Chapter 16
Evelyne burst from the lodge, wrenching free of Nathan’s hands as though they weighed nothing. He had been waiting for it, already positioned like a wall the moment alarm flared down the bond. He had seen the change in her face the instant it struck.
Not again.
She would not endure this a second time.
Not the hollow terror. Not the awful helplessness of feeling her mate’s pain without seeing what was being done to him.
Agony tore through their connection in a savage wave, just as it had the other night.
Only now she was nowhere near Kaldrek. She could not tell whether he was bleeding, choking, or dying—
Kaldrek!
She was already moving before her mind caught up.
Nathan had warned them in Alaric’s room that something was out there.
Evelyne had insisted on going with Kaldrek, but quiet as Nathan usually was, he had met her with a sternness that left no room for argument.
She obeyed him only until the bond detonated and Kaldrek’s pain hit her like a blade. Then primal instinct took over.
Protect. Find. Save.
She shoved Nathan aside and ran.
Night air knifed into her lungs as she sprinted through the village, searching for a familiar face, for any sign of where the patrol had gone.
Wolves moved through the dark in different forms, some human, some furred and pacing with their attention fixed outward.
There were no screams. No panicked shouting.
No cold creeping through the buildings the way it had during the attack on Cindermoor.
It should have been a relief.
It wasn’t.
If the village was untouched, why had Kaldrek’s pain crashed through her with such violence?
“Where is he?” she cried, her voice cracking against the dark. “Where is my mate?”
Heads turned, but no one answered quickly enough.
She spotted Ravena and Coren and went straight for them, desperate as a drowning woman grasping for shore.
“Have you seen Kaldrek?” The words came out in a rush, stumbling over each other. “I felt him. He’s hurt. We need to find him. Please… tell me you’ve seen him.”
Ravena’s expression tightened, then settled into something steady. When she spoke, her voice carried the calm authority of an alpha used to holding others together when they were close to breaking.
“His pack is with him,” she said. “He’s alive. He’s being tended to.”
Evelyne’s knees nearly gave way anyway.
Coren stepped forward and caught her arm, gentle but firm. “Come,” he said. “We’ll take you to him.”
“What happened?” Evelyne demanded as they hurried on. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
Ravena’s brows drew together. “The Noskari were watching,” she said, as though she still scarcely believed it herself. “They kept their distance. No one was attacked. Except—”
Except Kaldrek.
It did not need saying. Evelyne felt it in Ravena’s pause, in the way Coren’s grip tightened at her arm. More than that, she felt him.
They had not gone ten steps before she saw them.
Holden and Obren emerged from the dark with Kaldrek between them, his body hanging heavy, his head slumped to one side, limp enough to make her heart seize as though he had already slipped beyond her reach.
A sound tore from her, strange and broken, and she lurched forward.
“Oh gods… no.” She reached him in a stumble, her hands flying to his face. His skin was cold with sweat. His chest rose in harsh, uneven pulls. His heartbeat raced, wild and panicked.
Alive.
Alive, but—
Her hands slipped away wet. Too wet.
“Holden,” she choked, voice shaking. “Holden, there’s so much—”
“So much blood,” Holden snapped, and the panic in his voice made her stomach drop.
He tightened his grip on Kaldrek and picked up speed.
“I know. Fuck.” His eyes flashed, wild. “If you die on me, Kaldrek, I’m going to curse your grave for the rest of my life.
Don’t you dare go to sleep. Open your damn eyes. ”
Obren matched Holden stride for stride, and the three of them barreled toward—Alaric’s lodge. Evelyne blinked hard, disoriented by the choice.
“Where are you going?” she shouted after them.
“I told them to go there.”
The voice came from behind her.
Evelyne spun to see Lorena jogging toward them, wiping blood from her hands with a cloth, her face set in grim concentration.
Evelyne’s heart lurched. “Lorena—”
Lorena’s eyes flicked to Kaldrek’s limp form, to the dark smear down his throat.
“I don’t believe this is a wound I can heal,” she said firmly.
And Evelyne’s world dropped out from under her.
***
They stopped at Alaric’s lodge only long enough to call for Cillian, and Evelyne hated every second of it.
It felt reckless, cruel even, to pull her brother back toward magic when he had only just spent himself trying to help Alaric.
Lorena called it instinct, a healer’s hunch shaped by old stories, tales her mother once told of Sunweavers who could heal and cleanse with light.
But Cillian’s gift had come through prophecy, not legend. They had stories. No proof.
And still Cillian nodded, agreeing almost at once, as though he had not been on the verge of tearing himself apart not long before.
Evelyne seized his arm before anyone could move him. “Cillian,” she snapped under her breath, “are you out of your mind? You would have burned from the inside out if Kaldrek had not pulled you away.”
“I know,” Cillian said softly. “I understand why you’re afraid.”
Afraid did not come close to naming it.
Lorena had her bandages and healing instruments ready by the time Kaldrek was brought inside.
