Chapter 21 - Sera
The voices downstairs pull me from sleep. I stare at the ceiling of Raegan’s guest room and count my breaths. One. Two. Three. My mind keeps circling back to the same question—can I really do this?
I press my palms against my eyes.
The bed is comfortable. Too comfortable. I could stay here all day and avoid making this choice. Except I can’t. Thornridge is mobilizing. My pack needs me. And somewhere, Reeyan is waiting for an answer.
I drag myself out of bed and find clothes Raegan left folded on a chair. Simple things. Leggings and a soft sweater that smells like lavender. I pull them on and head downstairs.
Raegan sits at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, with her blonde hair pulled back in a messy bun. She looks up when I enter and gestures to an empty chair. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
She pours from a pot that looks freshly made and slides the mug across the table. I wrap my hands around it and let the warmth seep into my palms.
“Did you sleep?” she asks.
“Some.” I take a sip. The coffee is strong and exactly what I need. “Where’s Wyn?”
“Meeting with Oren and the others. They’re coordinating security for the ceremony.” She pauses. “If you decide to go through with it.”
There it is. The question I’ve been avoiding since yesterday.
I stare into my coffee. “How did you do it? When Wyn forced you into marriage, how did you get past the anger?”
Raegan rests her chin in her palm and asks, “Who says I’m past it?”
I look up.
She smiles, but there’s something wry in it. “I’m serious. Some days, I’m still furious with him for taking my choice away. But I had to figure out what I was really angry about. Was it the marriage itself, or was it that I wanted him and hated myself for it?”
“Both?”
“Exactly.” She takes a sip of her own coffee. “Fighting what I wanted only made me miserable. And yeah, accepting him felt like weakness at first. Like I was giving in. But it turned out accepting the bond didn’t make me weak—it gave me access to strength I didn’t know I had.”
I turn the mug in my hands. “What if I don’t want that strength? What if I’m fine the way I am?”
“Are you?”
I open my mouth to say yes, of course I am. But the words don’t come.
Raegan watches me with those knowing eyes. “You’ve spent your whole life proud of how controlled you are. How independent. How you don’t need anyone. And now you’re terrified because maybe you do need someone, and that feels like losing yourself.”
My throat goes tight, and I swallow against it. “I hate that you’re right.”
“I know.” She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “But here’s the thing, Sera. That control you’re so proud of? The curse gave you that. It’s not really yours. It’s something that was done to you three hundred years before you were born.”
I pull my hand back. “So what am I without it? Just another omega who falls apart over feelings?”
“You’re a woman who gets to choose what she feels instead of having it chosen for her. And yeah, that’s scary. Feeling everything without that magical buffer between you and the world is going to be overwhelming at first. But it’s also freedom.”
"I spoke with my mother yesterday," I say quietly. "Before I came here."
Raegan sets down her mug. "How did that go?"
"She told me I was being manipulated. That the visions were probably planted by Grayhide wolves to destabilize our pack. That I should come home immediately and submit to examination by the elders."
"Submit to examination?"
"To make sure I haven't been compromised.” I bark out a laugh before I add, “She said the fact that I'm even considering marrying a Grayhide wolf proves something is wrong with me. That the Sera she raised would never abandon her pack's values for a man she barely knows."
Raegan's hand finds mine again. "That must have hurt."
"The worst part is how she said it. Not angry.
Not even disappointed, really. Just... certain.
Like she was reciting facts from a textbook instead of talking to her daughter about her future.
I kept waiting for her to show some emotion.
Any emotion. Fear for my safety. Anger at my choices.
Even disgust would have been something. But she just looked at me with those empty eyes and told me I was making a mistake, and I realized—she can't feel it.
She can't feel how terrified she is of losing me because the curse won't let her. "
My voice cracks on the last words. Raegan moves around the table and wraps her arms around me, and I let myself lean into the comfort.
"The things she said," I continue against Raegan's shoulder. "They sounded like her. Used her voice. Her words. But it wasn't really her talking. It was three hundred years of curse conditioning speaking through her, using her love for me as a weapon to keep me trapped."
"The vision warned you that someone in Llewelyn would try to stop you."
