The room remained cold long after Corin stopped speaking.
The glowing silver crystals on the walls stayed dim, pulsing with a weak, hesitant light that did nothing to wash away the sudden dread in my chest.
Vance didn’t let go of his sword hilt.
His massive knuckles were white, his jaw locked tight as he stared at the old healer.
“The darkness from twenty-three years ago?” Vance’s deep voice cut through the quiet, flat but dangerous.
“The Alphas who betrayed the throne are either old men or dead, Corin.
Who else is out there?” Corin slowly stood up, his ancient bones popping.
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he gestured toward a heavy oak door carved with the image of a rising phoenix.
“Come.
The air in this healing room is too heavy for the truths you need to hear.
There are things Vance does not know.
Things your mother, Queen Seraphina, kept hidden even from her own guard.” He led us down a long, winding corridor made of smooth white stone.
This deeper part of the sanctuary felt like a tomb—quiet, ancient, smelling of dust and old parchment.
We entered a vast council chamber.
In the center sat a long stone table, its surface scratched and ancient.
I sat at the edge, my hand instinctively dropping back to my stomach.
Vance stood right behind my chair, an unmovable wall of iron.
“The history books in the outside world tell a simple story,” Corin began, leaning his weathered hands on the stone.
“They say the Alphas grew tired of the royal bloodline’s rules.
They call the Night of Ashes a simple uprising of wolves wanting freedom from the silver crown.” “It was an uprising,” Vance interrupted, his silver eyes narrowing into slits.
“I saw the banners, Corin.
I saw the Blackfang crests, the Crescent Moon crests.
It was the Alphas.” “They were the blades, Vance.
Not the hand holding them,” Corin countered softly.
He looked at me, his eyes clouding over.
“The official history is a lie created to protect the pride of the packs.
The Alphas were nothing but pawns.” “Pawns?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
“For whom?
Who could manipulate powerful Alphas?” “A man who was neither Alpha nor human,” Corin said, his voice dropping to a low, grim register.
“A master of the old ways, a sorcerer who sought things the ancestors had forbidden.
We called him the Dark Alchemist.
He was the shadow behind the Night of Ashes.” The name itself felt heavy, dropping into the room like a stone.
“An alchemist?” Vance scoffed, though his grip on his sword tightened.
“Magic cannot control a prime Alpha’s will.” “Forbidden blood magic can,” Corin replied shatteredly.
“He didn’t care about territories or packs, Vance.
He needed to destroy the bloodline so no one could ever lock him away again, and he needed Queen Seraphina’s blood for his final ritual.
He played on the Alphas’ greed, using them to harvest the palace.” A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck.
“Why my family?” I asked, my heart beginning to hammer.
“What did he want with us?” “Because the Silver Crest is the source of the oldest, purest magic in this world, Aria,” Corin explained, looking directly into my eyes.
“It is the only power capable of neutralizing his corruption.
He thought he succeeded.
He thought the silver magic was gone from the world forever.” The room seemed to shrink around me.
I looked down at my hands, my mind racing.
For weeks, I thought I was just running from Kael.
I thought my only danger was a pack of angry wolves wanting to punish a rogue servant.
But this…
this was a monster that had swallowed a whole kingdom.
And now, my babies were tied to it.
Panic, sharp and suffocating, twisted my insides.
My babies hadn’t even taken their first breath, yet an ancient monster already wanted them dead.
They hadn’t even seen the light of day, and they were already marked for destruction by a creature that had slaughtered their ancestors.
“This isn’t about me anymore,” I whispered, the weight of it crushing my lungs.
“It’s not just about surviving a pack rejection.” “No, Princess,” Corin said firmly.
“If he takes you, if he takes the children you carry…
he will finally have the power to enslave all of Elyndra.” Vance stepped forward, his face dark with fury.
“We can hide her here.
The veil will keep her safe.” “The veil will hold for a time,” Corin countered.
“But as the twins grow, their magic will grow with them.
They carry the royal silver light from Aria, but they also carry the dominant, aggressive blood of a prime Alpha.
The combination is dangerously loud.