She sent everyone out but Evelyne and Cillian.
Holden, unsurprisingly, took up position outside the healer’s tent like a guard dog daring anyone to test him.
Nathan went back to Alaric and Heidara, while the rest of the village shifted into motion.
The packs were already gathering supplies and making ready to leave.
Evelyne could not blame them. They had lingered too long as it was, and the Noskari now knew exactly where to come looking.
Evelyne paced the packed-earth floor, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. Her chest still ached with the bond’s echo, with the constant throb of Kaldrek’s pain.
“Explain it to me,” she demanded, stopping short before Lorena. “Why can’t you heal this?” The sharpness in her own voice startled her, though strain had been living in her blood for hours now. A poor excuse, and she knew it.
Lorena did not flinch. “I understand that you’re frightened, Evelyne,” she said evenly. “But the wound was torn open again.”
The healer began cleaning her hands.
“It was still mending from the other night,” Lorena went on. “You saw how much strain it took for his body to close it, even with shifter healing. Now he’s lost too much blood, and that weakness slows the rest. And this wound…” Her lips pressed tight. “It was made with purpose.”
Evelyne’s heart pounded. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying whoever did this knew exactly where to strike,” Lorena replied.
“The same wound. The same fragile place. Only this time they cut deeper.” She hesitated, then continued more carefully.
“I can stitch him. I can stop the bleeding. I can get him through the night and keep the pain at bay with tonics until his strength begins to return.”
Evelyne seized on those words at once.
“But,” Lorena said softly, and the word landed like steel, “I cannot do what follows.”
Evelyne’s throat closed tight. “Which is?”
Lorena’s voice eased. “I can’t search for blood magic, not the way it threads itself through flesh.
If something slipped into him when the wound reopened, if even a trace took hold, then I need your brother to cleanse it.
And I need that wound sealed properly, so we can leave here with our alpha whole. ”
Evelyne closed her eyes and drew in a slow, shaking breath, fighting to keep herself from splintering apart in front of them. She could not watch another person she loved be swallowed by darkness. She could not cast her brother back into the fire after seeing what it had nearly done to him.
And yet, deep in her bones, the wolf in her whispered the same brutal truth.
This was Kaldrek.
And she would beg.
Cillian stepped closer and set both hands on her shoulders. “Evelyne,” he said, holding her gaze, “I can do this.”
A jagged laugh slipped from her. “You do not know that.”
“No,” he admitted. “But this is different. The wound is fresh, which means I can try. And I can be careful. Please… let me do this for him.” The edge left his voice. “He has done so much for us. For you. This is the least I can give in return.”
Tears stung behind Evelyne’s eyes. She squeezed them shut hard, forcing herself to breathe. They didn’t have time. They couldn’t afford another delay, another night trapped in this village like bait. And Kaldrek needed her to choose.
Evelyne opened her eyes and met her brother’s gaze. “All right,” she whispered, the word tearing out of her like surrender. Then, steadier, as if saying it twice could make her stronger: “All right.”
Minutes stretched until they stopped feeling like minutes at all.
Evelyne’s nerves made her tremble, caught between fear for Kaldrek and terror for her brother.
Lorena, however, never wavered. She stayed steady at Cillian’s shoulder, guiding him in a calm, even voice, as if she had been waiting her whole life to talk someone through this.
Cillian set his hands over Kaldrek’s bandaged throat and breathed. In. Out. Slow, measured breaths, each one anchored by Lorena’s quiet instruction.
“Easy,” she murmured. “Keep it small. Keep it steady. That’s it.”
And Cillian did.
There was no violent recoil. No black mist spilling from Kaldrek’s mouth the way it had from Alaric’s. No screams, no thrashing, no horror clawing at the walls.
Only quiet. Only the calm rhythm of breath and light.
A soft bloom of gold spread beneath Cillian’s palms, brightening until it filled the small space like sunrise. The same light poured into his eyes, turning his irises molten. Even the air seemed to warm around him, as though this was what his gift had always been meant to do. Heal.
Evelyne watched the strain ease from her brother’s face as color returned to his cheeks, as if some starved part of him had finally been given what it needed.
Beneath his hands, the wound drew closed with slow care, skin knitting itself together as though remembering its proper shape.
The blood-soaked bandages went still. Kaldrek’s breath caught once, then his chest lifted on a deep, steady inhale that sounded almost like relief.
He blinked once. Then again. When his dark eyes found hers, her knees nearly gave way.
At last Cillian drew his hands back, the glow sinking to embers beneath his skin. He swayed for a heartbeat, then lifted his head, and a small, stunned smile touched his mouth. Not pride. Not triumph. Only quiet wonder, as though he scarcely believed what he had done.
“He’s clean,” Cillian murmured, almost to himself. “No darkness has taken hold.”
Something in Evelyne’s chest loosened and warmed in answer. For the first time in what felt like forever, she saw her brother not as someone breaking, but as someone becoming.