Chapter 76 Trained purpose

Chapter 76 Trained purpose
Sera's Pov

"But how is that possible?"

I was still on the floor, still finding my bearings, and Maera was looking at me.

She pulled in a slow breath. "Sit her up properly first,"

My father and my mother moved at the same time. I ended up against the wall with a folded blanket behind my back and a cup of water I didn't remember being handed pressed into my palms.

"Rudolph," Maera started, and her voice was careful the way you are careful with something old and breakable, "is not a name anyone alive should know."

“So, to top it all up. I am now speaking to dead guys?” I scoffed hard.

"And yet." She looked at me directly. "He was the first. The very first hybrid ever to exist, not born, not trained, but chosen by the Moon Goddess herself at the beginning of everything. Before packs. Before territories. Before any of the laws and bloodlines we've been running our lives by. He died over four hundred years ago, Sera. There are no records of his name in anything written after the third century. It was deliberately erased."

"Why?" Damien asked.

"Because the faction that existed then, had a different name, same goal, believed that a hybrid that powerful was too dangerous to be remembered, if no one knew his name, no one could invoke him. No one could try to recreate what he was." Her eyes stayed on me. "The name exists in daring ancestors who passed down his history and in exactly one place. An encrypted text in a sealed archive that requires three bloodlines to open."

"Three bloodlines, like mine?” I repeated slowly.

I stared at her. "So either he came to me—"

"Or your power found the archive without you knowing it was looking. Which means the witch bloodline is further along than any of us realized."

I sat with that for three seconds.

“You're telling me my own power is opening sealed archives in my sleep." I looked around the room. “I keep getting so many surprises.”

"This is not funny," Maera said.

"No," I agreed. "It really isn't. But if I don't find something slightly absurd about it I'm going to have a breakdown on this floor and we don't have time for that." I pushed myself carefully to my feet.

"What did Rudolph tell you?" Gia asked.

"He didn't tell me anything useful about himself, he looked at me like he recognized me. And then I saw the attack route."

“But first, we need to question Brielle.”

We all moved to where she was held. She was exactly where we'd left her. Back against the wall, knees up.

We filed into the hold room, me, Damien, Maera, Caden. My mother stayed with Wren. Tobias stayed with my father.

Brielle looked at each of us in turn. Her eyes stopped on Caden for exactly one second longer than everyone else and then moved on.

"You've come to ask about the attack,” She sighed. “I knew you'd figure it out,”

"We've come to ask about everything," Damien said. "Starting with who came with you."

She said nothing at first.

"Brielle." My voice dropped. "You've been in this hold for hours and nothing bad has happened to you. I'd like to keep it that way. But I need you to understand that my patience has a very specific limit and you are standing right at the edge of it."

Brielle swallowed hard.

"Eight people, they're waiting at the base of the eastern ridge. If I'm not back by dawn with confirmation that the deal went through, they move without me."

“Fuck,” Caden's jaw tightened. "You came in here with backup."

"I came in here with insurance," she said. "You all are not to be trusted,”

“Says the most cunning person I've ever met,” Caden shut back.

"Do you know about the blind spot in our eastern perimeter?" I asked.

“Yes.” She looked at me. “What they want isn't to stop you or capture you or run you out. They want to extract the bloodline. They have people who know how to do it and they've been waiting for a hybrid to exist for decades." She paused. "They don't need you alive for the process, Sera."

Everyone exchanged terrified glances.

"You wanted to warn us?” Caden asked.

"I decided I wasn't willing to be responsible for whatever war this is,”

"There really isn't. You watched Sera drown, Brielle. You don't get to draw a moral line now because the stakes got too high for your princess shoes."

She looked at him. And something in her face flashed painfully that I didn't want to see because it was too real and it made her too human.

"You're right," she said quietly. "I know you're right."

Nobody knew what to do with her. So we moved on.

We moved in two groups. Damien took four of our best fighters around the north to cut off the retreat. Maera led the rest of us straight toward the ridge.

I should have stayed in camp.

I knew that. I was still drained from the healing. My legs were weaker than they had been an hour ago but I went anyway.

The ridge was dark and the trees were thick the way I remembered from the vision and everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, which meant the vision was real and Rudolph was real and apparently the dead had better intelligence than we did.

"They're already moving," Maera said quietly. "They came early."

"How early?" I asked.

"They are here now,”

They came out of the trees fast and organized and there were more than eight of them. Brielle had miscounted or she had lied and it didn't matter which because they were already between us and the camp and Maera was already moving and everything collapsed from organized chaos in about four seconds.

My body just moved, after many months of training, taking over where thought couldn't keep up. The wolf power came up fast and certain, and I used it, and for a while it was enough.

And then something hit my left side.

I didn't see it coming. One second I was upright and the next I was on the ground, pain tore through my ribs and I went down hard on one knee.

"Sera!" Caden called out to me and rushed to my side.

"I'm fine, no need to worry,” I groaned in pain.

“Stay here, you need treatment,”

Three of them were still coming towards me. I looked at them coming and felt the pain in my ribs and felt the tiredness in every part of me that the healing had already taken, and something in me simply decided not to give up.

My power erupted, it came from everywhere at once. All three, together, for the first time, like three rivers hitting the same point and becoming something none of them were individually. It moved out from me like a shockwave and it was enormous and it was nothing like training and it had no technique and no refinement and absolutely no one in its path stayed standing.

The entire ridge had fallen. I stayed on one knee, breathing hard.

"Sera." Caden was in front of me before I finished the breath. Both hands came up to my face, cupping my jaw, tilting my head up, his eyes moving over me fast and desperate and checking every part of my face for the thing he was most afraid to find. "Where are you hurt?”

"I took a hit to my ribs, but I'm okay,” I kept wincing.

"Stop saying you're okay when you're clearly—" He stopped. His hands were shaking. I could feel it against my face, that fine, uncontrollable tremor that had nothing to do with cold.

I realized mine were too. Both of us, shaking and not saying anything about it. His hands on my face and my hands coming up to wrap around his wrists and neither of us pulling away.

“Did the bond choose Caden?” I whispered under my breath.

We stayed exactly like that. Then Damien's voice from across the ridge.

"We've got them contained.”

Caden's hands dropped slowly. I kept my hands around his wrists for one more second before I let go.

He picked me up, and walked across the ridge, we reached the cluster of people Damien had contained against the far treeline. One by one I looked at the faces.

Most of them were strangers. And then I reached the last one.

He was on his knees with his hands pinned behind him and his head down, and something about the shape of his shoulders stopped me before I even saw his face.

"Look up," Damien said to him.

He looked up. The world tilted in a completely different way than the pain had caused.

"Noah," I said.

Noah Veyron looked at me. Quiet, dark-eyed Noah who had sat two rows behind me in every class we shared and never once said a word when Brielle humiliated me and disappeared so completely after the bridge that everyone assumed grief.

"You've been with them this whole time," I said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes," he admitted.

"Why?" Caden said. His voice was ice. "Why would you—"

"Because I knew," Noah said. He looked straight at me. "I knew she was going to come back. I knew the Moon Goddess wasn't done with her bloodline. I've known since before any of this started."

"How?" Maera demanded. "How could you possibly have known that?"

Noah's jaw tightened. His eyes stayed on mine.

“I trained all my life for a position, only to have it stolen from me by someone unworthy!” He growled.

“What do you mean?” I questioned.

“I was supposed to be the next hybrid,” he yelled for everyone to hear. "Until you were chosen and my birthright was given to you, Sera!”