Chapter Fifteen – The Riddle of Her Blood

Ilia didn’t stop running until her lungs screamed and her legs trembled beneath her, her bare feet pounding the earth with a desperation she couldn’t name. Every heartbeat thundered with fear, shame, confusion. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and her eyes stung with tears she refused to let fall.

How had it come to this? How had her world twisted in such a short span of time? One moment, she was nothing—no one—a shadow moving through kitchens and corridors. The next, she was humming men into submission, being seen by an alpha she had no right to even look at, and surviving an attack that should have broken her. She was unraveling and yet… she wasn’t. Something deeper inside her was rising. Watching.

Somehow, through the blur of panic and the haze of too many questions, her feet had guided her to the forest’s edge. The towering trees loomed like silent sentinels, swallowing the moonlight as their branches whispered secrets only she could hear. And yet, in their darkness, she found a strange familiarity—as if the woods themselves recognized her. As if they’d been waiting.

She staggered deeper into the woods, toward the grove. The place where she’d once seen the old woman. The one who’d spoken in riddles and touched her with something more ancient than anything Ilia understood.

And there she was.

Waiting.

Wrapped in layers of moss-colored cloth and shadows, the crone stood beside the twisted yew tree, her gnarled staff carved with runes that shimmered faintly in the dark.

“You’ve come again,” the woman said, voice like gravel softened by time.

Ilia stopped a few feet away, panting. "What’s happening to me?"

The old woman tilted her head. “You hum the song and awaken the truth. The blood remembers, even if you do not.”

Ilia clenched her fists. "That warrior—he—he was going to—"

“But he didn’t.”

"Because I sang. That song. It stopped him.”

The woman stepped forward, her presence larger than her hunched frame should allow. “You sing a melody not heard in this forest for a thousand years. One of siren blood would know it without knowing why.”

“Siren?” Ilia blinked. “That’s a myth.”

“A myth to some. But sirens are real.”

The old woman’s voice held no doubt, only certainty shaped by centuries. “They were the voices of the old world, Ilia. Wielders of sound that could command beasts and bring warlords to their knees. Their beauty was renowned—ethereal, devastating—and it brought empires to ruin, kings to madness. They were hunted, feared, desired. And in time, believed to be extinct.”

Ilia stared at her. “You think I’m one of them?”

“I know you are,” the woman replied. “You carry the song in your marrow. It’s in your hum, your presence, your power. Forgotten, perhaps, but not gone. You are only half, of course. The other half—wolf blood. But your siren side, that is the legacy that sings.

You knew your mother, didn’t you?”

Ilia swallowed hard. “I don’t remember her. Or my father. I was left in the kitchens when I was just a babe. No name, no legacy. Just… abandoned.”

“She was one of them. A true siren, with a voice like honeyed lightning. But she betrayed her kind—for love. For a wolf. And for that, she was cast out, hunted by both sides. The wolves feared her. The sirens despised her. And in the end, they killed her for it. But know this, child—she did not abandon you. They took you from her. Torn from her arms before she could protect you, before she could run far enough. Her final act was to hide you, to ensure your blood lived on. She died fighting for you.”

Ilia’s hands trembled. “Why do I feel like I'm losing my mind? I see things in dreams—visions that feel more like memories than imagination. I feel drawn to a man I shouldn't even look at, like there's a tether between us I don’t understand. And when I’m near him, it’s like there’s a storm inside me, something wild and untamed trying to claw its way out. And now you're saying my mother didn't abandon me? That she fought and died for me? I don't know what to believe. I don't know who I am anymore.”

The woman reached forward and pressed her fingers to Ilia’s chest, just above her heart. Ilia gasped. A current sparked through her skin and spread outward, wrapping her in invisible threads that hummed with ancient power.

“It is not madness, child,” the woman said. “It is awakening.”

Ilia staggered back. “Awakening to what?”

The woman smiled faintly. “To who you are. To what your voice can do. To the bloodline that makes kings kneel and monsters obey.”

Ilia’s heart pounded. “I’m a servant. Nothing more.”

“You were hidden in the kitchens because that was the only way to keep you alive. But blood will always call to blood. Even he feels it.”

“Who?” Ilia whispered, though she already knew.

The woman’s eyes glinted. “The alpha whose hunger threatens to unravel everything. He’s already dreaming of you. You already haunt him.”

Ilia shivered.

The woman leaned in, her breath like warm smoke. “But be warned. A storm is coming. And the mark he is to give another will not be the end of your story. Only the beginning.”

Ilia’s lips parted. “What are you saying?”

But the woman had already begun to fade, her form becoming mist, her words trailing like fog across the leaves.

“Some are chosen by fate. Others steal it.”

Ilia stood alone, the forest now silent but for the racing of her heart.

And in that stillness, something stirred deep within her.

Something ancient.

Something hers.