Chapter 35
ASHES OF THE BOND
Seraphina
A few hours earlier
THE BOUNDARY FOREST looms before me, a tangled mass of ancient trees marking the edge of Malakai's domain.
I enter on foot, pushing through dense undergrowth until exhaustion forces me to rest. A small glade opens before me, moss-covered stones arranged in a natural circle. Dawn breaks in pale fingers through the canopy as I collapse against one of the ancient stones, my legs giving out beneath me.
Hours pass. I drift in and out of consciousness, the emotional and physical toll of the journey catching up at last. My Omega instincts whimper constantly—wrong wrong wrong, go back, find Alpha, go back—but I force them down, needing time to think clearly without his emotions flooding through the bond.
When I fully wake, the sun has climbed higher, dappling the glade with golden light. I reach into my pocket, fingers closing around the crystal vial Ivy gave me. The Blood Severance Elixir. The escape route I thought I needed.
The iridescent purple contents swirl like a miniature storm when I hold it up to the light. So small a thing to hold such devastating power.
I stare at it for a long moment, turning it over in my hands.
Then I cork it firmly and tuck it back into my pocket.
No.
The certainty settles over me like a weight lifting rather than descending. This isn't the answer. Running isn't the answer. Severing our bond and losing myself in the process—that's not protecting our child. That's just... running away from the problem instead of facing it.
I think of Julia's final words: Forgive me, beloved. She thought her death would save him. Thought her sacrifice would break the curse. But it didn't work. The curse remained, and Malakai spent centuries alone, broken, believing he'd killed her.
I won't make her mistake.
I love him. The realization crashes through me with startling clarity.
Despite everything—despite the fear, despite the danger, despite the unstable shadows—I love him.
I love the way he created shadow butterflies for orphaned children.
I love how he holds me in the darkness like I'm something precious.
I love his vulnerability when he thinks I'm sleeping, the way he whispers my name like a prayer.
And I'm carrying his child. Our child. A piece of both of us.
We need to face this together. The curse, the instability, whatever darkness his father planted in him—we fight it together, or we don't fight it at all.
I need to go back. I need to tell him about the baby. I need to tell him I'm not running, that I'm not afraid of him, that we'll find a way through this.
I push myself to my feet, wincing at the stiffness in my legs. My throat is parched—I haven't had water since the inn. I need to find a stream, clean myself up, then head back to the palace.
Back to Malakai.
Back home.
The thought fills me with relief so profound it nearly brings tears to my eyes. Yes. Home. That's where I need to be.
I follow the sound of trickling water to a small stream at the edge of the clearing. As I kneel to cup water in my hands, something crinkles in my pocket—something that wasn't there before.
My blood runs cold.
I reach in slowly, fingers closing around a folded piece of parchment. When did this get here? I didn't have any paper when I left the palace.
With trembling hands, I unfold it.
The handwriting is spidery and old-fashioned, written in fading ink:
My dear child,
By the time you read this, it will be too late. The elixir I slipped into your cider at the inn is already working through your blood. In a few hours, the bond will sever completely.
I know you will be angry. I know you will feel betrayed. But I did this to save you, child. The shadow poison takes what it loves—always. You would have died like she did, like all the others before her. Slowly. Painfully. Your child dying with you.
I have seen this pattern too many times. Watched too many Omegas wither away, their Alphas helpless to stop it. The curse cannot be broken. The only mercy is separation.
You will hate me now. But when you hold your living child in your arms, when you grow old and grey instead of dying young and afraid, you will understand.
I saved you from her fate.
Forgive me.
—Mother Wren
The parchment falls from my numb fingers.
No.
No, no, no—
"NO!" The scream tears from my throat, echoing through the forest. "NO!"
She poisoned me. At the inn. Hours ago. The cider that tasted so sweet, that warmed me from the inside out—it wasn't just cider.
It was the elixir.
I was already dying and I didn't even know it.
"You had no right!" I scream at the empty forest, at Mother Wren wherever she is. "NO RIGHT!"
Rage floods through me, hot and vicious. My light magic explodes outward in uncontrolled bursts, scorching the moss around me, sending birds fleeing from the trees in panic.
