In The Healer’s Bond, Emma Adams, a gifted healer, defies destiny after her mate bond with Alpha Steve Kane shatters in brutal rejection. Five years later, a deadly threat forces them together, challenging werewolf traditions, love, and free will. Can Emma reshape their future and heal their broken world?
View MoreChapter One: The Bond
The moon hung blood-red over the Spring Equinox celebration, a crimson eye watching the gathered wolves below. Emma Adams smoothed her silver dress for the hundredth time, trying to calm her racing heart. At twenty-three, she'd attended enough pack ceremonies to know the routine, but tonight felt different. The air crackled with possibility, heavy with magic that made her wolf pace restlessly beneath her skin, claws scraping against her consciousness with growing urgency.
Through the towering windows of the Sterling Creek Pack house, moonlight painted the marble floors in shades of ruby and garnet. Emma's fingers trembled as she tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear, the familiar scents of pack and home doing nothing to calm her nerves. Her wolf was never this restless during ceremonies, yet tonight she prowled through Emma's mind like a caged thing, sensing something momentous on the horizon.
"Stop fidgeting," her best friend Lily whispered, nudging her side. "You look like you're about to jump out of your skin." Lily's warm brown eyes crinkled with concern as she studied Emma's face. "What's got you so worked up?"
Emma forced her hands to still, pressing them flat against the silk of her dress. "Sorry. I just... something feels different tonight. Like the air before a storm breaks." She drew in a shaky breath, tasting magic and anticipation on her tongue. "My wolf won't settle."
"Maybe she knows something you don't," Lily murmured, but before Emma could respond, the gathered wolves parted like water before a ship's bow.
Emma's breath caught as Alpha Steve Kane strode into the great hall. At thirty, he cut an imposing figure in his tailored black suit, raw power rolling off him in waves that made lesser wolves drop their gazes. His presence filled the room like thunder, commanding attention without a word. Emma had seen him from afar at pack gatherings, but never this close. Never close enough to notice how his green eyes seemed to hold ancient forests within them, or how his movements carried the fluid grace of a predator barely contained by human skin.
Their eyes met across the room.
The world stopped.
Emma felt it—the snap of destiny locking into place, a golden thread of fate weaving their souls together with the inevitability of stars falling into alignment. The mate bond blazed to life, filling her with joy so intense it brought tears to her eyes. Her wolf howled in triumph, recognizing the other half of their soul. All her life she'd dreamed of this moment, imagining how it would feel to find the one person the Moon Goddess had created just for her.
Her feet carried her forward without conscious thought, drawn by the pull of their new bond. Whispers erupted around her as pack members realized what was happening. Emma barely heard them, too focused on reaching her mate, her Alpha, her everything—
"I reject you as my mate and the Luna of the pack."
The words hit like a physical blow, sharp as a blade between her ribs. Emma stumbled, certain she'd misheard. But Steve's face was carved from stone, his green eyes cold as winter as he looked down at her. Where moments ago there had been the warmth of recognition, now there was only aristocratic disdain.
"What?" The word came out as a broken whisper, hardly more than a breath of disbelief.
"Oh, please." His lip curled, twisting his handsome features into something ugly. "Don't give me that look. It's not my fault you're not qualified to be my Luna." Each word fell like ice, precise and cutting. "A healer apprentice? The Sterling Creek Pack needs someone of proper breeding and social standing. Someone who understands the responsibilities of leadership, not a common wolf who spends her days brewing herbal remedies."
The rejection ritual was swift and brutal. Emma fell to her knees as Steve severed their newly-formed bond, molten agony ripping through her body like liquid fire in her veins. Her wolf howled in anguish as the golden thread of fate turned to ash, leaving behind a void that burned like acid in her chest. The pain was physical, mental, spiritual—a tearing away of something fundamental to her very being.
Through tears she refused to shed, Emma watched him turn and walk away without a backward glance. Whispers rippled through the gathered pack members—how the Alpha had rejected a simple healer, how she should have known better than to think she was worthy. The words stung like salt in an open wound, but Emma refused to let them see her break.
The marble floor was cold against her palms, grounding her in reality when everything else felt like a nightmare. Every instinct screamed at her to curl into a ball and give in to the pain. Instead, Emma forced herself to stand on shaking legs. Her mother's words from years ago echoed in her mind: "Fate can be cruel, my dear. But we choose what to do with that cruelty."
Emma lifted her chin and met the stares of those around her. Let them see. Let them remember. She was Emma Adams, daughter of healers, keeper of ancient knowledge, and she would not crawl.
Her wolf, though wounded, gathered what remained of their strength. Together, they straightened their spine and faced the whispers and stares with quiet dignity. The blood moon watched impassively as she walked out of the pack house, each step an act of defiance against destiny itself. Behind her, the Spring Equinox celebration resumed as if nothing had happened, as if her world hadn't just shattered into irreparable pieces.
She made it to her car before the first sob tore free. Her hands shook so badly she could barely grip the steering wheel, the void in her chest a hungry thing threatening to consume her whole. Only one thought burned clear through the haze of pain and humiliation:
She had to get out of here.
