Fifty Eight

Fifty Eight

Haylee's POV

The atmosphere in Dr. Sarah’s office is so thick, you can cut it with a knife as Aiden and I take our seats across from her at the desk. Her usual composure looks shaken, and the desperation in her voice when she summoned us here still rings in my ears.

Dr. Sarah addresses us after the introductions, opening a worn folder. ”What I am going to teach you would shatter everything you thought you knew about True Bonds.”

"What do you mean?" I lean in, despite the wad of dread in my belly.

Dr. Sarah opens the file and fans a few documents out on her desk. I've been studying True Bonds since we last spoke, swotting up on the old books and cross referencing them with new magical theory. It turns out what I've found... it's not good."

Aiden's hand grasps mine and I can feel how tense he is through our connection. "Just tell us, Sarah."

“There are bonds which can be artificially influenced, with the help of dark magic,” she mutters, almost inaudibly. “Since natural generation could be changed, speeded up or altogether bypassed via the use of blood rituals and soul binding ceremonies.

My blood runs cold. "What are you saying?"

What I am saying is that all True Bonds are not the real deal when it comes to fated love. Some are produced by those who know the old magic sufficiently to manipulate it.” Dr. Sarah takes out what appears to be a blood test report. That's why I called you over here, Haylee. “I re-tested the blood samples we took when you got here and I took more of them from Aiden’s pack.

"And?" My voice comes out strangled.

"You’ve got magical contamination in your blood. Leftover energy readings lead us to believe a binding spell was cast upon you, while you were unconscious." Dr. Sarah looks me straight in the eye and gives me that pitying-sorry/fuck off concern-compassion look. "Your magical signature was tampered with intentionally, five years ago.

The world whirls around me, and I clutch Aiden’s palm for dear life. "That's impossible. I would have known. I would have felt it."

“Not necessarily,” Dr. Sarah says, gently. “If the ritual was done when you were in a weakened state — for example, asleep from tiredness and stress — your guard would have been down. The spells would’ve melded with your life force, becoming hard to even sense.”

“Who could do something like that?” Only Aiden's voice is murderously low, and I can feel the rage just waiting to come seething through the bond.

“Somebody who knew the prophecy of your children,” Dr. Sarah says. “Someone who knew that if they were magically bound to you, they would have power over your children.
The implications struck me like a blow to the face. "Xavier."

I need to show them my original medical records,” I say, standing up suddenly. From the time he found me in the forest. Everything."

Dr. Sarah hesitates. "Haylee, I don't know if that's-"

"Please." My voice breaks slightly. "I need to know the truth."
Then, after a long time, she nods and heads to a locked filing cabinet. “I saved copies of absolutely everything from that period, just in case. You were such an oddity, such an extreme case, that I wrote down everything I did.”

She slides a thick medical file across the table to me, and my hands are shaking as I pop it open. The first few pages are typical — vital signs, preliminary assessment, treatment plans. But as I scroll deeper into the file, I come across notes that send a chill down my spine.

“Patient was unarousable for three days,” I read aloud. ‘Xavier Carters threatened to be in the room whenever treatments occurred, saying that he knew age-old jet-healing practices that would help aid the recovery process.

“Keep going,” Dr. Sarah murmurs.

“Day two: Xavier did what he describes as a ‘life force stabilization ceremony’ during the patient’s critical period. The procedure included... drawing blood and... symbolic marks made on the skin of the patient.” My voice fades as the horror of what I’m reading dawns upon me.

“He was doing the binding ceremony,” Aiden says, voice dangerous with suppressed rage. “While you fought for your life and the lives of your children, he was binding your magical signature to his.

“And there’s more,” Dr. Sarah adds, indicating another part of the file. "The heal… man, who was the healer you saw, the one who treat… treated you in the beginning - Master Elias - he was suspicious of some of Xavier's work. Jotted down notes on concerns over the "non-traditional healing approaches" being utilized.

"Where is Master Elias now?" I ask, even though something in Dr. Sarah’s face already tells me I’m not going to like the answer.

"He disappeared three years ago. Just... vanished one day. No trace, no explanation."

The silence in the place is suddenly deafening, my heart thudding in my ears. Nothing I have believed about my savior, about Xavier, about my feelings, and about the choices I've made in my life has been true.

“Haylee,” he says softly, bringing me back from my thoughts.
"We'll figure this out. We’ll figure out how to undo whatever he did to you.”

"How can you be sure?" I whisper. What if I didn’t really love him, or appreciate him, or want to marry him at all? What if I’ve been a total fraud for five years?’

