Chapter 115 Through the Cursed Marsh
Wynter's POV
The forest gave way to marshland gradually, the solid ground beneath our feet turning soft and treacherous as we pushed deeper into neutral territory.
By the second day, we were wading through knee-deep water that smelled of rot and old magic, the air thick with moisture that made every breath feel like drowning.
"This place is cursed," Jax muttered, his eyes scanning the twisted trees that rose from the murky water like skeletal hands. "I can feel it. Old magic. The kind that doesn't play nice with wolves."
Through the Bond, I felt Chase's agreement. His Alpha senses were on high alert, every instinct screaming danger, but we had no choice except to press forward.
The first attack came at noon on the second day.
I was pulling my boot from a particularly deep patch of mud when the water beside me erupted with movement. Something pale and sinuous wrapped around my ankle—not a snake, but something worse, something that burned like ice where it touched my skin.
"Wynter!" Chase's roar echoed across the marsh as he lunged toward me, but the thing was already pulling me under, dragging me toward the deeper water with impossible strength.
I gasped, water flooding my mouth as I went down. Through the Bond, I felt Chase's panic spike so sharply it made my vision white out, felt him diving after me without hesitation.
Then Jax was there, his knife flashing in the murky water. The blade cut through the pale tendril, and immediately the thing released me with a sound like a child's scream.
Chase hauled me up, coughing and sputtering, his arms like steel bands around my ribs. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm—" I stopped, looking down at my ankle where the thing had grabbed me. The skin was white and blistered, marked with a pattern that looked almost like frost. "What was that?"
"Marsh wraith," Jax said grimly, scanning the water around us. "They feed on warmth. Life force. If it had pulled you all the way under..." He didn't finish, but he didn't need to.
"We need to keep moving," Chase said, his voice tight with barely controlled fear. Through the Bond, I felt him fighting the urge to turn back, to abandon this mission and get me somewhere safe. "Stay close. Both of you."
The marsh seemed to sense our fear after that. The attacks came more frequently—more wraiths rising from the water, twisted roots that grabbed at our feet, clouds of insects that bit with poisoned mandibles. My ankle throbbed with each step, the wraith's burn sending jolts of cold pain up my leg.
But worse than the physical dangers were the illusions.
They started as whispers at first—voices carried on the wind that sounded almost familiar. Then shapes in the mist, figures that looked like people we knew.
I saw my father standing in the water ahead, his face pale and accusing. "Why did you let them kill me, Wynter? Why didn't you save me?"
"He's not real," Chase said immediately, his hand finding mine and squeezing hard. Through the Bond, he pushed certainty at me, using our connection to anchor me to reality. "It's the marsh. It feeds on fear and guilt."
But even as I nodded, even as I forced myself to look away from my father's ghost, I saw Chase freeze. His face went white, his hand tightening on mine until it hurt.
"What do you see?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
"Anne," he whispered. "I see Anne in a white dress. She's walking toward me, and she's saying..." His voice broke. "She's saying I chose wrong. That I should have married her, should have protected her, that this is all my fault."
"Chase." I turned to face him, forcing him to look at me instead of the illusion. "That's not Anne. Anne made her choice. She chose to let us go because she believed in what we're doing. Don't let the marsh twist that into something ugly."
Through the Bond, I felt him struggling, felt the guilt and fear threatening to pull him under worse than any wraith. So I did the only thing I could think of—I kissed him.
Hard. Desperate. Real.
The illusion shattered like glass, and when we pulled apart, Chase's eyes were clear again, the gold in them burning with renewed determination.
"Thank you," he breathed.
"Always," I promised.
After an hour, we found Jax standing frozen in the water, staring at something we couldn't see, his whole body shaking.
"Jax!" I called, but he didn't respond.
"What's he seeing?" Chase asked, already moving toward him.
"I don't know, but we need to snap him out of it." I waded closer, careful of my injured ankle. "Jax, whatever you're seeing, it's not real. Fight it."
"They're all here," Jax said, his voice hollow. "All the children. Cassius and Marcus and Lily and all the others. They're asking why I left them. Why I didn't save them. Why I'm out here chasing evidence when they're still suffering."
His words hit me like a physical blow, because they echoed the same guilt I'd been carrying about Anne.
"You didn't leave them," I said firmly, reaching out to grip his shoulder. "You're fighting for them. Every step we take toward that witch, every second we spend trying to fix this ledger—that's for them. You haven't abandoned anyone, Jax. You're trying to save them all."
"But what if I'm too late?" His voice cracked. "What if while I'm out here, Draven takes more? What if they die because I wasn't there?"
"Then we'll mourn them," I said, my throat tight. "We'll mourn them, and we'll make sure Draven pays for every single life he's stolen. But we can't save them if we give up now. They need you to be strong. They need you to finish this."
Slowly, painfully, Jax's eyes cleared. He blinked, looking around as if seeing the marsh for the first time. "Sis?"
"I'm here," I said. "We're all here. And we're almost there."
He nodded shakily, and we continued forward, three wounded souls holding each other up through a cursed marsh that fed on our worst fears.
By the time we spotted the witch's cottage rising from the mist on tall wooden stilts, we were exhausted, soaked, and marked by dozens of small injuries. Blue ghost-fire flickered around the structure, casting eerie shadows across the water.
The door was carved with ancient runes that made my wolf whimper with instinctive unease. At the center, larger than the rest, was a phrase in old Pack dialect: "Those who seek truth must pay in pain."
"Welcoming," Jax muttered.
Chase stepped forward and knocked three times, the sound echoing across the marsh with unnatural clarity.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the door swung open to reveal a woman who might have been anywhere from forty to four hundred years old. Her hair was silver-white, falling past her waist in waves that seemed to move with a life of their own. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds, and when they fixed on us, I felt like she was seeing straight through to my soul.
"More supplicants," she said, her voice carrying a musical quality that didn't quite sound human. "More desperate wolves with their desperate causes, seeking to bend old magic to their political games." She started to close the door. "I don't help your kind anymore. Find another witch."
"Please," I said, the word coming out more desperate than I'd intended. "We're not here for politics. We're here for a story."
The door paused mid-swing. One storm-cloud eye fixed on me with renewed interest. "A story?"