Chapter 58 THE WASTES KNEELS
Chapter 58 THE WASTES KNEELS
THE WASTES KNEELS
SERAPHINE'S POV
I did not know how long I had been running before the land finally changed.
My legs shook beneath me as a result of weakness and from the constant pull inside my chest. Every step away from the mountain felt like I was tearing myself in half. Azrath’s pain brushed my thoughts like distant thunder, dull but persistent, and I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached just to keep from turning back.
I refused to go back.
The Wastes stretched endlessly ahead of me, a barren sprawl of cracked earth, jagged stone, and scattered ruins half-buried by time. The sky here was wider, harsher, and unforgiving. I stumbled over a ridge and nearly collapsed, catching myself on my hands as grit bit into my palms. My heart was pounding so loudly it drowned out everything else.
That was when I realized I was no longer alone. My senses, sharpened by the Lycan blood awakening inside me, picked up heartbeats that did not belong to dragons.
I forced myself upright and turned slowly.
Figures emerged from the rocks and dunes, they were wolves, dozens of them. Some of them stood in human form, others half-shifted.
Their stares locked onto me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. My instincts screamed danger, and my body reacted before my mind could catch up. I dropped into a defensive stance, protracting my claws, fire flickering weakly along my fingers.
“If you’ve come to drag me back,” I said hoarsely, “you’ll have to kill me.”
But none of them moved. Instead, they sank to their knees one by one,
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
A tall man stepped forward from among them. He did not kneel immediately, instead, he studied me with calm, assessing eyes that were the color of storm-washed steel. His presence was steady in a way I had never felt before, not like Azrath’s overwhelming force, but like a mountain that did not need to prove its strength.
“My name is Reid,” he said quietly. “General of the Wastes.”
At his words, the others lowered their heads further, and something inside me twisted painfully.
“You are bleeding,” Reid continued, his gaze flicking to my torn clothes and trembling hands. “And you are carrying a bond that is not yours to bear.”
My throat tightened. “You know what I am.”
He nodded once. “We have been waiting for you longer than you know.”
had spent my life unwanted, overlooked, and discarded. Now I was standing before strangers who knelt as if I was some sacred god.
“I don’t want followers,” I said. “I don’t want anybody to worship me. I just want to be free.”
Reid held my gaze, unflinching. “Then you are in the right place.”
He gestured, and the wolves rose smoothly, forming a loose circle around us. For the first time since Drakar, my shoulders eased by a fraction.
They took me deeper into the Wastes, through narrow canyons and hidden paths that vanished when viewed from the wrong angle.
The hidden Lycan settlement revealed itself slowly. Stone dwellings carved into cliffs. Fire pits ringed by symbols older than any language I knew. Every eye followed me as I passed, but there was no hunger in them. None of them feared me.
When my legs finally gave out, Reid caught me before I hit the ground.
“Easy now,” he murmured. “You’re safe here.”
Reid led me into a room that was dimly lit but looked very comfortable.
"You can rest here. Everything here has been provided for you." He said.
I stepped in and he closed the door softly behind me. He was right when he said everything he had been provided for me, It was as though he was expecting me to come all day.
I ignored the food on the table and went straight to the bed that was already neatly made.
I slept for what felt like days. When I woke, my body ached in a different way. The bond still tugged at me, but it was quieter here, muted by words I could feel but not yet understand.
Reid came in politely and sat with me as I ate, he spoke very little and never pressed me to speak. It was unnerving at first. Azrath’s presence had always been fire and command, pain and intensity but Reid was none of those things. On the contrary, he was calm, steady, and deeply aware.
He spoke very softly and told me that we were supposed to begin training the next morning. The news didn't come as a shock. I could tell that he had seen something in me I didn't even notice. The least I could do in exchange for his kindness and giving me refuge was to allow him to train me.
Training began the next morning. I nearly laughed when he told me to close my eyes.
“This is pointless,” I said. “I don’t need meditation. I need control.”
He inclined his head. “That is exactly why we start here.”
The first time I tried to follow his breathing pattern, the fire inside me flared violently. Memories crashed into me. I gasped and lost focus, my claws tore into the ground.
Reid did not raise his voice nor did he restrain me.
“Again,” he said calmly. “Let it pass through you. Do not fight it. Do not surrender to it. Balance is not silence, it is choice.”
No one had ever spoken to me like that before.
Days turned into weeks in the wastes. He taught me how to feel the fire without letting it rule me. How to shift partially without losing myself. How to listen to the wolf instead of fearing it. When I lost control, he corrected me without cruelty. When I succeeded, he acknowledged it without praise that felt like ownership.
At night, when the bond whispered Azrath’s pain into my mind, Reid showed me how to anchor myself. How to breathe through it without breaking.
“You are not his,” he told me once, as we watched the moon rise over the Wastes. “And you are not only what was done to you.”
I looked down at my hands, at the scars and the faint glow beneath my skin. “What if I become worse than him?”