"I thought it meant an enemy. Someone working against me. I never imagined it would be my own mother, genuinely believing she was protecting me while the curse pulled her strings."
I pull back and wipe my eyes. "If I'd told her about the vision before I left Llewelyn, before I had evidence and allies, she would have had me confined. For my own good. Out of love. And I would have spent the rest of my life in that gilded cage, never knowing what I'd lost."
"But you didn't tell her. You trusted the vision."
"I trusted you." I meet her eyes. "The vision said not to tell anyone in Llewelyn. It didn't say anything about my best friend from Grayhide."
Raegan smiles, watery but real. "That's the curse's blind spot, isn't it? It never accounted for connections that cross pack lines."
I think about my mother. About Caelan. About every woman in Llewelyn territory who has lived and died without ever feeling the full weight of love or grief or rage.
The curse didn’t just steal their emotions—it stole their choices.
They never got to decide if they wanted a mate or solitude, passion or peace.
The decision was made for them before they were born.
“What about the rest of my pack?” I ask. “If I break this curse, every woman in Llewelyn is going to feel everything all at once. What if they can’t handle it?”
“They’re stronger than you think.” Raegan stands and refills both our mugs. “And they’ll have help. Ash has already offered to coordinate with the psychics, and Veva’s working on magical support for the transition. You won’t be throwing them into the deep end alone.”
I wrap my hands around the fresh coffee. Steam curls up from the surface, dancing in my field of vision. “Reeyan said he wants me. Not just because of the mate bond or the curse. He said he wants me.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know,” I confess with a groan. “I want to. But how do I trust that when everything about how we got here was forced?”
Raegan sits back down. “You don’t have to trust it all at once.
Trust is something you build. Day by day, choice by choice.
He made some terrible decisions about how to keep you safe.
You have every right to be angry about that.
But from what I’ve seen, he’s willing to put in the work to earn your trust back. ”
I take another sip of coffee. “You really think this can work?”
“I think you’ll never know unless you try.” She tilts her head. “And I think the fact that you’re this scared means it matters to you. You don’t agonize over things you don’t care about.”
That hits somewhere deep. I stare at the table and try to imagine it. Marrying Reeyan. Breaking the curse. Feeling everything without that familiar distance between me and my emotions. The thought makes my chest hurt.
But then I think about Caelan. About my sister growing up the way I did, believing independence means isolation and strength means never needing anyone.
I think about her falling in love someday and not being able to feel it fully.
Not being able to choose whether she wants that person or not because the curse will make the choice for her by dampening everything until it’s manageable.
That’s not freedom. That’s a cage.
“I need to do this,” I quietly declare. “Not just for me. For all of them.”
Raegan smiles. “There’s the Sera I know.”
We finish our coffee in comfortable silence, then I stand and rinse my mug in the sink. “I should go back. Reeyan’s probably wondering if I ran off in the night.”
“He knows you didn’t. Wyn’s been getting updates from the security detail outside.”
I turn to stare at her. “There’s a security detail?”
“Did you think Reeyan would let you stay here without protection? Especially with Thornridge mobilizing?”
Part of me wants to be annoyed about that. The other part recognizes it for what it is—not control, but care. I’m not sure how I feel about the distinction yet.
Raegan walks me to the door. “Whatever you decide to tell him, make sure it’s what you actually want. Not what you think you should want, or what will make things easier. What you want.”
I nod before I step outside into the cool morning and start walking.
The security detail follows at a distance. I pretend not to notice them.
By the time I reach Reeyan’s house, my stomach is doing flips. I knock once and push the door open before I can change my mind.
He’s at the dining table surrounded by books and papers, exactly where I expected him to be. His head snaps up when I enter. Those green eyes search my face like he’s trying to read my answer before I say anything.
I close the door behind me. “I’ve made my decision.”
He stands slowly, keeping his palms flat on the surface of the table. “And?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll marry you and break the curse. But I need you to understand something. I’m still angry about how this started. About you forcing my hand and not giving me a choice about staying here. That anger doesn’t just disappear because I’ve decided to go through with this.”
“I know. And I’m not asking you to forgive me. Just to let me try to make it right.”