Chapter 87 Old Wounds
Calix POV
I went to my father's office the next morning before training started because if I waited any longer I would talk myself out of it.
The guard at the door let me in without question and my father was already at his desk going through pack documents when I walked in.
He looked up briefly then looked back down.
"Calix."
"I need to talk to you," I said, closing the door behind me.
"I'm busy."
"It won't take long," I said, sitting down across from him without being invited to.
He set his pen down slowly and leaned back in his chair. "What is it."
"The curse," I said. "I want to know where it actually came from and whether anyone in this family ever tried to break it."
The shift in his face was small but I caught it. His jaw tightened and his eyes went flat in the way they did when he was closing off. "We've talked about this before."
"No," I said. "You've told me about it before. That's different from talking about it."
"The origin is what it is," he said. "A jilted witch cursed our bloodline five generations back and it has followed us since. You know this."
"I know the story you told me," I said. "But Maddie asked me something yesterday that I couldn't answer. She asked who actually confirmed the curse was real and I realized the only answer I had was that our family said so."
My father's expression didn't change but something behind his eyes did.
"The seer confirmed it."
"The seer said there was darkness around our bloodline," I said. "That's not the same as confirming a specific curse exists. Did anyone ever go to a witch? Did anyone ever look for a way to break it or at least verify it properly?"
"Your grandfather tried," he said, and his voice dropped a level. "He spent years looking for a way out of it and every person he went to told him the same thing. That it was bound in blood and could not be undone."
"Which people?" I asked. "Who did he go to?"
"Calix."
"I want names or at least details because right now I have nothing solid to stand on and I need something solid."
He stood up and that was usually a sign that the conversation was ending on his terms. "This is not something I'm going to sit here and argue with you about. The curse is real. It has taken everyone this family has loved and it will continue to do so. Accepting that is how we survive it."
"Or accepting it is how we keep ourselves from ever finding out if it can be broken," I said.
"Enough," he said, and his voice had the Alpha tone in it now, the one that pressed down on your chest and made your wolf instinctively submit.
"Drop this. Focus on your duties. Stop letting that girl put ideas in your head."
I stood up too. "She asked one question that I couldn't answer. That's not her putting ideas in my head. That's me realizing I never actually thought it through."
He didn't respond to that so I turned and walked toward the door. The office was large and the door was on the far end so I passed the wall with the cabinet on my right side and that was when I saw it.
It was partially behind the cabinet, like it had been moved there or was always kept at that angle so it wasn't the first thing you noticed when you walked in.
A framed image of a white wolf, not a painting or a sketch but something more deliberate than that, with detail in the lines that suggested whoever made it knew exactly what a white fur wolf looked like.
I slowed down without fully stopping.
The wolf in the image was standing still and looking forward and something about the posture and the way it was drawn felt personal, like it wasn't just a reference image but a specific wolf that someone had wanted to remember.
"Keep moving."
I turned. One of my father's personal guards had stepped forward from his position near the side wall and was looking at me with a flat expression that made it clear he wasn't asking.
I looked at my father. He was watching me from behind his desk and his face gave nothing away but he hadn't told the guard to stand down.
I walked out.
The door closed behind me and I stood in the hallway for a moment before heading toward the training grounds. My head was loud with questions I didn't have answers to and the conversation had given me less than I came for.
He shut it down too fast. That was the thing that stayed with me as I walked. He didn't argue with me or try to convince me the way someone would if they were confident in what they were saying.
He just closed it, the way you close a door on something you don't want looked at.
And the image of the white wolf behind the cabinet was not something I could explain away.
Back in my room after training I sat on the edge of my bed and went through the conversation again in my head.
Maddie's voice kept cutting through it. Her saying that I was ten years old when my father gave me the curse to carry. Her asking who confirmed it and watching me come up empty.
I had spent years keeping people at arm's length because of something I never once verified for myself and the longer I sat with that the harder it was to justify.
Keeping Maddie away wasn't protecting her if the threat wasn't even real and even if it was real, pushing her away while she was already being targeted by Simone wasn't keeping her safe.
It was just leaving her without backup.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling.
Staying away from her was doing nothing except hurting us both and I was running out of reasons to keep doing it.