Blood Heir

Chapter 19

Blood Heir

POV: Adelina McKenna

They say power skips generations.

That magic thins with time.

But that morning, in the Hollow Moon ruins, I realized something very different:

My daughter will not inherit weakness.

She will inherit fire.

It began with a dream.

Lux again older this time. Not a child. A girl, maybe nine or ten. Barefoot. Wild-eyed. Standing on a cliff surrounded by wolves, her hair woven with leaves and ash.

Behind her, the forest burned.

But she didn’t flinch.

She raised her hand, and the flames bowed to her.

I woke gasping, heart pounding, skin covered in sweat despite the cold.

The moment I sat up, I felt it:

A pulse.

Low in my belly.

Not pain. Not sickness.

Magic

Old, raw, and spiraling outward.

Asha was the first to feel it.

She barged into the old temple chamber I’d been sleeping in, her expression guarded but alert.

“Do you feel that?” she asked, scanning the stone walls like she expected them to crack.

I nodded. “It’s her.”

“Your child?”

“Yes.”

A long silence.

Then she muttered something low under her breath.

“Asha?” I asked.

“She’s calling the veil,” she said. “It’s too early.”

“The veil?”

“The membrane between worlds. Spirits. Power. The Matrons used to cross it at birth or death, but never before.”

I gripped my stomach instinctively.

“She’s not dying,” I said. “She’s waking.”

The others felt it too.

By midday, the energy had spread through the ruins.

Birds circled overhead without cawing. The wolves patrolling the perimeter began pacing, agitated. Even the younger shifters grew restless, their bodies half-reacting to something they couldn’t see.

And then the glyphs began to glow.

The first appeared on the old training stones.

The crescent-moon etchings once dull and cracked lit with soft silver light.

Then the fire pits sparked to life.

Without flamewood.

Without flint.

Just fire.

Responding to her.

To Lux.

By dusk, it was undeniable.

Even the most skeptical among the Hollow Moon remnants stopped pretending.

They gathered in a wide circle near the altar stone and waited.

Some stood armed. Others stood in silence.

But none looked away.

I stepped into the center with Asha at my side.

I didn’t raise my voice.

Didn’t dress the part.

Didn’t ask for permission.

I simply spoke the truth.

“You’ve all seen what I am,” I said. “You tested me. Challenged me. Watched me bleed. And I earned your patience, if not your trust.”

I let my hand rest on my stomach.

“But this,” I said, voice rough, “is something older. Something bigger than me.”

I stepped forward.

“Her name is Lux. And her presence has awakened your glyphs, your stones, your flame.”

I looked to the wolves now circling closer.

“You’ve mourned your Alpha. You’ve wandered in shadow. But what if this child isn’t just born of legacy?”

I drew the flamebrand at my side.

“What if she is a new one?”

Silence.

Then, a voice from the back.

A young male barely twenty, with a burn scar on his jaw.

“What does that mean for us?”

I met his gaze.

“It means we don’t have to be ghosts anymore,” I said. “It means the line didn’t end. It means we still matter.”

More silence.

Then another voice.

Older this time. A woman. Blind in one eye.

“If she’s born from Matron fire and rogue flame… what else will she wake?”

I nodded slowly.

“All of it.”

That night, no one slept

Lux’s energy pulsed through the Hollow like a second heartbeat.

It didn’t hurt.

It didn’t burn.

It reminded.

By morning, two wolves came forward and offered fealty.

Not in words.

But in blood.

They cut their palms and pressed them to the altar stone beside mine.

And for the first time in decades, the Hollow Moon pack wasn’t memory.

It was living.

Oya arrived two days later.

She emerged from the tree line as if she’d been summoned by the pulse herself.

She said nothing at first.

Just walked straight to me, placed a hand over my stomach, and inhaled.

Then she whispered, “The fire within her calls the old ones home.”

I nodded.

“She’s not just heir.”

“No,” Oya said. “She’s the bridge.”

I frowned. “To what?”

Oya’s eyes turned sharp.

“To the unbound future.”

We gathered at the central fire pit that night.

Asha, Oya, the remnants of Hollow Moon, and the wolves who’d begun arriving in ones and twos from the outer ranges.

They came bearing stories. Loss. Names. Injuries. Magic that no longer worked, and dreams that wouldn’t die.

And they asked the same question:

What happens now?

I rose from the firelight, Lux pulsing steadily beneath my ribs, and said:

“We survive. We gather. We wait.”

“And then?” one asked.

I looked toward the sky.

The moon rose full.

White. Wide. Watching.

“And then we return.”

Because I saw it now.

Dax’s silence.

The Council’s fear.

The shattered remnants of every Matron pack burned in history.

They thought fire destroyed.

But fire cleanses.

And this time… we wouldn’t come back to kneel.

We would come back to take.