The Alchemist’s trackers will find a way to scent them eventually.” Corin turned back to me, his silver eyes flashing with a sudden, hard intensity.
“You cannot afford to be helpless anymore, Aria.
For twenty-two years, you were taught to hide, to shrink, to be weak so you wouldn’t be noticed.
But those days are over.
If you remain weak, your children will die.
You must learn to fight.
You must learn to command the silver magic.” I looked at the old man, then at Vance, and finally down at my own hands.
I was terrified.
But when I thought about Kael’s cold rejection, when I thought about the scouts hunting me down like an animal, and when I felt the steady, innocent heartbeats beneath my palms…
the fear didn’t go away, but a strange, quiet anger took its place.
“Tell me what I need to do,” I said, my voice steadying.
“I’ll train.” Corin nodded slowly, a small spark of hope appearing in his tired eyes.
“Tomorrow, we begin.
Rest tonight, Princess.
You will need every ounce of strength you possess.” Hours later, the valley had completely settled into a deep, silent night.
They had given me a small room in one of the cottages near the stream.
The bed was comfortable, the blankets were warm, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t have to listen for the sound of growling wolves outside my door.
But sleep was restless.
Sometime after midnight, the air in my small room grew suffocatingly cold.
My breath began to form pale plumes of mist in the darkness.
Suddenly, a sharp, searing heat exploded from the Silver Crest on my shoulder.
It burned so badly that I whimpered in my sleep, trapped in the grip of a sudden, violent vision.
In my mind, the peaceful valley vanished.
I was standing in the middle of a massive, burning palace.
The sky above was pitch black, filled with choking smoke and raining ash.
The ground beneath my feet was slick with blood.
Then, the noise stopped.
Everything went dead silent, though the flames kept roaring.
A figure emerged from the thick black smoke at the end of the corridor.
He wore a long, tattered black robe that seemed to swallow the light around it.
As he walked closer, the flames around him turned a sickly, corrupt purple.
I tried to run, but my feet were frozen to the bloody stone floor.
I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my throat.
I could only watch as the figure stopped a few feet away from me.
Slowly, the man pulled back his dark hood.
My heart stopped.
His face was pale, covered in ancient, glowing black veins.
But it was his eyes that terrified me the most.
They were silver.
A cold, corrupted, dead silver.
A terrifying, dark smile spread across his twisted face.
He looked down at my stomach, his eyes gleaming with a sick, hungry satisfaction, and then lifted his gaze to lock directly into mine.
His voice didn’t come from his mouth; it echoed directly inside my head, cold and scraping like metal on stone.
“Your mother’s blood failed me once.
Yours won’t, little phoenix.” I snapped awake, screaming.
I sat bolt upright in the bed, my chest heaving wildly as I gasped for air.
Sweat was pouring down my face, and my entire body was shaking uncontrollably.
The room was empty, the quiet stream bubbling peacefully outside my window, but the skin over my Silver Crest was still burning hot.
The nightmare was over.
But deep inside my soul, I knew one terrifying truth.
The monster from my vision wasn’t a dream.
He was awake.
And he had already started looking for me.
Far beyond the frost-bitten peaks of the Whispering Mountains, inside the grand, stone walls of the Blackfang Pack house, Alpha Kael woke abruptly from his sleep.
He sat up in the dark, his breath ragged, his forehead slick with cold sweat.
Beneath his skin, his wolf clawed at his chest—restless, angry, and suddenly frantic.
It was a phantom sensation, a sudden pull that made his soul feel entirely hollow.
Beside him, Camille stirred in the silk sheets, murmuring softly in her sleep, but Kael barely noticed.
He threw off the blankets, walking over to the wide stone balcony that overlooked his vast territory.
The night was dead silent, but the air felt charged, heavy with a warning he couldn’t comprehend.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, Kael found himself staring intently toward the jagged southern mountains.
Toward the freezing peaks where Aria had disappeared.
His jaw tightened as the bond in his chest throbbed with a dull, confusing ache.
He had cast her out.
He had left her to die in the mud.
So why did his wolf feel as though the true hunt had only just begun?
[END OF CHAPTER 18]