Chapter 181: Self Sacrifice

Maddie Pov

The salt line went all the way around the flat stone table in the center of the old meat shed. I dropped the empty leather sack onto the dirt and wiped the white grains from my palms. My chest bone was burning hot now, and every time I took a breath, the yellow light flared out against the log walls, making the shadows jump.

"Maddie, open the bar," Calix shouted from the yard and his heavy boots slammed hard against the thick pine door. The timber groaned under his weight, but the iron latch held firm. "I know what you are doing with the salt line. Do not light the white tallow candles, Maddie. We can find a different way to clear the veins."

"There is no other way, Calix," I called out and I picked up the flint stone from the bench. I struck the iron piece twice until a small spark caught the dry wick of the first candle. "The gray lines are touching my collarbone now. If the sun goes down before I break the anchor contract, he will have the whole body and he will use my teeth on the remaining pups. I can feel him spreading like rot inside my ribs. Every breath makes it worse. I won't let him wear my skin and hurt you. I won't."

"You are going to burn your own skin," Calix roared and his shoulder hit the wood again with a loud thud. "Maddie, listen to me. We’ve come this far together. Don’t do this alone. Let me in. We can fight him side by side like we always have. Please, love. Don’t shut me out now."

I did not answer him right away. I stepped inside the white circle and sat flat on the cold stone table, crossing my ankles.

A memory came back into my head the second my skin touched the smooth rock. I saw Calix standing by the frozen creek three months ago, his brown wolf fur covered in white frost while he carried a small deer carcass back to my mother’s cabin. He looked up at me through the branches and his gray eyes were full of that simple valley warmth, before the peak contract ever touched our name.

"He cannot save the white fur, sister," Kai murmured inside my skull and his voice was very low and cold today. The gray lines along my wrists started to swell up, pushing hard against my skin like thick wire. "The tallow smoke will just trap your soul in the stone. You will go down into the dark well with me and the boy will be left alone in an empty yard. Is that what you want? To leave your valley boy grieving while I take everything?"

"We go down together then," I thought back, clenching my jaw. "I’m not letting you win. Not after everything you’ve taken from me. Not after you twisted my mother’s memory and used my own power against the man I love. You don’t get to keep me."

I closed my eyes and forced all my internal energy straight down into the stone table. The gold light of the mate bond flared up from my neck, clashing directly against the gray mountain ink that was creeping up from my chest. My bones started to rattle against each other and a hot fluid ran out of my nose, dripping down onto my linen shirt.

"Maddie, please," Calix begged from the door and the wood finally split down the middle with a huge crash.

He lunged through the broken frame, his face covered in sweat and his leather coat torn at the elbow. He stopped right at the edge of the white salt line, his boots sliding in the loose dirt. He reached his arms out toward my knees, but the hot yellow air around the circle pushed his fingers back, burning the hair on his wrists.

"Step back, Calix," I whispered and I did not open my eyes to look at him. My voice came out strained, every word costing me. "I can feel the anchor loosening, but it’s fighting back hard. If you cross the line now, the backlash could kill you. I need you alive. I need you to lead the pack if this goes wrong. Promise me you’ll keep them safe."

"I am not leaving the yard," Calix stated and he dropped down onto his knees in the dirt, pressing his palms flat against the outer edge of the salt. "Look at my face, Maddie. Remember the night by the logging camp. We signed our own name on the pine bark. We chose each other. That choice is stronger than any contract, stronger than him. Fight him with me. Don’t do this alone. I can’t lose you. Not like this."

"The pine bark is gone," I muttered, my breath coming faster as the pain sharpened. "Everything from before feels burned away. But I remember your eyes that night. I remember how safe I felt for the first time since my parents died. That feeling… that’s what I’m holding onto now. That’s what I’m fighting for."

The white power inside my chest bone snapped like a dry branch and a huge wave of heat drove Kai’s presence back into the dark corner of my brain. The gray lines on my wrists shrank down until they were nothing but thin pencil marks, and his heavy grip went completely loose from my muscles. I let out a long, shaky breath and my shoulders dropped down toward the stone.

"You cannot kill me, Maddie," Kai gasped and his spirit voice sounded thin and broken now, like an old male who had been running through the snow for days. He did not laugh this time, but a strange, cold stillness came over his words. "You think I am just a rival chief who wants the white fur power for the high gate. You do not know anything about the house before the timber scouts came. You don’t understand what your mother sacrificed to bring you into this world."

"The contract is broken, Kai," I claimed, my voice stronger now even as blood trickled from my nose. "I feel you slipping. I feel the gray lines pulling back. You don’t own me. You never did."

"The contract was signed three hundred years ago," Kai corrected and a sudden image appeared behind my eyelids, clearer than any memory of my mother.

It was a tall male with long silver hair standing by the same stone table, and he was holding the hand of a female who looked exactly like my mother when she was young. They were wearing the old peak armor and their fingers were locked together with a bright gold bond that did not look like the valley line at all.

"I am not your enemy, sister," Kai whispered and his voice grew very close to my ear, though his spirit was still bleeding gray smoke into the dark. "I am the first love of the female who carried you in her ribs. I waited three centuries in the cold stone for your soul to come back to the clearing. We belong to the high hall, Maddie, and your valley boy is just a stranger who found us in the woods. He will never understand what we are. What we could be together."