Chapter 11 - Sera
Everything I thought I knew about myself is a lie.
The realization sits heavy in my chest as Reeyan drives us back toward Grayhide territory.
Desert landscape races past the windows, but I barely register the changing colors of sand and rock.
All I can see is Evangeline’s pale eyes as she explained how a witch’s revenge three centuries ago turned my entire pack into something less than what we should have been.
Moira Ashwood cursed us because one man rejected her.
One cruel, thoughtless man who humiliated her in front of both packs.
And instead of directing her rage at him, she punished every woman who came after.
Made us incapable of the deep emotional bonds that give life meaning.
Stripped away our ability to love freely, to trust completely, to feel without restraint.
Three hundred years of women living half-lives because of one witch’s broken heart.
The injustice of it makes my hands curl into fists in my lap.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Reeyan asks, breaking the silence.
“No.”
He doesn’t push. Just keeps driving while I stare out the window and try to process what breaking this curse would actually mean.
Every Llewelyn woman I know—my aunt, my mother, my sister Caelan, my friends—all of us have lived under magical suppression our entire lives.
Believing our emotional distance was a strength when it was really imprisonment.
How many times did my mother struggle to tell me she loved me? How many times did I see something in her eyes, some emotion trying to surface, only to watch it get swallowed by that terrible reserve we’re all trained to maintain?
Except it’s not training. It’s not cultural adaptation or learned behavior.
It’s a curse. A binding. Magic designed to make us less than we should be.
The sun is setting by the time we pull up to his house. I climb out before the truck fully stops, needing to move, needing to do something with the restless energy crawling under my skin.
“Sera—”
“I need to be alone right now.” I don’t look back as I head for the front door. “Please.”
The mate bond pulls at my chest, wanting me to turn around. Wanting me to seek comfort in his arms. But I can’t. Not when I don’t even know who I am anymore. Not when everything I thought made me Llewelyn turns out to be magical manipulation.
I lock myself in the guest room and lean against the door, breathing hard like I’ve just run a marathon. The folder from Evangeline is full of documentation about the curse that’s been strangling my pack for generations.
I should read through it. Should study the spell work and understand exactly what was done to us. But I can’t bring myself to look at those pages right now. Can’t face more evidence of how thoroughly we’ve been violated.
Instead, I strip off my clothes and climb into the shower, letting hot water pour over me until my skin turns pink and tender. The heat doesn’t wash away the knowledge. Doesn’t make the truth any easier to bear. But at least it gives me something to focus on besides the screaming in my head.
When I finally emerge, wrapped in a towel with my hair dripping down my back, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. Same silver-blonde hair. Same blue eyes. Same face I’ve seen every day for twenty-four years.
But underneath, something is different. The curse is weakening. I can feel it in the way emotions surface without the usual dampening effect. Anger doesn’t get smoothed into mild annoyance. Fear doesn’t get rationalized away. And desire…
I press my hand to my stomach, feeling the low ache that’s been building there since we left Hysopp territory. An ache I’ve never experienced with such clarity before. Want. Need. Hunger for something I’ve never allowed myself to truly feel.
This must be what it feels like to be free.
It’s terrifying.
I pull on the oversized T-shirt I’ve been sleeping in—one of Reeyan’s that I borrowed because I’m still waiting on my own clothes to arrive—and climb into bed. The fabric smells like him. Cedar and old books and something uniquely his that makes my wolf perk up with interest.
Sleep won’t come. My mind keeps replaying Evangeline’s words. The mate bond triggered something that was always inside you. The abilities are yours. The bond simply gave them room to grow.
The bond.
My hand drifts to my chest, pressing against the place where I feel the constant pull toward Reeyan.
Even now, with a locked door and an entire hallway between us, I’m aware of him.
Can sense him moving around the house, probably researching or taking notes in that worn journal he carries everywhere.
The ache in my belly grows stronger. More insistent. More demanding than anything I’ve felt before.
I squeeze my thighs together, trying to ignore it. Llewelyn women don’t give in to base desires. We’re taught to maintain control, to rise above physical needs, to value logic over emotion and passion.
Except that’s the curse talking. That’s three hundred years of magical suppression telling me that wanting something—wanting someone—is wrong.
My hand slides lower, tracing over my stomach through the thin fabric of the T-shirt.
The touch sends sparks through my nervous system, making me gasp softly into the darkness.
When was the last time I touched myself like this?
Years, maybe. The curse always made it feel muted, distant, like going through the motions without real satisfaction.
Like trying to feel pleasure through layers of thick cloth.
But now…
Now everything feels different. More vivid. More real. More alive.
I think about Reeyan’s hands as they moved across maps and documents today.
Long fingers tracing historical passages with such care.
Those same hands that can be gentle when handling ancient texts or brutal when protecting me from enemies.
Hands that killed Thornridge operatives without mercy to keep me safe.
What would those hands feel like on my body? Would he be gentle or rough? Would he take his time exploring every inch of my skin, or would he claim me with the same focused drive he brings to everything else?
My hand slips beneath the waistband of my underwear, finding slick heat that makes me bite my lip hard enough to sting. I’m already wet. Already aching. The curse’s weakening grip has left me vulnerable to every sensation, every need, every desire I’ve suppressed for my entire life.
I circle my clit slowly, testing the sensation. Pleasure jolts through me like electricity, and a moan escapes before I can stop it. I press my face into the pillow to muffle any other sounds as I continue touching myself, finding a rhythm that makes my hips rock against my own hand.
Images flood my mind unbidden. Reeyan’s messy, dark blond hair sticking up in all directions after he’s been running his fingers through it while researching.
The green eyes that see too much, that look at me like I’m a puzzle he’s determined to solve.
