Marked By Flame

Chapter 15

Marked by Flame

POV: Adelina McKenna

There’s a moment just before your world changes when everything goes quiet.

A silence that’s not just soundless but sacred.

A breath before the howl.

A stillness before the burn.

I stood in the center of the stone circle, the blood still warm on my palm, dripping down the ancient altar stone. The mountains around me seemed to hold their breath, the air thick with something that shimmered on my skin like static and prophecy.

The flame wolves spirit echoes of Matrons past circled me slowly. Four of them. One white, one black, one silver, and one glowing like embers.

None spoke. They didn’t need to.

I felt them.

Their memories pressed into my bones. Their grief. Their rage. Their power.

And their promise.

I had called to them.

And they had answered.

Mama Oya stood at the edge of the circle, arms crossed, her breath fogging in the chill morning air. She was calm but I could see it in her eyes.

This was not ceremonial.

This was real.

“You’ve bled,” she said, voice like stone cracking in fire. “Now you burn.”

I nodded once. My voice was gone.

My wolf paced beneath my skin, alert and poised not in fear, but in something close to awe. She knew what was coming.

I could feel it.

The rite of Flamebranding.

The true moment a Matron took her claim not just in blood, but in spirit.

No Alpha could bestow this.

No mate could earn it.

It came only from the flame, and from the legacy that refused to be silenced.

Mama Oya stepped forward and drew something from beneath her cloak.

A blade.

It wasn’t steel.

It looked like obsidian, carved from volcanic glass. The edge shimmered red and orange like it was pulled from lava.

“This blade was made from the last forge of Hollow Moon,” she said. “Carried by your father into exile. It was never used. It waited for this.”

She extended the hilt to me.

I hesitated.

Not from fear but from weight.

The moment I touched it, heat surged through my skin. My breath caught in my throat. My wolf snarled.

Not in pain.

In recognition.

It was ours.

Oya gestured to the center of the stone circle. I stepped back into place.

Then she lifted her hands and began to speak in the old tongue.

I didn’t understand the words but I understood their meaning.

And when she reached the final phrase, the flame wolves raised their heads and howled in unison.

The fire behind the altar roared to life.

Not orange. Not red.

Blue.

Sacred fire.

Matron fire.

The kind of fire that doesn’t just burn. It transforms.

“Step forward,” Oya said.

I did.

“Where?” I asked, barely above a whisper.

She touched her own left shoulder. “Here.”

I pulled my coat down. The cold stung my bare skin.

“Mark yourself,” she said. “No one else may do it.”

I stared down at the obsidian blade.

Its edge pulsed.

Waiting.

And then I pressed the glowing point to my skin.

The pain was instant. Sharp. Radiant.

Not cutting, but searing. Like lightning drawn into flesh.

My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall.

The blade carved a single curve into my shoulder—smooth, elegant, echoing the crescent moon sigil I’d seen on the Matron scrolls.

The scent of burnt flesh filled the air.

But it wasn’t just pain. It was release.

A door opening.

A name remembered.

The brand glowed gold, then white-hot and then settled into a silver burn etched permanently into my skin.

I dropped the blade. My vision blurred.

The fire wolves howled again this time not in ritual, but in approval.

When it was done, I sank to my knees in the snow. Steam rose from the mark on my shoulder. The mountains echoed with silence.

And then 

I heard them.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds.

All inside me.

Not madness.

Not ghosts.

Ancestry.

The Matrons.

The Line.

My line.

They weren’t gone.

They were alive in me.

Oya came forward and placed a cloak around my shoulders. Not black. Not silver.

But deep violet, embroidered with ash-pale thread.

“The color of twilight,” she said softly. “Of what ends, and what begins.”

My wolf pressed against my skin, her presence stronger than ever.

She was no longer wary.

She was ready.

“I’ve never felt this before,” I murmured. “Like the fire is inside me now.”

“It is,” Oya said. “It always was. But now it answers you.”

She helped me to my feet.

“You are no longer unmarked. No longer silent. No longer waiting.”

Her eyes gleamed.

“You are Matron Flameborne.”

We returned to the den in silence.

But everything felt different.

The shadows didn’t threaten.

The silence didn’t isolate.

I wasn’t alone anymore.

That night, I dreamed of wolves with wings. Of fires that moved through time. Of a moon that bled silver and sang names I hadn’t yet learned.

And when I woke…

I was no longer the girl who had been rejected in front of the world.

I was the woman who survived it.

Branded by flame.

Named by history.

Chosen by something far older than politics or fear.

Let them come for me.

Let them try.

Because now…

I’d burn them clean.