Chapter 140 CHAPTER 140
The dungeons smelled of damp stone and fear.
Helena moved carefully between the boys, holding the wooden bowl close to her chest. The porridge inside was thin, barely more than warm grain and water, but it was all she had been allowed to give them. Even so, the boys clutched their bowls like treasures.
They were huddled together in the corner, ribs showing beneath torn clothes, shoulders pressed tight for warmth. Each time Helena handed over a bowl, it disappeared almost instantly, spoons scraping softly as they ate with desperate urgency.
“Slowly,” Helena whispered, crouching beside them. “Please. Take your time. Don’t choke.”
None of them answered. They were too weak for words.
One boy glanced up at her briefly, eyes too large for his face, then returned to eating.
Helena swallowed hard.
She was reaching for the last bowl when the air changed.
It thickened.
The torches flickered, flames bowing inward as if pulled by an unseen force. The shadows stretched long across the stone walls.
Helena’s breath caught.
Seraphine stepped out of the darkness as if she had always been there.
“Well,” Seraphine said lightly, her voice echoing through the dungeon, “isn’t this perfect timing?”
The boys froze.
Helena turned slowly, her heart pounding.
“I find you feeding,” Seraphine continued, smiling. “And I arrive hungry myself. What a coincidence. It seems we crave nourishment at the same time.”
She glanced at the boys. “You for food.”
Then her gaze shifted to Helena.
“And me… for something else.”
Helena’s voice came out small. “Seraphine, please. The boys are too weak. Give them time to recover before you do this again.”
She stepped forward without thinking. “You’re going to kill them.”
Seraphine’s smile vanished.
“Enough.”
The word cracked through the dungeon like a whip.
“Who told you,” Seraphine said coldly, “that you have the right to speak to me?”
She lifted her hand.
Her fingers spread in a casual gesture - thumb wide, the rest extended.
Power surged.
Helena was yanked backward, slammed hard against the stone wall. The air left her lungs in a sharp gasp as an invisible grip closed around her throat.
She clawed at nothing, feet dangling just above the ground.
“Just because something happened in this dungeon,” Seraphine said calmly, stepping closer, “does not give you permission to forget your place.”
Tears streamed down Helena’s face as she struggled to breathe.
“Do you hear me?”
Helena nodded desperately.
The pressure vanished.
She collapsed to the ground, coughing violently, her body shaking as she dragged air back into her lungs.
Seraphine crouched beside her.
“Good,” she said softly. “Now behave.”
She stood and turned toward the boys.
“Well then,” she said brightly. “Who shall it be today?”
She pointed playfully. “Meeny. Meeny. Miney….”
She laughed.
“Oh, let me start again.”
The boys pressed closer together, some whimpering, others too exhausted even for fear.
“I don’t need to make a game of it,” Seraphine said, her tone suddenly bored.
She pointed.
“You.”
The boy she chose shook his head weakly, trying to crawl backward.
Seraphine lifted her hand again.
The boy rose into the air, pulled forward as if by an invisible rope, landing hard at her feet.
Helena cried out, scrambling toward him. “Please…”
Seraphine ignored her.
She gripped the boy’s neck with one hand, tilting his head back gently, almost tenderly.
Then she fed.
Something pale and shimmering began to seep from the boy’s mouth, thin at first, like mist caught in moonlight. It stretched between them in trembling strands, drawn toward Seraphine as naturally as breath into waiting lungs. As it touched her, her body responded.
The faint lines that time had etched along her face smoothed away. Her skin took on a soft, unnatural glow, as if lit from beneath. Color returned to her cheeks, her posture straightened, and her eyes shone brighter - hungry, alive, radiant. With every pull of that stolen light, she seemed to grow younger, more beautiful, more whole.
The boy changed just as quickly.
His shoulders sagged. The strength drained from his limbs as if it were being poured out of him. His skin lost its warmth, turning ashen, his breaths growing shallow and uneven. Where moments ago there had been life - fragile but present - there was now only a hollowing, a visible unraveling. His body withered in her grasp, each stolen fragment of light leaving him weaker, thinner, closer to nothing.
By the time the last shimmer vanished into her, Seraphine looked renewed - glowing with stolen vitality - while the boy hung limp in her hands, emptied of everything that had once made him alive.
She let him fall with a thud.
She straightened, glowing faintly, her skin warm and radiant, eyes bright with stolen life.