I chose. I CHOSE to go back. I chose to fight for us, for him, for our family. And she took that choice away from me.
"I was going back!" My voice breaks on a sob. "I was going to tell him about the baby. We were going to face this together. We were—"
A strange warmth spreads through my chest. Not the comforting warmth of the bond, but something else. Something foreign and wrong.
No. Not yet. Please, not yet.
I reach desperately for the bond, for Malakai's presence. It's still there—faint, but there. I can still feel him. He's searching for me, I can feel his panic, his desperation—
"Malakai," I gasp, pressing my hand to my chest. "Malakai, I'm coming back. I'm coming—"
The warmth turns to heat. Then to fire.
Agony.
Pure, undiluted agony explodes through every nerve, every vessel, every inch of my being.
I arch backward, a scream tearing from my throat as the magic of the elixir—the elixir I never chose to drink—collides with the mate bond.
The claiming mark on my neck—the silvered scar where Malakai's fangs pierced my scent gland—burns as if branded with white-hot iron.
Through the bond, I feel his answering cry of anguish as the magic tears through both of us.
His pain mingles with mine, doubling the torment.
I sense him being thrown from his shadow steed, crashing to rocky ground as the magical backlash hits him.
His body convulses, the same liquid fire racing through his veins.
His Alpha roars—I hear it through the bond, a sound of such primal fury and pain that it shakes me to my core. The sound an Alpha makes when his mate is dying.
I'm not dying by choice, I want to scream at him. I didn't choose this. I was coming back. I was coming back to you.
Through the haze of torment, I feel it—the bond stretching, thinning, straining beyond its limits. What was once a thick rope binding us together frays rapidly, threads snapping one by one.
Memories cascade through our connection as it dies—fragments of our time together dissolving like smoke.
The first time he touched me with gentleness instead of possession.
The way his shadows would curl protectively around me while I slept.
His voice, rough with vulnerability, confessing fears he'd never told anyone.
The heat-mad claiming, yes, but also the quiet moments after, when he held me like I was precious.
All of it slipping away.
I reach for the bond instinctively, desperate to hold onto these pieces of us. But they fragment in my mental hands like delicate glass, each memory shattering as I try to grasp it.
My Omega howls. The sound tears from my throat, a keen of loss so profound it echoes through the forest, sending birds screaming from the trees.
"Malakai!" His name escapes my lips, again and again. "Malakai, I'm sorry! I didn't want this! I was coming back! I love you!"
Through the rapidly dying bond, I feel his desperate attempts to reach me, to somehow hold our connection together through sheer force of Alpha will. His power surges toward me, trying to reinforce what the potion is tearing apart. But it's like trying to hold back an avalanche with bare hands.
I chose you, I try to send through the bond. I chose us. I chose our family. This wasn't my choice—
The bond doesn't stretch.
It snaps.
The sound is deafening—though only I can hear it—like a mountain splitting in two. The claiming mark on my neck flares with blinding light, searing pain beyond anything I've ever experienced.
And then—
Silence.
Absolute, deafening silence where his presence should be. The constant thrum of Malakai that has lived in my chest since our wedding night—gone. Not faded. Not weakened. Simply... gone.
I collapse to the forest floor, convulsing with aftershocks of magic too powerful for a mortal body to contain. But worse than the physical agony is the emotional void—the terrible, echoing emptiness where he used to be. The cold nothingness where warmth once lived.
I reach desperately for any trace of him but find only hollow silence. The mate bond isn't weakened.
It's destroyed.
My Omega curls in on itself, whimpering. Lost. Alone. Broken in ways that may never heal.
"What has she done?" I sob into the moss, my body shaking with grief as much as magical aftershock. "Oh gods, what has she done to us?"
The ground beneath me freezes, then thaws in rapid succession, responding to the chaos of my magic suddenly unbound from his shadows. Light bursts from my fingertips in uncontrolled pulses, my power seeking equilibrium now that it's no longer tethered to darkness.
My hand finds my stomach, and I curl around the tiny life growing there. Our child. The only piece of him I'll have left, if I survive this.