The engine roared to life, a sound of escape and possibility. Emma Adams drove away from the only life she'd ever known, leaving behind a broken mate bond and the cruel lessons of fate. The blood moon cast long shadows across the road ahead, but she didn't look back.
She couldn't afford to look back. Not now. Not ever.
The fourth pedestal sat further from the others, recessed into a basin of carved obsidian stone, almost as if the chamber itself had recoiled from it. And in the center of that basin—barely flickering, barely visible—burned the Blue Flame of Wisdom.Emma approached it slowly.The air didn’t feel hot this time.In fact, it felt… cold. Like still water in a sealed cave. The silence pressed down on her like weighted cloth. Even her heartbeat felt loud.Behind her, Steve stopped at the final marble step.“I can’t go any farther,” he said. “Can I?”“No,” Long murmured, stepping beside him. “This trial is taken in solitude. Even the Sovereigns of old faced it alone.”Sarah added, “Blue is the color of insight. Ice that does not numb. Flame that doesn’t warm. It’s not a trial of the body or of fury. It’s what you know, Emma.”Emma exhaled slowly and stepped forward.---Crossing into the BlueThe moment her foot touched the basin, the sound of her companions disappeared.No more voices.No m
The red flame on the third pedestal snarled and writhed, its surface rippling like molten anger barely kept in a jar of glass. It growled at Emma as if it sensed the hollow inside her—the missing ignition point, the origin of fury now turned to ash. She stood at the edge of the platform, shoulders stiff, her breath uneven. “I don’t feel anything,” she said quietly. “There’s nothing in me for it to answer.” Sarah stepped forward. “You don’t mean that.” “I do,” Emma said, her voice flat. “I know I should feel it. This flame is rage. Pain. Resistance. But I don’t… remember why I ever fought.” Steve clenched his fists. It wasn’t just that Emma had forgotten—it was that something had taken the memory. Sliced it clean from her, leaving behind only the shell. “Then we’re not starting the trial,” he said firmly. “We’re taking it back.”
Paths appeared—five of them.Each led to a choice.Each held someone she had saved.And at the end of each path… stood an Emma. A different version. A different life.---Path One – The Solitary SaviorEmma walked alone down the first path, leaving Steve behind momentarily.She stood before a version of herself—dressed in white healer robes, hands aglow with curing light.Behind her, villages stood healed. No disease. No famine. No frost.She was alone.Always alone.Her eyes were tired. Her smile was practiced.She had given everything.Even Steve.“I made a world without death,” this Emma said. “But I lost every reason to live in it.”Emma stepped back.And the vision dissolved.---Path Two – The Flame QueenThe second path shimmered with gold and crimson.A regal Emma stood at the head of a flaming city, her Ember Heart grown massive, her hair a crown of living fire. She wielded the Heartfurnace like a divine beacon, and cities bowed at her feet.Steve was there.But not beside he
The Sovereign sat atop a throne of still-ice, in a room that never changed. Its domed ceiling shimmered faintly with frozen time, flickers of moments suspended in crystal: the raising of hands, the writing of names, the kissing of lovers—all trapped before they could become past tense.To move here was to remember too loudly.But now, in his stillness, something remembered him.Not by name—he had long erased it—but by opposition.The Ember.Emma.---Sensing the PulseThe Sovereign extended one hand.The wall before him shimmered and split—not into vision, but into truth-streams, the quiet threads of existence that only an entity like him could interpret.He followed the new ripple backward:– A pulse from the Flame Archives– A restored name in a girl’s mind in Birch Hollow– A faltering in Irsi’s unweaving threadHe watched the sequence like a conductor studying dissonance.She had passed the first Flame Trial.The White Flame had accepted her.And worse...It had synchronized with
The flame did not burn. It pulsed. It not only pulsed, it existed with a sentient life of its own. It seeked for connection with any being that had an affinity to fire. It was the first flame.It was one of the first fires that burned into existence and it was as old as time itself. Winds and storms have passed and yet it flared with a silent strength and shined through time and evolution. Even when the first virus struck and civilization fell, it burned brighter than ever. The flame represented the spirit of civilization itself and for as long as great minds with brave heart existed, it would continue to burn. Soft and white, cradled in the center of the first pedestal like a sleeping heart. The White Flame of Memory, they had called it in the etched walls above. A fire not meant to sear flesh or ignite war—but to anchor who you are, even when the world tries to make you forget.
Irsi was hungry for memories. It's tongues, although cold was salivating with a ravenous need for people's lives.It did not kill them. Where was the fun in that? It did not want them dead, it loved how they were left empty and aimless. Their soul screaming for a meaning to their unwritten existence.It loved how confused they were when it was done eating up their personal history, their goals and their purpose.There was a village near the edge of the world. It shuned the technology of that once ruled the world but ever since the mysterious virus wiped out almost half of humanity, the village had reverted back to the olden days.There were no cars or malls. Only vast farm lands and some surviving goats and cattle.The call of desires and memories drew Shatter Tongue to this place. It salivated from the smell of innocence.It wasn’t large—no more than twenty-three homes built in crescent shape around a central well, cradled in the roots of the northern cliffs. They called it Birch Hol
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