Chapter 29
Jul 18, 2025
Peace was a strange creature—quiet where chaos had roared, gentle where violence had ruled. It settled over the kingdom like morning mist, unfamiliar but welcome.
I watched from the sanctuary’s upper balcony as the training grounds transformed before my eyes. Where once Alphas had learned dominance, Hector now taught restraint. Young heirs faced him in the courtyard, their faces flushed with exertion and raw frustration.
“Power without control is destruction!” His command cut through the morning air as he circled a boy who trembled with barely contained fury. “Show me discipline, not rage!”
The heir lunged wildly, all aggression and no strategy. Hector sidestepped with fluid grace, letting momentum carry the boy face-first into the dirt.
“Again.”
“This is pointless!” The young Alpha spat blood and wounded pride. “My father says strength comes from taking what you want!”
“Your father’s thinking built the world we tore down.” Hector’s voice sliced like steel through flesh. “You can learn from our mistakes, or repeat them. Choose.”
The boy’s fists clenched, war raging across his features. I held my breath, waiting to see which path he would take—revolution or repetition.
Meanwhile, fifteen she-wolves sat in my sanctuary’s main hall, their faces blazing with defiance and determination. They were the future—girls who would never know the fear of being chosen, only the power of choosing.
“Resistance isn’t just refusing orders,” I declared, pacing before them like a general before battle. “It’s knowing your worth when the world tells you otherwise.”
A girl’s hand shot up. “What if they’re stronger?”
“Strength has many forms.” I smiled, remembering my own trembling hands in that first trial. “I wasn’t the fastest or the fiercest. But I was the one who refused to kneel.”
“They could have killed you.”
“They tried.” The admission hung in the air like a drawn blade. “But here’s what they never understood—you can’t kill an idea whose time has come.”
The Oracle’s departure came without ceremony. She simply appeared in my chambers one evening, her ancient eyes bright with fierce satisfaction.
“My work is finished,” she announced, setting aside the walking stick that had supported her through decades of prophecy. “The wheel has turned. The future belongs to younger hands.”
Sariah stepped forward, her movements graceful despite the scar slashing across her ribs—a permanent reminder of Vaela’s blade. “I’m not ready.”
“Neither was I, child. Neither was she.” The Oracle’s gnarled finger pointed toward me. “Readiness is a luxury prophets rarely enjoy.”
The transfer of power struck like lightning—weathered fingers touching Sariah’s forehead, whispered words in the old tongue crackling with supernatural force. Suddenly the girl who had once hidden messages in bread rolls carried the weight of prophecy burning in her transformed eyes.
“The visions will come,” the Oracle warned. “Trust them. Even when they terrify you.”
Marcus Sonwood’s fate proved stranger than death itself. Guards discovered him each morning painting visions on his cell walls with his own blood, fragments of prophecy covering every surface in crimson madness:
The moon rises in silver flame…
Blood of the ancient, crown of the new…
She who burns will light the path…
“Mad as a rabid dog,” the guards muttered, backing away from his wild-eyed stare.
But I saw truth in his ravings—the future speaking through a shattered mind, prophecies painting themselves in blood across cold stone.
Darius’s end cut deeper than death. His name vanished from every record, every monument, every trace of history. Official proclamation declared him “unworthy of memory.” Even his own house forgot his existence, speaking only of their “eldest son who died in childhood” when pressed for details.
Erasure. The cruelest fate of all.
The old Matrons found themselves stripped of authority, their intimidating black robes replaced with humble gray. The new council rotated monthly—she-wolves and heirs working side by side, their decisions challenged and changed by voices that had once been silenced.
“This is chaos!” former Matron Ivera protested at the first session, her face twisted with outrage.
“This is choice,” Kira Ashborn countered, the crown resting easily on her young head. “Learn the difference.”
The cemetery outside the capital held no grand monuments, just simple stones marking lives that had mattered. I knelt beside one weathered marker, my fingers tracing letters worn smooth by rain and endless time.
Catherine Fowler
Beloved Mother
She Chose Fire
“The kingdom remembers you now,” I whispered to the earth that held her bones. “Every girl who walks free carries your rebellion in her blood.”
Wind stirred the grass around her grave, carrying the wild scent of jasmine and hard-won freedom.
“I kept my promise, Mother. I’m no one’s bride.” My voice gained strength, carrying across the cemetery like a battle cry that would echo through generations. “I’m the blood that never bent.”