"'Cause what you feel for me is real," he says, pressing my hand against his chest so that I feel his heart. The bond between us—our true bond—the bond that is happening right now—is pure. What I feel, you feel, don’t you?”

I close my eyes and extend myself through our bond, sensing the warm golden thread that binds us. Not even remotely similar to the empty, forced gratitude I’d experienced with Xavier. This connection with Aiden, being with him, feels like home, like I’ve stumbled upon some part of my soul that was missing.

"You're right," I admit. “This is a very different feeling.”

Dr. Sarah clears her throat. “I hate to interrupt, but another thing you should know. I can't get a hold of Master Elias's apprentice to learn more about what happened five years ago, but I just got this news from the police."

"What kind of word?" Aiden inquires, though he sounds like he doesn't want to hear the answer.

"Master Elias was discovered this morning at the old forest preserve, some fifty miles north of here. He's been dead for about three years, by the level of decay.” Dr. Sarah sounds clinical, but her grief is in her eyes. "But you know what's odd,—which had been clutched in his bony fingers with the pack seal set into the wax."

"Whose seal?" I ask, though I already know.

"Xavier's."

The silence that follows is the sound of the world coming to an end. Master Elias has his life taken — and Xavier's Blazon left with his corpse as a calling card. Like a warning.

"He killed him," I whisper. “Xavier murdered him because he knew too much of what actually happened to me.”

“We do not know that for sure,” Dr. Sarah says, in a tone that does not even sound very convincing.

“We have that,” Aiden replies grimly, getting to his feet and walking to the window. “Xavier has been thinking long term since day one. “It was all a set up, He arranged for Haylee to be kicked out, He was waiting in those woods to ‘rescue’ her and he did all kinds of illegal rituals on her while she was passed out and vulnerable.

The extent of Xavier’s lie hits me like a ton of bricks. "The arranged marriage. He just rushed it, said it was for the good of both our packs. But really..."

“Surely he needed to make the magical binding a legal and social one,” Aiden concludes. “You were just securing the fact that you would have been completely under his influence and protection.”

"And one of my babies," I murmur. The magical link he has to Lior - that wasn't natural either, was it?

Dr. Sarah hangs her head. “From what I can gather in these records, it seems a part of the binding focused on your unborn children. Xavier did not want to be without a claim at least on one of them.”

I collapse into my seat, the betrayal from Xavier is deafening. Everything - my rescue, my marriage, my children's magical signatures, even my own feelings - has been lorded over me by a man to whom I entrusted my life.

"Haylee," Aiden whispers, down on one knee next to my chair. "Look at me."

I hold his gaze, within which there is nothing but love and determination.

“We’re going to fix this,” he pledges. “By whatever means necessary, by whatever length necessary, we’re going to break every bond he’s ever artificially created, every bond he’s ever had — and we’re going to make sure he never, ever is able to hurt you or the children.”

"How? So if my magic´s been attached to my vital force for five years--"

"We find somebody who know binding magic better than Xavier does," Aiden states firmly. “We investigate, we discover, we battle. But we do it together."

Through our True Bond I can sense his absolute certainty, his unmovable dedication to protecting our family. And for the first time since Dr. Sarah began sharing with me Xavier's deceptions, I feel a flicker of hope.

“So, together,” I nod, squeezing his hand.

Dr. Sarah coughs again. “I can see if I can assist with that work. I have connections in the magical academia square, experts in ancient binding rituals. If anyone could undo what Xavier had donea.m.

I say thank you honestly. "For everything. For searching for the truth, for recording it, for helping us to fight this.

"Master Elias was my teacher," she whispers. “If Xavier killed him to keep him from talking about his own crimes, then I owe it to Elias to make sure it wasn’t in vain.

And as we head out the door of Dr. Sarah’s office, I can sense the True Bond growing stronger between me and him, fed by our mutual stubbornness and the trust we are reestablishing together. Xavier may have controlled my past, but he no longer holds claim to my future.

"What's our next step?" I say and Aiden are walking to his car.

“We spend that time compiling all of the evidence we have on Xavier’s involvement with dark magic and this rogue group,”
he responds. “If he has been planning this for years, there must be other trails, other people who know about what he’s been doing.

"And then?"

Aiden’s smile is toothy and predatory. “Then we make sure he pays for every lie, every manipulation, every moment of pain he’s caused you and our children.

I nod, a fierce sense of satisfaction blossoming in my chest. Xavier must have figured he was smart, spinning his lie to me for five years. "But he did make one error in judgment - he underestimated the strength of a True Bond, born from pure love, and tried by shared hardship."

He’s going to find out exactly how dangerous that error is.