Chapter 10

Elara's POV

Kael was on his feet before Nyra finished speaking, and I followed him into the library proper, my heart still unsteady from the moment we'd just left hanging unfinished between us, though there wasn't time to dwell on that now with the way Nyra's hands were shaking around the old scroll she carried.

"Sit," Nyra said, gesturing to the table where she'd already cleared a space, spreading the brittle paper out carefully like it might crumble if she moved too fast. "This isn't from the texts I usually work from. I found it tucked behind a false panel in the old archive, records that someone went to a great deal of trouble to hide."

"Hidden records don't usually mean good news," I said, and Nyra's grim expression told me I wasn't wrong to be worried.

"Three hundred years ago, a mark like yours appeared on a woman named Wren," Nyra said, tracing a finger along a line of faded script.

"She was born into a small pack, unremarkable by every account, until a Lycan lord touched her by accident during a border skirmish and the same mark you're wearing bloomed on both their wrists." She looked up at me, and something in her eyes made my stomach tighten before she even finished the thought.

"The records say she was the last known descendant of the Moon Goddess's bloodline before you. The line was believed to have ended with her."

"Ended how," Kael asked, his voice carefully even, though I could see the tension gathering in his shoulders.

Nyra hesitated, and that hesitation alone told me the answer wasn't going to be an easy one to hear. "She was hunted, Kael. Once word spread of what she was, every kingdom within reach wanted to control her, marry her, or eliminate her so no rival could claim her bloodline first. She spent the last years of her life in hiding, and when she finally died, the line was thought lost with her, until apparently it wasn't."

The room felt colder all of a sudden, and I wrapped my arms around myself without meaning to, the warmth from the moment with Kael in the other room feeling very far away now. "You're telling me this happened before. That someone like me existed before, and it got her killed."

"I'm telling you it's happened before, and I think you deserve to know exactly what that history looks like before you decide how much of yourself to hide and how much to risk showing the world," Nyra said, and there was something almost gentle underneath the bluntness of it, like she wasn't trying to frighten me so much as arm me.

"Wren made choices, Elara. Some of them kept her safe for a while. Some of them, according to these records, may have cost her the people she loved most."

Kael's jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on the scroll like he could will more answers out of it through sheer force of will. "Does it say anything about the curse? Anything about whether Wren's bond ever managed to break it?"

Nyra was quiet for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, her voice had gone softer, careful in a way that made my chest ache before she even said the words.

"The Lycan lord she bonded to carried the same curse you do, Kael. According to this, their bond did begin to weaken it, slowly, over the years they were together.

" She paused. "But they were separated before the process ever finished. Political enemies saw to that.

And without her, the historians write that he lost himself to the wolf completely within the year."

The silence that followed felt heavier than anything that had passed between us since the night in the forest, and I watched something shift behind Kael's eyes, some old fear given new and terrible shape by history repeating a warning none of us had wanted confirmed.

"So the bond isn't enough on its own," I said slowly. "It has to last. It has to be protected."

"That appears to be the case," Nyra said. "Which means whatever grows between the two of you isn't just a personal matter anymore, if it ever was. It's the only thing standing between Kael and the fate every text I've ever read says is coming for him.

And it means the people who want to separate you won't just be doing it out of jealousy or politics. They may be doing it because they understand exactly what losing you would cost him."

I looked over at Kael, and for the first time since I'd met him, the King feared across three territories looked less like a man bracing for a fight and more like a man who had just been handed proof that the thing he wanted most in the world came with a clock attached to it, ticking down whether either of us was ready or not.

"Then we don't let anyone separate us," I said, surprising myself with how steady the words came out, how much I meant them despite how little time had actually passed since the forest, since the mark, since everything about my life had turned upside down in the space of one terrible night. "Wren didn't have people around her who understood what was at stake. I do. That has to count for something."

Kael reached across the table and took my hand, right over the mark still resting quiet against my skin, and when he looked at me there was something fierce and unguarded in his expression that hadn't been there before, like Nyra's warning had cracked something open in him instead of closing it back down.

"It counts for everything," he said quietly. "I just intend to make sure it's enough."