CHAPTER ONE: STUPID DECISIONS AND COLDER TRUTHS

KIARA'S POV

I gripped the sheets so tight the moment he thrust deep into me.

To hell with the moon goddess.

“Arghh….”  

The sound escaped my lips before I could stop it.

To hell with mate bonds and coven rules. I turned twenty-three today and still haven't gotten mated.

I tried to keep clean….I really tried but not anymore. 

I was aware. That was the embarrassing part. Not fully drunk, maybe two drinks past sober, which was just enough to make a terrible decision feel like the most logical thing in the world. 

I knew exactly what I was doing.

And I love it.

The wet sound of kisses filled my ears but not on my lips, lol but my fucking lower lips.

Argh…..he was so good.

His cold lips on my neck and I forgot what spells were.

Who the fuck was he? He didn't smell like a witch ... .or a wol ....” argh…. please.” 

I couldn't help but moan the moment his cold lips hit my nips.

My magic.

It was moving on its own.

Reading him the way it did when I encountered something unfamiliar, tendrils of quiet power sliding beneath his skin trying to pull back a species.

Not a witch.

Whatever he was, he carried none of the markers I knew. No coven signature. No spell residue. No lunar trace that matched anything in my….

“Please…..” 

I woke up to cold sheets and an empty room.

He left…

I lay there for exactly four seconds staring at the ceiling of a hotel room I didn't book, in a bed that still smelled like cedar.

and had a very mature internal conversation with myself.

‘You,’ thought, ‘are an idiot.’

A powerful idiot. A witch with three generations of coven blood in her veins and enough spell work to level a building. But an idiot nonetheless.

I sat up. The room was expensive, with dark walls, heavy curtains, No note. No number. Not even the courtesy of a name scrawled on the hotel notepad.

At least he paid for the booking.

I pressed my fingers to my neck where his mouth had been and felt…. nothing. 

My spells reached out, searching for whatever it had been trying to classify last night, and came back empty.

Whatever he was, he was good at disappearing.

I didn't know his name.

He didn't know mine.

Perfect.

Definitely going to find one of the spells to shut my fucking womb. 

The Volkron Coven was forty minutes away and I had exactly twenty three minutes before the morning bell rang and my absence became everyone's business.

Gripping my shoes in my hands, I immediately covered my face in a veil…

With one leg in the castle grind and the other holding on to a stone a quick jump should help. 

And there, I handed it to my butt. 

“Who's there?” 

Fuck.

Speeding through the grass I got to the hostel room and the first person I met who's not supposed to be awake by this time was. 

Emma .

“Where have you been? Lady seraphine sent for you an hour ago…I was already going to pretend to be you.” 

“...and do a double rotation?”

“ I should be asking you that, quickly go and dress up.” Emma  pulled me in…wrapping the rotation concealed veil on me.

It was my day today to swear on my unborn babies to Seraphine.

At every twenty third annual age hit…

 It's a norm, I was sworn here too. 

The moment I got to Seraphine chambers her voice broke out of the half opened door. 

I have to thing for listening to gossips….I mean I know Camila vale fucks girls. 

The walls has a special kind of ears and I have one. 

“We could have saved her."

I didn't breathe… held my breath to listen, wasn't sure why I was doing this…or there's just something about the tone.

“You may be right, my lady. There were difficulties that night…"

"I didn't want to save her." Seraphine's voice. Unmistakable, that particular flatness, that cold precision she wore like a second skin. 

"She took everything from me. My title. My standing, my child, everything."

“But my lady, you couldn't have managed everything alone, she was only her nanny, you are still her real mother.” 

Seraphine has a child? For whom? 

“I didn't need to manage anything."

I heard Movement. Seraphine's heels against the marble tiles "I went in before the fire spread. I made sure of it. I stabbed her, directly on her spine.”

My hand went cold on the door.

"Coral Wilton was already dying when the building went up."

The world tilted.

Coral?  Coral my Mama? 

“What if she finds out about my lady?” 

“You are the only soul I have spoken this to…just you, and of course I don't trust you with this secret.”

“My lady, I promise to keep it, with my life.” 

“Yes you will.” 

“My lady please, please don't do this, I swear to the moon and back….”

I heard it so loudly ... .the sound of a knife digging in and out.

My chest beat so hard my legs wobbled as my mind went blank. My veil slipped out of my finger.

I couldn't…I couldn't help but hold my breath, my presence must not be noticed but I couldn't help the tears from pouring out of my eyes….

 The night I had spent three years mourning was an accident.

Not an accident.

“Kiara.”

The door swung open.

“You're awake." 

“Ye…yes my lady.” I immediately covered my head with the veil, making sure my tears weren't seen.

I have no spell greater than Seraphine to kill her…I wrapped my hands in a tight fist holding back the spell I was struggling to cast. 

She killed my mama.

She made me an orphan.

The moment I got to the ritual circle, Seraphine began to cast the spell for the rotation, concealed 

The moment the spell came in I knocked it with all the spells I could form and watch it bounce back….

Then hit Seraphine directly at her chest…

“Kiara !!!!”