Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Price of Loyalty

Nadia's POV

 The home I had known for eighteen years was buried, along with the only person who had ever loved me.

Tears tracked clean lines through the dirt and dried blood on my cheeks. I clutched my father’s journal to my chest, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold it. I was supposed to run. My grandmother’s final command echoed in my ears: Step into the light. Live, demanding that I head west toward the border, far away from this territory.

But as I stood at the edge of the tree line, looking down at the smoking fires of the outer town, a cold knot of dread twisted in my gut.

Mara.

When I ran, I had left her standing right in front of the pack guard. She had seen my blood. She had heard the horns. If the Alpha’s enforcers realised Mara was my friend, they would drag her into an interrogation room. They would break her.

I caused this, I thought, swallowing back a swell of nausea. I can’t let her die because of my mistake.

Ignoring the screaming instinct in my mind telling me to flee, I turned away from the safety of the western trail. I slipped into the shadows of the forest, circling around toward the wooden perimeter fence, our secret meeting spot.

In the low-lying timber houses of the outer district, the air in the Pack Elder’s hall was thick with suffocating tension.

Mara stood in the centre of the cold stone room, her knees trembling so hard she could barely stand. Two heavily armoured pack guards stood behind her, their spears levelled at her back.

"I... I didn't know!" Mara sobbed, wiping frantically at her red, swollen eyes as she looked up at Elder Aaron sitting behind the high wooden desk. "I swear to the Moon, I didn't know what she was! She was just Nadia, a girl from the mountains who traded herbs!"

Elder Aaron leaned forward, his face dark and unreadable. "A Blackblood girl. An illegal, cursed abomination hiding right under our noses. And you, a low-ranking weaver, were meeting her at our borders for over a year."

"She didn't hurt anyone!" Mara pleaded, her voice cracking. "She saved my life today!"

"She brought the Alpha’s royal enforcers to our front gates!" Aaron bellowed, slamming his fist onto the desk. The sharp crack made Mara flinch. "Harbouring a Blackblood carries an execution sentence for your entire lineage! Do you want your mother and younger brothers dragged to the gallows, Mara?"

"No!" Mara gasped, dropping to her knees, her hands clasped together in desperate prayer. "No, please! Please, don't hurt them!"

"Then you give us the monster," Aaron growled, his eyes narrowing like a predator’s. "She trusts you. She has nowhere left to go. You will go to your meeting spot at the border fence. You will stand there, and you will wait. And when she comes for you... our hunters will be waiting in the trees."

Tears streamed uncontrollably down Mara’s cheeks as she looked up at the cold, ruthless faces of her elders. She was just a weaver. She wasn't a warrior. She had no power, no bloodline, and no choice.

"I... I'll do it," Mara whispered, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces. "Just spare my family."

The sun was beginning to dip beneath the sharp peaks of the mountains, casting long, bloody shadows across the borderlands.

I crouched in the thick canopy of a pine tree overlooking the wooden fence line, my eyes scanning the area. The forest was eerily quiet. Too quiet. Not even the birds were singing.

Then, a figure stepped out from the brush near the boundary line.

It was Mara.

She was standing near the tall wooden post where we always traded scarves and sweet bread. Her head was bowed, her shoulders shaking with silent, rhythmic sobs.

A wave of relief washed over me. She was alive. She was free.

I dropped quietly from the branch, landing on the soft moss with practised, silent grace. "Mara," I called out in a low whisper, staying in the shadow of the thick treeline.

Mara flinched violently at the sound of my voice. She spun around, her face pale as death, her green eyes wide with sheer terror.

"Nadia..." she breathed, taking a small, hesitant step backwards.

"I came to get you," I said quickly, stepping closer, my hands raised to show I meant no harm. "The cave is gone, Mara. The guards know what I am. You can't stay here if they link you to me; they’ll hurt you. You have to come with me across the river."

"Nadia, don't..." Mara whimpered, tears spilling over her lashes as she gripped her hands tightly together. "Please... don't come any closer."

I froze. A cold prickle of alarm raced up the back of my neck.

"Mara?" I whispered, my gaze dropping to her trembling hands.

"I'm so sorry, Nadia," Mara sobbed, her voice breaking into a gut-wrenching cry as she took another step back into the clearing. "I'm so, so sorry... They threatened my family. They were going to kill them."

Before I could process her words, the forest exploded around me.

Iron-tipped nets crashed down from the high branches. Heavy-armoured wolves—elite trackers from the Alpha's inner guard—swarmed out from the dense shadows of the trees, their heavy boots thundering against the forest floor as they formed a tight, impenetrable circle around me.

"TAKE HER ALIVE! THE ALPHA WANTS THE BLACKBLOOD IN CHAINS!"

The world seemed to stop. I stared at Mara through the gap in the surrounding guards. She hid her face in her hands, her body wracked with sobs, refusing to look at me.

The only friend I had ever made in my entire life had walked me directly into a trap.

Something inside my chest—the naive, desperate girl who just wanted to belong, who just wanted a friend—shattered into cold, jagged dust.

"Grab her!" a tracker barked, lunging forward with a silver-tipped pike.

The survival instincts my grandmother had hammered into my muscle memory for eighteen years took over in an instant. I didn't panic. I didn't cry.

I ducked beneath the lunging spear, grabbed the guard’s forearm, and used his own momentum to slam him face-first into the dirt. In a flash, I unsheathed the hunting knife from my belt, slicing cleanly through the ropes of the weighted net before it could pin me to the ground.

"She's too fast! Circle around!"

Two more guards charged with drawn broadswords. I bounded off the trunk of an oak tree, twisting in mid-air to dodge a lethal swipe, my blade flashing in the dim light as I struck the exposed leather joint of a guard's shoulder armour. He dropped his weapon with a howl of pain.

I didn't stay to fight the army. I sprinted toward the raging waters of the border river, leaping over roots and rocks with desperate, supernatural speed.

"SHOOT HER!"

Crossbow bolts whistled through the air, tearing through the sleeves of my tunic and embedding themselves into the tree trunks beside my head. I didn't look back at the guards. I didn't look back at Mara.

I threw myself off the rocky ledge at the edge of the border, plunging thirty feet down into the freezing, roaring rapids of the boundary river below.

The icy water swallowed me whole, washing away the blood on my face, carrying me fast and hard away from the only world I had ever known—and pushing me straight toward the dangerous, unknown lands of the ancestral Blackblood clan.