come to see her.
Besides, that old priestess and her Chieftain were still waiting outside. They wouldn’t leave until they got what they wanted.
Just as Seraphina was puzzling over it, Damien walked in. He reeked of blood and the damp earth of the Darkwood.
Seraphina immediately saw the moonstone bracelet clutched tightly in Damien’s hand–my bracelet.
She quickly came up with a plan.
Clutching her chest, her eyes red–rimmed, she spoke to Damien in a weak voice. “Damien… Is sister Elara still angry with me? Won’t she come see me?”
4 Chapter B
“I knew it. I’ve broken sister Elara’s heart.”
“But I had no choice. I was under that shadow curse. If it wasn’t to survive, to keep serving the pack, I would never have let her give up her precious Soul–Spark”
Seraphina could cry on command, her voice heartbreakingly pitiful.
But no one in the den comforted her.
Seraphina felt something was wrong. Usually, by now, everyone would be consoling her and. cursing me for being ungrateful and selfish.
The distant pack elders and Damien’s mother just gave Seraphina a complicated look and said nothing.
Damien walked step by step to Seraphina’s bed. His golden wolf eyes were dead, his voice as cold as a winter wind. “Were you really so cursed that you needed someone to sacrifice a Soul–Spark to save you?”
Seraphina’s heart leaped in alarm, but she quickly composed herself. wolf spirit
Course. My was fading. All the pack priests and healers saw it. Would I fake something like that?”
“I’m not like sister Elara. I wouldn’t use tricks to deceive the Alpha, and I certainly wouldn’t lie to the entire pack.
“Did sister Elara tell you some nonsense? She must be jealous that I got your attention.”
Seraphina didn’t know why Damien was suddenly questioning her, but in front of the elders, she had to stick to her story.
Damien held up the bracelet, stained with mud and blood, almost shoving it in Seraphina’s face. “Did you do this?”
