Chapter 93

Chapter 93
Sera POV

I couldn’t stay there anymore. My chest felt tight and the words from the shrine still echoed in my head: judgment requires love as much as fire.
I needed air. I needed something steady. Before I even thought it through, my feet were already carrying me toward Jade’s chambers.
The halls were quiet. Most of the pack was asleep. I walked slowly, trying to calm my breathing. Jade’s door was just ahead slightly open, a warm light inside.
But before I reached it, someone stepped out of the shadows.
Lady Moreen didn’t speak at first. She simply looked at me, her face looking harsh in the moonlight. Then I saw the dagger in her hand, it was small, but deadly.
I stopped where I was. I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
“You came again,” she said softly, but there was nothing kind in her voice. “Always running to him.”
I swallowed. “I just came to talk to..”
“No.” Her voice cut through mine. “You are destroying him.” She lifted the dagger just a little. “You are changing him. Confusing him. Hurting him. And I will not allow it.”
I felt fear then cold and deep but I kept my voice steady.
“I’m not trying to hurt him,” I said. “I care about him.”
“That is the problem,” she snapped. “He cares for you. Enough to throw away everything he was raised to be.”
Her hand tightened around the dagger.
“You will ruin him. But I will kill you before I let that happen.”
Her words hit me hard. But something inside me stood up.
“You think killing me will save him?” I asked quietly.
She froze with just a small pause but I saw it.
“You think taking me away will fix what’s already happened? The bond? The mark? The choice the moon already made?”
For a moment, she didn’t speak. Her jaw clenched. Her eyes burned.
“I will do what I must,” she said finally, voice low. “For my son.”
I looked right into her eyes. I didn’t run. I didn’t beg.
“If you cut me down,” I said softly, “you’ll break him worse than I ever could.”
She stepped toward me again, quieter this time, like a shadow that refused to release its grip. The dagger was still in her hand.
“Do you think I will simply walk away?” she asked, voice low and tight. “Did you think I was done?”
My throat felt tight. I didn’t answer. There was no point in arguing. She didn’t want words.
She wanted me gone.
She moved fast.
Her hand lashed out, the dagger aimed for my heart.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t even have time to breathe. I only saw silver flash and felt cold fear burst open inside me.
But the moment the dagger touched my skin, light flared.
A pulse of silver fire burst between us.
I felt it spread under my skin like something waking up.
Lady Moreen jerked back as if she’d been burned.
The dagger didn’t fall. But she stumbled, shock widening her eyes.
The blade,It was glowing.
As if the moon had dipped its fingers into it.
She stared at it, and then at me.
“No…” she whispered, voice breaking. “No. No, this cannot be…”
The hall was silent except for our breathing.
I looked down at where the dagger had touched. My skin wasn’t cut. Not even a scratch. Instead, faint silver lines shimmered there like threads of moonlight beneath the surface.
The same glow I had seen in the shrine.
Lady Moreen’s face changed and the anger was gone.
All of it.
What replaced it was fear.
She shook her head once, as if trying to push away something she already knew.
“The moon rejects me?” she whispered.
Her voice trembled.“The moon chooses you?”
I didn’t know how to answer cause I didn’t know anything anymore.
But the silver glow didn’t fade.
It shimmered soft, steady, unignorable.
Moreen backed away slowly, like I was something dangerous. “You…” Her voice was thin. “You are going to destroy him.”
Her hand shook around the dagger.
“Or save him,” I said quietly.
The words didn’t feel like mine.
They felt… placed.
Moreen stared at me for a long moment, her breath uneven. Her lips parted like she wanted to speak again, but nothing came out.
Then she turned.
She walked away down the hall, not looking back, her steps unsteady.
The silence she left behind pressed close around me.
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. My fingers slowly unclenched, and I leaned back against the cold wall just long enough to steady myself.
But the steadiness didn’t come.
A strange heaviness slid through my limbs, slow at first, then sharper, almost like being pulled under deep water. My head began to throb, and the air in the hallway suddenly felt too thin, too tight.
I braced a hand against the wall.
The silver glow under my skin flickered then flared again, brief and bright like something inside me was struggling to wake up too fast.
My heartbeat grew uneven. It felt like power, but power that had nowhere to go, no shape, no release.
My lungs burned. I tried to breathe deeper, but each breath only made the tightness worse. The corridor seemed to tilt, the torches blurring and smearing their light along the stone.
“Not again,” I whispered.
I tried to push off the wall, to take one step toward Jade’s door, but my knees wavered. The floor came up too fast, and I caught myself only barely, palms flat against the cold floor.
My vision pulsed black at the edges.
My pulse thudded too loud.
The silver fire I had seen at the shrine wasn’t calm anymore. It surged wild unsteady like it didn’t know if it was meant to protect me or tear me open from the inside.
I curled forward, pressing a hand to my chest.
“Breathe,” I told myself.
But breathing didn’t help, the mark on my neck warmed.
Jade, like something in me, was calling for him.
Or he was calling for me.
The bond pressed tight, aching with a pull that felt almost physical, like fingers closing around my ribs.
I hated that part. That I could feel him even when he wasn’t near.
That I could need him without meaning to.
The hallway rippled again, wavering like heat over stone. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself upright slow, shaky, but upright. I reached again for the door, fingers trembling now, the wood cool beneath them.