~Elara's Pov~
I woke up drenched in sweat, every muscle in my body vibrating with something that felt like electricity and dread braided together. My dreams hadn't been dreams, not really.
They were more like memories stitched into my bones, breaking loose now that the seal on my past was torn. I could still feel the weight of the curse clinging to my skin like ash. But something was different. Something inside me had shifted. Woken.
I wasn't the same woman who had kissed Kade in a moment of reckless need. I wasn't even the same woman who had cried on the floor of her apartment after remembering the witch's cruel voice.
I was something else now.
The city outside was just starting to stir when I stepped into the street, hoodie up, sunglasses on, trying to pretend I was still human—still sane. But my senses betrayed me at every turn. I could hear conversations blocks away. I could smell the sharp spice of a street vendor's curry before he even unpacked his cart. I could feel the weight of eyes on me from buildings I hadn't even passed yet.
I see you.
That's what it felt like. The world saw me now, the way predators see each other. As prey or threat. I wasn't sure which yet.
The truth came fast and cruel.
It started with the woman.
At first, I thought she was just another jogger in the park. Fit, focused, and dressed in sleek black. She kept a few paces ahead of me, but something about the rhythm of her steps was wrong. Too calculated. Too... predatory. I slowed. So did she. I turned down a side path. She followed. I cut across the grass. She mirrored it like a shadow.
My instincts, whatever they were now, howled.
When I turned, she was already on me.
I barely dodged the blade she pulled from her jacket. It wasn't long or flashy, just a curved silver thing that hissed through the air like it had a name. I rolled across the dirt path, heart slamming in my chest, adrenaline flooding my system. But beneath the panic, something colder coiled in my belly, something sharper.
"You're the mark," she growled. "The cursed bitch."
"I don't even know you," I hissed, backing away slowly.
"You don't need to," she said, eyes glowing amber now. "You were born wrong. You carry the blood of the witch and the wolf. You're a threat to every pack in this city."
She lunged again.
This time, I didn't move.
I didn't have to.
My body did it for me.
Something inside me snapped and uncoiled, and a heat burst from beneath my skin. The moment she touched me, her blade melted. Melted. Her scream ripped through the park like a siren. I stared in shock as the silver hissed and warped in her hand, like it had touched live flame. She stumbled back, clutching her burned palm.
I stepped toward her, slowly. The air around me shimmered. I could feel the power now, hot and heavy, like a second skin. My fingertips tingled with it.
"What the hell are you?" she rasped.
"I don't know," I said truthfully. "But maybe you should run."
She did.
And I let her.
Because I was too busy trying to process what had just happened. I'd burned a blade. Not dodged it. Not blocked it. Melted it with something that wasn't fire and wasn't rage just me. Raw and awake. My skin cooled, but the fire remained, banked just beneath the surface.
I stumbled home, shaking, half-expecting Kade to be waiting. He wasn't. Of course, he wasn't. He'd given me space. Or maybe he was watching from the shadows. Either way, I didn't care. Not right now. I needed answers. Real ones. The kind that didn't come wrapped in cryptic stares and half-truths.
I opened the old box I kept hidden beneath my bed, where the only photo of my biological mother lay, folded in a worn leather wallet I'd never dared to throw away. I studied her face for the hundredth time. She was beautiful. Ethereal. With eyes like mine and hair like night. But the thing that always caught me was the mark on her collarbone, partially visible, the same crescent that lived under my ribs.
The same cursed blood.
There was a note tucked behind the photo. Faded. Torn. I'd never read it until now, too afraid of what it might say.
If she ever awakens, run. They will come for her. They will come for you. Protect the flame. Protect the bond. She's not just a child. She is the reckoning.
I read it three times before the meaning really hit me. My mother had known. She'd known what I was, what I could become. She hadn't abandoned me out of cruelty; she had hidden me.
And now the secret was out.
The woman in the park wasn't alone.
By nightfall, they came.
I felt them before I saw them. The air grew thick, charged like before a thunderstorm. Shadows slithered against the glass of my apartment window. I locked the door, but I knew it was pointless.
They were already inside.
Three of them. All dressed in civilian clothes, but there was no mistaking what they were. Wolves. Not like Kade. They moved differently. Together. Pack-minded. Tacticians. Their leader, a tall man with silver at his temples and a long scar down his throat, didn't bother pretending.
"You're a problem," he said flatly. "The Ignari don't allow witches in their bloodline."
"I'm not a witch," I spat.
He nodded. "No. You're worse. You're both."
Before I could speak again, he moved too fast. He was on me in an instant, slamming me into the wall. The others circled like jackals, waiting for the kill. I tried to scream, but the man pressed his arm against my throat.
"Don't bother," he sneered. "The bond might make you important to him, but not to us."
"Kade will kill you," I gasped.
"Kade isn't here."
But I was.
And I wasn't helpless anymore.
I let go.
The power inside me surged up like a tidal wave breaking free of a dam. My skin lit up not with fire, but with light, moonlight, ancient and pure. The man screamed as it scorched him. Not with heat, but with truth. I saw him. Saw his sins. The lives he'd taken. The mate he'd betrayed. And he saw me, too, not as prey, not as a target, but as something holy.
They ran.
Cowards, the lot of them.
When it was over, I collapsed to my knees, shaking, breathless.
And that's when I heard the voice behind me.
"You've changed," Kade said quietly.
I didn't turn to look. "They came for me."
"I know. I was watching."
"You didn't help."
"No," he said. "I needed to see what you'd become."
I finally looked at him. "And?"
He stepped closer, kneeling in front of me. His hand reached out not to claim, not to command, but to offer.
"I think you were never mine to protect," he whispered. "I think I was always yours."
And for the first time in my life, I believed him.