Blood on the Altar

The Blackthorn Estate was too quiet.

Not peaceful. Not still.

Just wrong.

The kind of silence that didn’t feel earned—it felt stolen. Like something had come in the night and taken all the warmth and sound and breath, and left only the chill behind.

Ezra felt it before he saw it. That pull again. Low, magnetic, crawling up from the base of his spine, tugging him toward the crumbling chapel at the edge of the woods. He didn’t remember deciding to go. One second he was pacing the hallway outside his room, and the next—he was pushing open the warped, frostbitten door.

The air inside was stale with dust and old stone, thick enough to choke on. The cracked altar still sat at the center, untouched since the night Elen betrayed them. It looked like it was waiting for something. Or someone.

Ezra stepped inside, chest tight, breath fogging in the cold. His mark had started glowing the moment the sun dipped below the horizon. Now it was burning, alive under his skin, hot enough to sting, pulsing with some rhythm that didn’t belong to him.

And still—he didn’t stop walking.

He didn’t have a choice.

“Ezra!” Kael’s voice cut through the dark, hurried footsteps trailing behind. “I felt it too.”

Ezra didn’t turn. He stood in front of the altar, sweat dripping down his back despite the cold. His shirt clung to him, soaked. “It’s not just glowing. It’s pulling me.”

Kael moved up beside him, quiet but steady. His eyes dropped to Ezra’s arm and froze.

The mark wasn’t just lit up. It was moving.

Gold and crimson veins writhed beneath Ezra’s skin, pulsing like something alive was crawling just beneath the surface. Like fire had learned to breathe.

Ezra looked down at it, barely holding it together. “Kael, I don’t think this is a mark anymore. I think it’s a fuse.”

Kael didn’t say anything. Just closed the space between them and pressed a hand to Ezra’s back. Solid. Warm. Real.

“You’re not a weapon,” Kael said softly. “You’re not what they made you for. You’re still you.”

Ezra swallowed hard. “What if I’m changing? What if I’m already someone else and I just haven’t noticed yet?”

Kael’s hand stayed firm. “Then I’ll still be here. Whoever you are.”

Before Ezra could answer, the air shifted.

A breath of wind swept through the chapel—dry, biting, too cold for the season. The old candles by the altar—untouched for years—flared to life all at once. The walls groaned. Dust rose in a spiral. Ezra’s mark flared white-hot, and he dropped to his knees, choking on a scream.

A voice, dry as cracked stone and ancient as the trees, echoed through the room.

“Blood that was promised... come forth. The vow wakes.”

Ezra’s vision fractured.

The world around him bled away, replaced by flashes of something else—somewhere else. Wolves circled a blackened altar beneath a red-tinted moon. Not Blackthorn wolves. Not Raen’s. Older. Wilder. More like ghosts in fur than anything living.

In the center, a boy stood barefoot, trembling, arms outstretched. His skin was carved with glowing runes. Blood dripped from his palms into the stone, and the wolves around him sang. Not in words—but in something deeper. Something bone-deep. Ezra felt it crawl inside him, felt it remember.

Not a pack oath. Not a mate bond.

A binding.

One wolf to carry the curse.

One bloodline to seal it.

A vow that couldn’t be broken—only passed down.

Ezra jerked back into his body with a scream, collapsing onto the floor.

He barely registered Kael kneeling beside him, gripping his shoulders, voice thick with fear. “Ezra—hey—what happened? What did you see?”

Ezra’s hands shook as he pressed them to his face. “It’s not just magic. This thing—this mark—it’s a cage. My bloodline was bound to carry something. Seal something.”

Kael’s eyes burned. “Seal what?”

Ezra stared at the altar like it might answer for him. “I don’t know. But it’s not sleeping anymore.”

They didn’t speak for a long time. Just sat in the heavy silence, the flickering candles casting long shadows that danced across the stone.

Then a third voice entered.

“She knew.”

Alric’s boots echoed on the chapel floor as he stepped into the light, his face ashen, hollow. Older than Ezra had ever seen him.

“Elen knew,” he said. “And so did I.”

Ezra scrambled upright, heart thudding. “What?”

Alric looked tired—like truth had been rotting inside him for years. “We buried that part of our history long ago. It was too dangerous. Too full of loss. So we erased the bloodlines. We shattered the altar. But the vow—it never ended. It just waited.”

Ezra looked down at his hands. They were glowing.

Faintly now—but still enough to see the fire flickering under his skin.

“So I’m… what? A sacrifice?”

“No,” Kael said quickly, his voice harsh with emotion.

But Alric didn’t argue.

Ezra’s voice cracked. “Tell me.”

Alric looked at him then, eyes heavy with guilt. “You’re the lock. Your blood—the last seal on a gate we were never meant to open. If you break, if the vow breaks... then it comes through.”

Ezra’s throat went dry. “What comes through?”

But Alric just looked back at the altar.

And said nothing.

---

That night, Ezra didn’t go back to the estate.

He sat on the chapel steps until his bones ached, the cold clinging to him like a second skin. Above him, the full moon glowed—round, bright, merciless. His mark had stopped burning. But it hadn’t gone still.

It hummed, soft as a lullaby. Like it was singing to something buried deep in the earth.

And as Ezra sat there, the wind picked up again—sharp, cutting.

A whisper threaded through it, curling behind his ear like breath:

“You were not born free. You were born for this.”

This time, Ezra didn’t argue.

Because maybe… maybe it was true.

---

Ezra is no longer just a boy caught between two packs—he’s the living seal of a blood-bound curse. With the gate trembling and the vow waking, the next full moon could shatter the fragile balance between destiny and choice. And if Ezra breaks… what nightmare will rise from the other side?