Chapter 5 – Promises Made in Panic

Rhea’s POV

Merek forced bitter medicine into my mouth while Calder held my shoulders. I swallowed, vomited, and was made to swallow again. “Stay with me,” Merek ordered, pressing his fingers over my wolf mark. “If your beast core closes, I cannot reopen it.”

I wanted to remind him that he had damaged it first. Before I could speak, the hall disappeared. Inside the darkness, a woman stood beside a silver wolf. I had seen her during my worst nights in Black Hollow and blamed hunger.

Four faded Redfang marks lined her dress. Her face resembled mine. “Mara?” I asked.

“Not yet, little wolf,” my mother replied. She covered my damaged mark with her hand. “Live long enough to learn why they abandoned us.”

In that spiritual space, Mara’s inner silver wolf touched Kiro’s head. My black wolf looked small and weak, but her voice returned. “Come back with me,” Kiro pleaded.

Pain dragged me into Merek’s treatment room. Medicine tubes entered my arm, and a healing lamp burned above the bed.

Grandmother sat on the other side of the bed with my hand held between hers. She had refused to leave while Merek fought the poison.

“Kiro?” I whispered. “She survived,” Merek answered. “The wolfsbane nearly destroyed your beast core and killed you both.”

“You should have allowed it.”

Calder gripped the bed. “Do not say that. You are still a daughter of Redfang.”

“Soren erased my name from the register.” I answered.

Calder promised to restore my title, rooms, allowance, and place at the high table. Merek promised to remove the moon-silver seals and strengthen Kiro. Their promises came because they had watched me choose death.

Once I recovered, they would choose Monica again. “Would you offer those things if I still refused to confess?” I asked. Their silence answered me.

I told them about Mara’s spirit and the words she had spoken in Black Hollow. I also told them she claimed no healer came while she was dying. “The poison caused a vision,” Merek decided. “Mara is gone.”

“Then which one of you watched her reject treatment?” I asked. “Who went to her village?”

Again, neither answered. Before Merek could lock me inside his treatment room, hurried footsteps sounded outside. Dagan and Soren entered with dirt on their boots.

Dagan carried a torn piece of silver cloth. Soren placed a bloodstained hairpin beside my medicine. “Monica disappeared during the confusion,” Dagan reported. “We found these near the hunting path.”

Every father looked at me. Grandmother rose between them and the bed. “Rhea has not left this room since she collapsed,” she said. “She could not have taken Monica.”

“The cloak and knife belonged to her,” Soren replied. “Monica may have disappeared before Rhea drank the poison.”

“Or Monica placed them there herself,” Grandmother argued. “You believed one daughter without question three years ago. Do not repeat that mistake.”

The fathers still looked at me as if the answer had already been decided. Their promises were already forgotten.