The crooked nose that makes him look less like a scholar and more like someone who’s survived real fights.
His lean, strong body, as it moved during the combat training I glimpsed through the window yesterday morning.
I imagine those callused hands on my skin. Imagine his mouth hot against my neck, teeth scraping over my pulse point. Imagine him pushing into me slowly, stretching me, filling me while those green eyes watch every reaction cross my face.
My fingers move faster. I’m slick and swollen, every nerve ending alive in ways I’ve never experienced. The pleasure builds in waves, cresting higher with each stroke. I’m panting into the pillow, hips rocking against my own hand as I chase the release building at the base of my spine.
I push two fingers inside myself, imagining they’re his. Imagining the stretch and fullness of him claiming me. My inner walls clench around my fingers, and I whimper at how empty it feels compared to what I really want.
I think about him taking control. Telling me exactly how he wants me.
Using that commanding voice he gets when he’s making strategic decisions about me.
Demanding I tell him who I belong to while he’s buried deep inside me, his hand wrapped around my throat just tight enough to make breathing difficult.
The fantasy shouldn’t excite me this much. Llewelyn women are supposed to value independence and autonomy above all else. The idea of surrendering control should be anathema to everything I was raised to be.
But the wanting consumes me anyway. The need to give myself over to someone completely, to trust them with my body and pleasure. To let someone else make the decisions while I just feel.
My thumb finds my clit again while my fingers work inside me. The dual stimulation makes my back bow off the bed. I’m close. So close. The pressure builds and builds until I can’t breathe through it.
I imagine Reeyan’s voice in my ear, rough and demanding. Come for me. Let me feel you.
The thought sends me over the edge. I come with a strangled cry, biting down hard on the pillow as waves of pleasure roll through my body.
My inner walls clench around my fingers, and I can feel myself getting wetter as my release coats my hand.
The orgasm seems to go on forever as the aftershocks roll through me until I’m trembling and gasping for air.
When it finally subsides, I lie there panting and spent. My heart pounds so loudly I can hear it echoing in my ears. My thighs are slick, and I can feel the wet spot forming on the sheets beneath me.
Then reality crashes back in, making me gasp.
Oh gods. What did I just do?
The guilt hits immediately, even though logically I know there’s nothing wrong with masturbating.
But years of Llewelyn training—curse-influenced training—scream that giving in to desire is weakness.
That losing control like this is shameful.
That pleasuring yourself while thinking about a man you barely know is the height of impropriety.
Except it’s not a weakness. It’s human. It’s normal. It’s what I should have been able to feel all along without magical suppression dampening everything.
Understanding that doesn’t make the mortification any less crushing.
I bury my face in the pillow and groan. The mate bond pulses in my chest, stronger now, almost like Reeyan is more aware of me than he was before. Can he feel what I just did? Does the bond work that way? Can he sense the pleasure still thrumming through my veins, the satisfaction in my bones?
Please let the answer be no.
But even as I think it, I hear footsteps in the hallway. They stop outside my door. Just stop. Like he’s standing there, deciding whether to knock.
My breath catches in my throat. I hold perfectly still, as if moving might somehow make this worse. As if he can’t already sense everything through whatever supernatural connection exists between us.
The footsteps move away after what feels like an eternity. Back down the hall toward his bedroom.
Relief and disappointment war in my chest. Part of me wanted him to knock. Wanted him to force the confrontation so I wouldn’t have to make the choice myself. Wanted him to push open the door and finish what I started, replace my fingers with his body, and make the fantasy real.
But I also couldn’t have handled facing him right now with my body still alive from release and my thoughts full of everything I imagined him doing to me.
I roll onto my side and pull the blankets up to my chin, even though the room is plenty warm.
The ache in my belly has eased, but the wanting hasn’t disappeared.
If anything, it’s stronger now. More demanding.
Having a taste of what pleasure feels like without the curse’s suppression has only made me hungry for more.
This is what the curse suppressed. This need. This hunger. This overwhelming desire to connect with another person on every possible level—physical, emotional, spiritual.
No wonder Moira Ashwood chose this particular revenge.
Emotional isolation is its own special torture.
Making an entire pack of women unable to form the deep bonds that give life meaning?
Unable to experience passion and desire and love the way we’re supposed to?
That’s cruelty on a scale I can barely comprehend.
And my ancestors lived with it. Adapted to it. Generation after generation accepted this diminished existence because the curse kept them from recognizing what was wrong.
How many potential mates were rejected because the bond couldn’t form properly through the curse’s suppression? How many children grew up with mothers who couldn’t express love the way they wanted to? How many friendships remained superficial because a true emotional connection was impossible?
How many women died without ever experiencing real pleasure? Real passion? Real love?
The magnitude of what was stolen from us makes me want to scream. Or cry. Or both.
Instead, I just lie there in the darkness, listening to Reeyan move around his house. Water running in what must be his bathroom. The creak of floorboards as he paces. The sound of a door closing softly, like he’s trying not to disturb me.
The mate bond thrums steadily in my chest. A reminder that despite everything—the coercion, the manipulation—he’s my person. The one the universe or fate or whatever cosmic force governs these things decided belongs with me.
And I don’t know what to do about that.
Because breaking the curse means embracing what I feel for him.
Means accepting the mate bond and becoming someone fundamentally different from the Llewelyn woman I was raised to be.
It means admitting that independence and emotional reserve aren’t actually strengths, but limitations imposed by magic.
But not breaking the curse means condemning every future generation of Llewelyn women to the same isolated existence.
Letting Moira Ashwood’s revenge continue destroying my pack from the inside out and watching my sister Caelan grow up unable to feel what I’m feeling right now.
Any daughters I might have someday would inherit the same prison.
No pressure or anything.