Chapter 12 Twelve
Chapter 12 Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Kael’s POV
The bond had been silent for two days.
Too silent.
I should have been grateful for the peace, but the stillness in my chest didn’t feel calm, it felt like a held breath before a storm. Every instinct told me something was wrong.
Aria had stayed near, moving quietly through the house. I felt her presence, soft and steady, a pulse that reminded me what life could sound like when it wasn’t built from pain. Yet beneath that warmth was a second heartbeat, faint, cold, and familiar.
I didn’t want to believe it.
But the moment the moon rose, the air shifted. The scent hit first: iron, ash, and wild roses. A scent I’d buried years ago.
My hands froze on the balcony rail. The forest beyond the mansion trembled with sound, branches cracking, the low hum of something moving fast.
She was supposed to be dead.
I didn’t wait for thought. The wolf inside me surged, answering the call before I could resist.
The forest was darker than it should have been. I moved through it fast, every sense sharpened. The pull in my chest led me toward the clearing by the old riverbank, the place where everything had ended once before.
When I reached it, the smell of blood clung to the air.
Then she stepped out from the shadows.
“Hello, Kael.”
The world stilled.
Liora.
Her name was a wound that never healed. She looked exactly as she had the night she died, eyes like burning gold, hair a tangled spill of dark copper, skin pale under the moonlight. But there was something wrong about her, something hollow in the way her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
“You should,” she whispered. “You’re the one who brought me back.”
The words hit like a blow. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” She stepped closer, the scent of her rising like smoke. “The bond chose another, and the curse woke me. You always forget, Kael. The moon remembers what you owe.”
I couldn’t move. My body knew her, my blood recognized her, but the heart that once broke for her didn’t respond the same. The bond with Aria pulsed once, painful, sharp, warning.
“What are you?” I asked.
“What you made me,” she said simply. “When you left me in the woods to die.”
“I buried you myself.”
She laughed softly. “You buried my body. Not my soul.”
Her eyes flashed brighter. “You think you’ve tamed the curse with that girl? You think she can love you enough to undo centuries of blood?”
“Her name is Aria.”
Liora’s smile faltered. “Ah. You gave her a name. That’s how it begins.”
“I didn’t bring you back.”
“You did the moment you chose another mate.” She circled me slowly, voice low and venomous. “The curse isn’t about death, Kael. It’s about devotion. You broke yours. The bond you forged with me was meant to last beyond flesh. You gave it to her instead.”
I clenched my jaw. “The bond with you died when you did.”
“Then why can you still hear me?”
Her words curled around my spine like ice. I could hear her heartbeat now, faint but steady, echoing beneath my own.
“Because the curse tied our souls,” she said. “And if you bind your soul to another, one of us must fade.”
I took a step back. “You’re saying one of you has to die.”
“One of us already did,” she said. “I don’t plan to do it again.”
The moonlight caught her face then, and for a moment I saw the cracks in her skin, fine lines of silver light running beneath the surface, pulsing with the same rhythm as the curse.
“Liora…”
“Don’t say my name like that.” Her voice trembled with something that wasn’t anger. “I waited for you. Every night in the dark, I waited. And you found someone else to save you.”
“It wasn’t about saving me.”
“No?” She took another step forward. “Then why does she look at you the way I used to?”
“Because she sees the man I could have been.”
“And I saw the monster you became.”
The words struck deep.
For a heartbeat, we stood facing each other, both breathing hard, both half shadows.
She tilted her head. “You could end it. Break the bond with her. Come back to me. The curse will settle. You’ll stop feeling her pain.”
“I don’t want to stop feeling her.”
The silence that followed was colder than winter.
Her eyes softened. “Then you’ve chosen your death.”
The wolf inside me shifted uneasily. “If it takes me, it takes me. But it won’t touch her.”
“You can’t protect her from what she already is,” Liora whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“The moment she took your pain, the curse marked her too. She’s becoming what I was.”
The ground beneath me seemed to tilt. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s already begun,” she said. “You’ve seen it, the way she senses you, feels you, dreams when you dream. That’s the curse learning her shape.”
I shook my head. “No. I can fight it.”
She stepped close enough for me to feel the cold radiating from her skin. “You never could, Kael. That’s why the moon bound you to me in the first place. Love was your weakness then, and it’s still your weakness now.”
“Maybe. But it’s hers too,” I said. “And she’s stronger than either of us ever were.”
Liora’s expression faltered for the first time. “You really believe that?”
“I do.”
She looked down, her hands trembling. “Then she’ll need to prove it before the next full moon. If she can’t, the curse will claim whichever heart beats weakest.”
I wanted to reach for her, to find something human left in her eyes, but when I blinked, the space where she’d stood was empty. The scent lingered, roses and smoke fading into nothing.
By the time I returned to the mansion, the night had deepened. My hands were still shaking.
Mrs. Blake was waiting in the foyer, candlelight flickering against her face. “You saw her,” she said.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
I didn’t answer.
“She’s not alive,” Mrs. Blake said quietly. “Not the way you think. The curse uses what it needs. Liora was the first bond. You broke it when you tried to save her, and the magic turned on itself. What you saw tonight is what’s left of that bond, anger given form.”
“She said Aria is becoming like her.”
Mrs. Blake’s gaze dropped. “If Liora’s spirit attaches itself to the new mate, the curse could repeat.”
“That won’t happen.”
“She might not have a choice.”
“I’ll find a way,” I said. “There has to be something that severs it completely.”
“The price might be higher than you think.”
“I’ve paid worse.”
“Not yet,” she murmured. “But you will.”
Later, alone in my room, I sat in the dark, listening to the faint rhythm of the bond. Aria’s heartbeat reached me through the quiet, steady, alive.
But behind it, barely audible, another rhythm echoed, slower and colder.
Two heartbeats. Two lives bound to mine.
I closed my eyes and whispered her name, the one that should have stayed buried.
“Liora.”
The wind outside answered with a low, familiar laugh.
And somewhere down the hall, Aria stirred in her sleep.