Fifty Eight: The Heir Revealed
Ronald's POV
Her wrist trembled in my hand, her pulse thrumming wild beneath my fingers.
The night pressed in around us, heavy and waiting, like the forest itself was holding its breath.
“Mara,” I said again, quieter this time. “Tell me.”
Her eyes flashed silver, her wolf bleeding through the edges of her control. “You want the truth?” she hissed. “Fine.”
I felt the air shift before the words even left her lips.
“I am the last Silverfang.”
The world tilted.
For a heartbeat, all I could hear was the wind, the thrum of her heartbeat through the bond, the echo of my wolf’s sharp, possessive snarl in my chest. Ours.
“What did you say?” I managed, even though I already knew. My wolf had known. It had always known.
Her chin lifted defiantly. “You heard me. My family, my bloodline, the ones your pack burned to ash? I am what’s left.”
Her voice cracked at the end, not with weakness but with fury and gods, it broke something in me.
I stumbled back, my hand falling away from her. The scent of smoke and iron clung to the air, but all I could smell was her truth.
“No,” I whispered. “That can’t be.”
“It is.” Her voice trembled now. “The crest you found on your father’s decree, the slaughter, the flames, you want to know what it all meant? It meant erasing me.”
Her words hit like claws to the gut. I couldn’t breathe. My wolf pushed forward, restless and angry, not at her but at me.
You knew, it growled, its voice like thunder in my mind. From the first moment, you knew what she was.
“No,” I snapped out loud, shaking my head. “I didn’t. I didn’t know.”
She laughed bitterly. “You did. Maybe not with your mind, but your wolf knew. That’s why you couldn’t stay away. That’s why you couldn’t kill me.”
She was right. Every instinct I’d ever tried to deny, every sleepless night, every ache in my chest when she looked away, it was all because of this.
I stared at her, the moonlight tracing the silver lines of her face, her hair wild around her shoulders. “You’re… Silverfang.”
“I was,” she said softly. “Before your kind took everything.”
The shame hit me so hard I almost staggered. “Mara…”
She turned away, shoulders trembling. “Do you know what it’s like,” she whispered, “to be hunted for something you were born as? To wake up every day praying your blood doesn’t betray you?”
“I never.”
“Yes, you did!” she shouted, spinning on me. “You led the same pack that buried us. You stood on the ashes of our graves and called it strength.”
Her words sliced through me. My wolf howled inside, clawing, desperate.
Mate, it roared. She is ours. Protect her.
“Stop,” I snarled at it, at myself, at everything. “I can’t.”
Mara’s voice dropped, low and trembling. “You can't do what? Accept that your mate is everything your father feared? Or that you’re bound to the bloodline he tried to destroy?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because she was right. Every truth I’d avoided was now staring me in the face. My father’s warnings.
The council’s obsession with the prophecy. The pull I’d felt the moment I met her.
It all led to this.
I felt my knees weaken, and for the first time in years, the Alpha in me faltered. “Moon help me,” I breathed. “What have we done?”
Mara stepped closer, her eyes glistening with tears she refused to let fall. “You didn’t just destroy my home, Ronald. You destroyed me.”
I opened my mouth, but the words died before they formed.
There was nothing I could say that could fix this. Nothing that could undo generations of blood.
My wolf’s voice rose again, furious and primal. You will not lose her.
And then the wind shifted.
A scent, foreign, sharp, wrong, cut through the air. I froze.
Mara sensed it too; her head snapped toward the treeline. The silence that followed was louder than any sound.
“Rogues?” she whispered.
“No,” I said slowly, drawing my blade. “Something worse.”
The forest came alive with movement. Shadows slid between the trees, quick and soundless. Metal glinted in the dark.
Mara stepped beside me, her wolf close to the surface now, silver light flickering beneath her skin. “You said you came alone.”
“I did,” I said. “But it looks like we were both followed.”
A voice echoed from the dark, low, distorted, cruelly amused. “The Silverfang heir and the Bloodfang Alpha. How poetic.”
Mara stiffened. “Who’s there?”
Figures emerged from the shadows, masked warriors, clad in black, their faces hidden behind bone-white masks carved with the council’s sigil.
My blood ran cold. “Council dogs.”
The leader tilted his head, voice dripping with mockery. “By decree of the High Seat, both of you are to be taken alive.”
Mara growled softly, the sound low and dangerous. “You can try.”
I stepped forward, placing myself between her and them. “You’ll have to go through me first.”
The leader laughed, unsheathing his blade. “Gladly.”
Before I could move, the air exploded with motion, steel flashing, wolves snarling, the earth itself shaking beneath the clash.
I fought like a man possessed, my wolf surging to the surface with every strike.
But even as I tore through the masked warriors, I kept my eyes on Mara, her movements precise, furious, beautiful in her rage.
For the first time, she wasn’t fighting as a rogue. She was fighting as an Alpha’s heir.
But there were too many.
“Mara!” I shouted, catching a blade meant for her side. Pain seared up my arm, hot and sharp. “Run!”
“I’m not leaving you,” she growled, slashing through another attacker.
“Then stay behind me!”
She didn’t listen. She never did.
The leader lunged again, faster this time, and I caught his wrist mid-strike.
His mask cracked under my claws, revealing eyes burning crimson beneath.
“You’ll never stop it,” he hissed. “The Blood Moon will take her.”
And then he vanished into the shadows, his laughter echoing through the trees.
Mara turned to me, breathing hard, blood streaking her face. “What did he mean?”
I wiped the blood from my blade, my chest heaving. “I don’t know.”
But my wolf did.
It whispered the truth I didn’t want to hear, low and guttural in my mind. She is the prophecy and the Blood Moon is coming.