I was coming back, I think desperately, as if he can somehow still hear me. I chose you. I chose us. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
Darkness closes in from all sides, narrowing my vision to a pinprick of fading light. As consciousness slips away, fragments of thought surface through the maelstrom of agony:
The child must survive. That's why she did this. For the child.
But I can't remember whose child. Can't remember why I'm here, or where I came from, or—
His face. Dark eyes. Shadows and warmth and—
Who—?
Then nothing.
* * *
Sunlight filters through leaves overhead, dappling my face with warmth. Birds call to one another in the branches above. Somewhere nearby, water trickles over stones.
I open my eyes.
The world is vibrant, almost painfully so—colors too bright, sounds too sharp, every sensation overwhelmingly new. I lie on my back on soft moss in a forest clearing, staring up at an unfamiliar sky through a canopy of ancient trees.
Where am I?
The question resonates through me with terrifying emptiness. No answer follows. No recognition sparks.
I sit up slowly, my body protesting with various aches and pains I don't understand. My clothes are travel-worn and stained with dirt and what looks like dried blood. A leather water skin lies nearby, along with a small dagger in an ornate sheath.
Are these mine?
I touch my face, feeling the contours of cheekbones, nose, lips—features I cannot picture though they belong to me. My hands move to my hair, finding it long and dark, woven in a braid that's coming undone.
Who am I?
Panic rises like a tide. I press my hands against my temples, searching for any fragment of memory, any glimpse of the past that might tell me who I am, where I came from, why I'm here in this forest alone.
Nothing comes—just a vast, echoing blankness where memories should be.
My hand moves instinctively to my stomach, resting there with protective familiarity I can't explain. Something about the gesture feels right, necessary. But why?
A pendant hangs around my neck—smoky crystal shot through with veins of gold. I lift it, studying the strange stone that seems to pulse with inner light when I touch it. It feels important, though I don't know why.
I struggle to my feet, legs unsteady beneath me. Which way should I go? Every direction looks the same—endless trees stretching into shadow. I choose at random, putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward because standing still feels dangerous, though I don't know why.
Hours pass. The forest gradually thins. Through breaks in the trees, I glimpse rolling hills beyond, and what might be plowed fields in the distance. Civilization. Safety, perhaps.
My pace quickens despite my exhaustion. Each step brings me closer to answers—at least, I pray it does. The forest opens suddenly onto a wide meadow bathed in late afternoon sunlight. Beyond it, nestled in a small valley, a village of stone and timber houses sends tendrils of smoke into the sky.
Relief floods through me. People. Help. Answers.
I step out from the tree line on trembling legs, following a narrow path that winds through tall grass toward the village. Before I'm halfway across the meadow, I spot them—a woman and three young girls tending to a small herd of goats near a wooden fence.
The smallest girl sees me first, pointing and tugging at her mother's skirt. The woman looks up, shading her eyes against the sun. She says something to her daughters, then approaches me with cautious concern in her expression.
"By the light, are you all right?" she calls, quickening her pace as she takes in my disheveled appearance. "Are you hurt?"
I open my mouth to answer, but what can I say? That I woke in the forest with no knowledge of who I am or how I got there? That I feel like half a person, as if something vital has been torn away, leaving me hollow and incomplete?
"Miss?" The woman reaches me, her face creased with worry. She hesitantly touches my arm. "You're safe now. We can help you. Whatever trouble you're in, you're safe here."
Behind her, the girls watch with wide, curious eyes. The oldest can't be more than ten, the youngest perhaps five. Something about their innocent faces makes my chest ache with nameless emotion.
"I..." My voice cracks from disuse. How long has it been since I've spoken? "I don't know what happened to me."
The woman's expression softens. "That's all right. Let's get you to the village. The healer can tend to you." She studies my face. "What's your name, dear?"
Such a simple question. The most basic fact of identity. It should be the first thing anyone knows about themselves.
I search the emptiness where my past should be, desperate for even a small fragment of myself. Nothing comes—just a vast, terrifying blankness. Tears fill my eyes, spilling over before I can stop them.
"I don't know," I whisper, the words falling like stones into still water. "I don't know who I am."