Chapter 88: A Truth Unveiled
These words should not have shaken Isla.
She already knew.
Not consciously, not in the way that one knows a fact, but in the primal way the body speaks when the mind won’t listen. She had felt it, all of it. In the strange hum under her skin, in the shivering power in her fingertips when she touched the trees in the forest, in the dreams that weren’t dreams but ancestral memories echoing through her veins.
She had known for weeks, long before the nausea had taken hold, before the aching tiredness had swept through her like a tide she couldn’t fight, that she was pregnant. But never did she imagine something so powerful.
But something in the healer’s voice cracked her composure. It wasn’t the words, it was the weight beneath them. The unspoken knowledge wrapped in the healer’s cautious tone, in the way she avoided Isla’s eyes and glanced toward Damian as if she were bracing for something deeper than biology.
Isla’s fingers tightened around Damian’s. “What is it?” she asked, keeping her voice steady, though her pulse raced in her throat.
The healer exhaled through her nose and met Isla’s gaze. “Your child is strong,” she said, choosing each word with delicate precision. “Unnaturally so.”
Beside her, Damian tensed like a taut bowstring. “What do you mean?”
The healer hesitated again, then finally gave voice to what had been pressing at the edges of their understanding. “I have attended many pregnancies. I have tended to the mates of Alphas and Betas, to wolves gifted with special abilities. But I’ve never seen anything like this. Your body is adapting, Isla. Reacting to the child in ways that defy even our most ancient texts.”
Alaine and Leo exchanged a glance, quick, sharp and uneasy. Rohen’s expression didn’t shift, but the air around him grew colder, more focused. He was listening intently now.
Lucia, however, had stilled completely. Her emerald eyes were fixed on Isla, unmoving, unblinking, as if seeing something beyond the room.
Isla’s throat was dry. She wet her lips, her voice low. “Changing how?”
The healer’s expression softened, but not with comfort. It was more a recognition of gravity. “Your strength, your heightened senses, the exhaustion… yes, these can be explained. But the fluctuations in your energy… they’re not random. They’re awakening and something ancient in your blood is stirring. Your essence is no longer fully your own.”
She reached out and gently touched Isla’s wrist. “Your blood is shifting,” she whispered.
Silence rippled across the room like a breaking wave.
Isla felt cold spread up her spine, curling under her ribs like frost.
“My blood?” she echoed, barely hearing her own voice.
Lucia stepped forward. She moved slowly, as if the truth in the air was sacred and volatile. “This has to do with your lineage,” she said, her voice calm, steady, but laced with warning.
Damian’s grip on Isla’s hand tightened again. “The golden-eyed wolves,” he murmured, the words thick with implication. His eyes were on the healer, but Isla could feel that his entire being was focused on her.
She flinched.
The golden-eyed wolves. The bloodline that vanished without a trace. Myths wrapped in superstition. Power too volatile to be passed on. She had heard the stories, vague whispers in the corners of old scrolls, half-muttered warnings in training camps, even a drunken tale from her father once, about “a spark that could unmake kings.”
The healer nodded gravely. “This is not just your child, nor only the Alpha’s. This is something… deeper. This child is a rekindling, some kind of convergence. A bloodline long buried rising again.”
Isla swallowed, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“I should have known,” she whispered. “The dreams and heat under my skin. I…” She stopped, looking at Damian. “I felt it growing. Not just life, but something awake.”
Damian’s silver eyes never left hers. But there was something new in them now, fear, yes, but not of the child. Of the path ahead and of what would come if they were not ready. As well as, of enemies not yet seen.
“What does this mean?” Isla asked, voice low. “For me? For the baby?”
The healer didn’t answer right away. She rose slowly, stepping back, as though unsure she was still meant to guide what was unfolding. “That is what we must discover,” she said carefully. “There are too few records. Too much has been erased.”
Lucia stepped closer, her voice crisp. “Then we find what wasn’t erased. Before it’s too late.”
Everyone looked at her.
She met Isla’s eyes and didn’t blink. “Vincent knew,” she said. “He was chasing it. Tracing back the bloodlines. He came to me once, asking about the old names. The first wolves. The true-born. He knew you were different. That’s why he was always watching you.”
“Because of me?” Isla asked.
“No,” Lucia replied. “Because of what your child might become.”
A long silence followed.
Alaine finally spoke. “You said something ancient was stirring.”
The healer nodded.
Damian stood then, still gripping Isla’s hand. His voice was a low growl. “Then we find the records. The remnants. Whatever is left. I don’t care if it’s buried in ashes or guarded by ghosts.”
Lucia’s lips curled into a wry smile. “It might be.”
Rohen finally moved, stepping forward. “If this child is what I think it is,” he said, voice cool but not unkind, “then there are those beyond this fortress who will come for it and not all of them will come with questions.”
Damian’s jaw tightened. “Let them try.”
But Isla was barely listening because beneath all the noise, beneath the dread and urgency, she could feel it again. A soft flutter inside her, it wasn’t a kick nor movement. But it was awareness.
She didn’t understand how she knew it, but it wasn’t just a child growing in her womb. It was a legacy. A reckoning. Something ancient and wild and watching and it was awake.