Chapter 47 — Sera Cries in Another Body

Cassia’s knees hit the cobblestones with a sickening thud.

Her attendants rushed forward, but Maera was faster. The Elder Priestess knelt beside the fallen Luna candidate, pressing one palm firmly over Cassia’s silver binding bracelet.

Beneath Maera’s touch, the metal glowed with a bruised, black-silver light.

Cassia trembled violently, her breath coming in ragged gasps. But her eyes were not fixed on the priestess offering aid.

They were frantically searching the crowd.

Searching for Mira.

The pack saw only what Maera wanted them to see: Cassia’s agony, Mira standing untouched, and the sacred alarm tightening the Elder’s face.

Maera did not shout accusations. She simply raised her voice in a tone of pious concern.

“Keep Mira Vale back.”

The warriors hesitated, caught between duty and fear. Darius’s Alpha pressure held them in place, but the damage was already done.

The pack had watched Cassia break the moment Mira silently called her wolf’s name.

Tovan moved through the chaos under the guise of crowd control, his warrior’s gaze missing nothing.

He stepped close enough to see what the others could not.

The bracelet had not burned outward, as if Mira had attacked it. The scorch marks were pressed deep into Cassia’s wrist, turning inward like a punishment inflicted from within.

The binding was hurting the wolf inside for answering its true mate.

Tovan caught Galen’s eye and murmured the observation low enough for only Beta ears.

Galen’s expression shifted instantly. If the binding caused the pain, then Mira was not the weapon. The bracelet was.

But Maera’s hand still covered the metal like a priestess guarding a holy relic. They could not seize it in public without declaring war on the Elder Council.

“We need proof of the mark before she hides it,” Galen breathed.

Tovan’s jaw tightened as he scanned the hostile faces surrounding them.

“Then we need someone close enough to see her without starting a war.”

Elder Corvin seized the silence left by Cassia’s collapse.

He demanded Mira be restricted from the Luna candidate’s presence until Cassia recovered, framing the order as caution rather than punishment. It was a trap wrapped in tradition.

Darius refused to confine Mira like a criminal.

Corvin’s voice turned ice-cold. “Then will you take responsibility if the Luna candidate dies?”

The courtyard went deathly silent.

If Darius agreed, he tied Mira’s fate to Cassia’s fragile body. If he refused, he appeared reckless. Silence would surrender the crowd to Corvin.

Mira stepped forward before the Alpha could answer.

“I will stay away from Cassia.”

Darius turned sharply toward her, but Mira kept her gaze locked on the Elder.

“But not because I am guilty. Because something inside her is being hurt when it reaches for me.”

For the first time, Mira defended Cassia’s body because Sera was trapped inside it.

The latch clicked shut behind Nia, sealing the guarded room.

Mira finally broke.

She pressed both hands over her mouth to stifle the sound, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. She had chosen distance, but distance meant abandoning Sera all over again.

Every path was a wound.

Reaching out hurt Cassia. Pulling away betrayed Sera. Speaking gave Maera ammunition. Silence let the lie fester.

Nia knelt before her, taking Mira’s trembling hands.

“You protected her.”

Mira laughed once, the sound broken and bitter against her palms.

“I protected the cage because my wolf is inside it.”

The choice tasted like ash. She had saved Sera’s prison because destroying it might kill the soul locked within.

Darius waited outside until Mira granted permission to enter.

That small pause mattered more than any command. He told her quietly about the inward burns Tovan had witnessed. The binding punished Sera for responding to her true mate.

Mira asked the question that terrified her most.

“Can you cut it off?”

Darius’s silence answered first. Then he spoke the truth.

No. Not safely. Not without understanding the rite. Not without risking Cassia’s body, Sera’s soul, and Mira’s mind through their fractured link.

Mira’s face hardened into stone. “So everyone tells me to wait while she suffers.”

Darius accepted the blow without flinching.

“No. I am telling you that if we rush, Maera may get exactly what she wants.”

He met her gaze steadily.

“A dead Cassia. A silenced Sera. And you blamed for both.”

Mira refused sleep that night, sitting rigid beside the window while Nia dozed in the chair.

But the link pulled her under anyway.

The room dissolved into silver mist and cold stone. Mira opened eyes that were not her own, seeing through Cassia’s vision in a dream that smelled of blood and moonstone.

Cassia lay bound to a ritual basin in Maera’s chamber. The bracelet hung open, revealing raw, blistered skin beneath.

Maera whispered over her captive.

“Cry if you must. But you will not answer her again.”

Inside Cassia’s chest, something whimpered. Small. Exhausted. Heartbreakingly familiar.

Mira reached through the dreamscape and whispered into the void.

“Sera?”

The crying stopped.

Then a wolf’s voice answered from inside another woman’s ribs.

“Mira… it hurts.”

Mira woke with tears cooling on her cheeks and Cassia’s phantom pain burning in her own wrist.

Sera was no longer only remembered.

Sera was suffering in real time.