chapter 4: The Breaking Point

~IVY ~

I woke up with a shock, not from a dream but from silence. The kind that came before a storm.

I sat up, breath tight in my throat, The mark on my wrist beat faintly under the bandage. The fire had gone out. I felt something was moving or someone not close but near enough for me to feel.

Killian.

I didn’t need to see him to know. The bond hadn’t fully broken.

I stood up slowly and stepped into the night, bare feet pressing into the frosted grass outside the tent.

Ronan was already awake, leaning against the edge of a tree, arms crossed, eyes locked on the north horizon.

“You feel it too,” I said.

He didn’t turn. “He’s moving.”

“Fast?” I asked 

“No but calculated.”

I walked to him, feeling so cold but I wasn't really bothered by that, I just needed answers.

“Where is he?” I asked further.

“Close enough to feel you.”

My heart was beating so hard. “But not close enough to touch,” I said quietly.

“Not yet.” Ronan finally turned, eyes sharp. “But he will.”

I looked at Ronan feeling a bit scared of what Killian is plotting. “What will he do?”

“He’ll strike a camp. Something small. Something meaningful.To send a message to you.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And what do we do?”

“Beat him to it.”

My voice dropped. “You think I’m ready?”

He looked at me like I already knew the answer.

“You don’t have to win. You just have to walk through it and not fall.”

The wind picked up.

And for a second, I smelled him.

Killian.

My body tightened.

It wasn’t longing.

It was instinct.

A wolf still trying to find its way out of me.

Ronan saw it.

“Don’t fight the bond,” he said.

I blinked. “You told me to break it.”

“I said don’t let it rule you. But if you fight it, it fights back.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “I hate that he can still touch me.”

“You survived him.”

“I don’t want to feel him anymore.”

“Then use it.”

I turned sharply. “Use it?”

“Let the bond burn. Let it pull. And when it opens a door, walk through it.”

“To what?”

“To the part of you that’s stronger than anything he ever gave you.”

My breath caught.

I touched the mark again.

The silver lines had darkened.

Not from pain.

From power.

“He wants me to come to him,” I said qui4.

“No,” Ronan said. “He wants to drag you back.”

“He won’t.”

He stepped closer, quiet.

“You’re not that girl anymore,” he said.

“No,” I whispered. “I buried her.”

He nodded once.

Then handed me a blade.

“This time,” he said, “you don’t wait for the fire.”

I gripped the hilt.

It felt warm in my hand.

Alive.

“I'll bring it.”

Later we went back into the cave, everywhere was too quiet. Ronan stood up and said I needed to be alone to listen and feel what moved inside me.

The walls of the cave were jagged and close, but they didn’t scare me. Not anymore. I’d been inside tighter places. The eyes of the pack. The cold silence after rejection. The ground that tried to swallow me.

No stone was darker than that. I stepped deeper inside. I  felt something beneath my skin, the mark was burning not sharp or loud, just low like a pinch on the skin.

The shadows slipped across the floor before I even touched the stone. They poured from the edges of the wall, curling toward my feet like they’d known me long before I knew myself.

I didn’t move or step back. “Come,” I whispered.

They did.

The first wave brushed my fingertips.

It didn’t hurt.

It was singing silently.

Power hummed.

Memory hummed.

I saw flashes behind my eyes.

My mother was screaming and bleeding. A woman in silver armor standing on a battlefield of bones. A wolf with no eyes howling under a red moon. Then I took a look at the woman and to my shock, she was the older and darker version of me sitting alone and crowned in shadows.

I staggered back, hand on the wall, breathing too fast. The torch were shaking, the shadows around me formed a straight line as if waiting for orders. And a voice whispered from behind the flame.

“Is this what you want?”

I didn’t answer because I don't know what I want, alot of strange things started happening. I began seeing strange faces in the dark but the faces were mine but looks dangerous and scary. Darkness filled me from within and in the room.

I tried screaming but no sound came, I just dropped to my knees and held my head and tried not to fall into the scream that lived in my chest.

My pulse raced as the shadows crawled into my ears, mouth and heart. I wasn’t me anymore, I was the cave, the fire. I was the thing the pack had feared when they threw me into the dirt.

Then, a hand grabbed me from behind not real but warm. “Ronan?” I called and turned, it wasn't him. It was me. The me from the visions. The one with no mercy in her voice and too much blood on her hands.

“If you’re going to rise,” she whispered, “you can’t keep hiding from what you are.”

I clenched my jaw, the blade beside me shined and was beating like it had a heart. I grabbed it and pressed the steel to my palm.nThe shadows recoiled.

“You don’t own me,” I said.

The cave shook.

“I carry you,” I whispered. “But you don’t get to carry me.”

The shadows screamed and vanished. Everything came back to normal and the light lit up itself. I fell onto my back, my heart was beating so fast, my hands were shaking. But I was still here and breathing. I looked at my palm, no blood, just the mark shining brighter and clearer now. 

The split crescent had grown a second line, rising behind it like a full moon being born.

I’d passed the test.

I’d stared into the part of me I was supposed to fear and I didn't run

Not this time.

~RONAN~

They gathered just before dawn.

No drums. No banners.

Only wolves in leathers, boots soaked in mud, hands on steel, eyes trained forward like they knew what was coming and didn’t care.

I counted them by instinct.

Thirty-two.

More would follow once the word spread, once they see what's in her.  

I stepped onto the rock at the edge of the ridge and looked down at them.

My pack, not by blood but by choice. Every one of them had walked away from something, power, name, title. Just like me. And now they were here because they knew the old ways had failed.

Because they believed in what was rising.

Behind me, Ivy stepped out of the trees.

They turned and everywhere went silent. She stood straight looking pale and young. But they saw it too, The light in her wrist.

The power humming beneath her skin like the moon had moved inside her.

“She’s not just one of us,” I said. “She’s the reason we’re going to win.”  A few of them murmured while some bowed their heads.

I kept my voice low.

“I know what Killian’s doing. He’s gathering his armies. Tightening the border. Looking for weakness.” I looked at her.

“She’s not weakness. She’s the weapon.” I stepped down from the rock and let them see us standing side by side.

“No more hiding,” I said. “No more waiting.” They raised their fists.

Even the quiet ones and the ones who’d never followed before. Ivy looked over at me, she didn't say anything but her eyes said it all. She was ready even if she didn’t feel it yet, even if she still doubted the fire inside her.

She’d walk into this war with her head up and make them all remember what it felt like to see a queen rise from the ashes.

"The War is about to begin".