Helena rushed to the boy, shaking him gently.
“Wake up,” she whispered. “Please. Wake up.”
He didn’t move.
“What did you do?” Helena sobbed. “They were too weak. I told you they couldn’t handle another feed.”
Seraphine waved a dismissive hand. “Stop being dramatic. He’s just unconscious. He’ll be awake in a few hours.”
Helena pressed her fingers to the boy’s neck.
There was no pulse.
She checked again. Then his wrist. Nothing.
Her breath hitched.
“He’s not breathing,” she whispered. “Seraphine… he’s dead.”
Seraphine frowned slightly. “So what?”
Helena stared at her. “You killed him.”
“He was going to die someday,” Seraphine replied coolly. “Don’t make a fuss.”
She turned to leave. “Dispose of the body.”
But then she suddenly paused at the foot of the stairs and glance back.
“Actually…leave it.”
Helena looked up. “What?”
Seraphine smiled over her shoulder. “Leave the body as it is. I know exactly what to do with it.”
She vanished into the shadows, a smile tugging at her face as the last shimmers of the magic glow disappeared.
The boys left behind attempted to howl, to mourn him the way wolves mourn their own - but their bodies betrayed them. The sound caught in their chests, never reaching their throats. What escaped instead were faint, broken whimpers, grief trapped inside bodies too weak to release it.
Helena stayed where she was, trembling, staring at the small, still body on the stone floor.
She too was too weak to do anything.
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The howl tore through the early morning air.
It was raw. Agonized. Primal.
Red Valley Park woke in a rush of movement and fear.
Wolves poured from their homes, shifting as they ran, following the sound into the forest. Leaves crunched beneath paws as they reached a small clearing just beyond the village boundary.
A female wolf lay there, her body curled around something unmoving.
She lifted her head and howled again.
Beside her lay a young man’s body - human, pale, lifeless.
She nudged him gently with her nose.
The father arrived moments later, skidding to a stop as he saw them. He shifted without thinking, his human form dropping away as he pressed close to his mate, his own low whine breaking free.
They mourned together, bodies touching, heads bowed.
When Alpha Reed arrived, he did not interrupt.
He waited.
Only when the howling faded into exhausted silence did they shift back.
Reed looked at the body, his jaw tightening.
“Isn’t he one of the boys who went missing?” he asked quietly.
The mother nodded, tears streaking her face. “He’s our son.”
“How did you find him?” Reed asked.
“I felt his scent,” she whispered. “It reached me. I followed it.”
“I found him here,” she whispered.
Her hands trembled as they hovered over the body, as if touching him might make it real again—or shatter her completely. “He was so… thin,” she choked out. “There’s nothing left of him. Look at him. They took everything. His strength. His warmth.” Her voice cracked. “Even his wolf.”
She pressed her forehead to his chest, listening for something – anything - but there was only silence. “He died alone,” she sobbed. “No pack. No howl to answer him. They didn’t even leave him his other half. My boy didn’t even have his wolf to die beside him.”
Her grief spilled over, raw and uncontained. “He must have been so scared,” she cried. “So weak. He must have called for me. I didn’t hear him. I didn’t come fast enough.”
She lifted her head then, eyes red, wild with pain, and looked straight at Alpha Reed. “You have to make them pay,” she said, her voice shaking with something darker than sorrow. “You have to find who did this. You have to make them feel what they made my child feel.”
She clutched her son’s lifeless hand to her chest. “They didn’t just kill him,” she whispered. “They tortured my boy.”
“They killed him,” the father said hoarsely. “And left him here.”
Reed closed his eyes briefly.
“We will arrange for him to be buried properly. We will mourn our boy,” he said. “And then the king must be told.”
The wolves gathered closer, forming a tight circle around the fallen body. One by one, their voices rose - raw, broken howls tearing into the early morning air. It was not a call to war, not yet. It was mourning. Pain carried on breath and bone, echoing through the trees for the son they had lost.
Miles away, deep within the forest’s shadow, Seraphine paused.
The sound reached her clearly - the anguish, the unity, the sorrow of an entire pack grieving as one. She tilted her head slightly, listening, savoring it. A slow smile curved her lips, pleased and knowing.
“Good,” she murmured softly, turning back into the dark. “Let them howl.”
And with that, she vanished - leaving the forest heavy with grief, and the promise that this was only the beginning.