The Blood Price

Cold seeped into Serena’s bones as the night clamped down on the forest. Hours had passed since the flames had disappeared, leaving only embers in their wake, smokeless tendrils curling in the air. Nature, for its part, appeared to be holding its breath. There was something to shatter the silence about her.

Serena hung back at the edge of the clearing, arms wrapped around the heat of herself, her own heat. Kaelen’s prophecy still pressed on her chest like a stone, heavy and insistent. She felt it—a pressure that pulsed through her skin, through her bones. The Onyx wolf inside her awoke, a dark whisper raking at her soul. It had always been within her, but now it was layered on top, something else, something with an edge, something pressed.

Behind her, Lucian and Elias walked with silent, careful steps. It was supposed to be comforting—the silhouette of Lucian, always shadowing her, and that silence shattered. But it wasn’t. Now there was a distance in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. And Elias… Elias had been a stranger even more. There was something near to the aboriginal that his mute reclusivity had developed. His eyes were bleary, and the looks he fired at her were fueled with conflict—anger, fear, something nastier, an unrefined emotion Serena couldn’t name.

But there was one person who still had not given up on her.

Isolde.

The quiet strength she offered a salve for Serena’s soul. Isolde hadn’t spoken much since Kaelen had revealed the prophecy. But her mere presence had sufficed for long. In a world that was splitting apart, Isolde was what kept Serena together. Even now, in the shadows cast by trees beside her, Isolde held her gaze like the lighthouse in a storm. Serena opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. What could she say? Nothing felt adequate.

Isolde leaned forward, her eyes straying to the horizon, where the dark shapes of the beasts were already beginning to weave between the trees.

“They’re coming,” Kaelen said, his voice quiet, grave. He made up his pack, all alert and poised. “The ones who have been following you. The ancient ones.”

Serena's heart skipped a beat. Her surroundings, if that were possible, seemed tighter, as if the entire forest was holding its breath. Kaelen’s pack shifted into a staggered defensive formation, their eyes alight with the same wild energy slithering through Serena’s center. They were ready for battle. Not simply to survive, of course, Serena knew, deep down, but for something far more dangerous.

Lucian faced Serena, his brow furrowed with worry. “Ancient ones?” he muttered, tinged with both foreboding and familiarity. “What, precisely, are we up against?”

Kaelen’s eyes remained fixed on the advancing shadows. “They are The Ruins, vestigial parts of the first pack. Those who truly understood what the Onyx wolf was. The ones who prophesied it. They are no simple beasts — they are the children of the earth itself. Corrupted by the magic they know so well. And they’re here for Serena.”

The words sent an icicle through Serena. Her Onyx wolf stirred from within at the sensation of ancient power on the horizon. There was no escaping it now. Already she could feel their hunger snapping in the wind, their need to take what was hers.

“They won’t stop at anything to take you,” Kaelen said, his voice steady. “You must leave, Serena. Get to safety.”

“No.” Serena’s voice was quiet, but it was steady. “I won’t leave.”

Lucian’s fingers tightened on her arm, his eyes pleading for her. “Serena, please. This is bigger than us, you have to understand — this is bigger than us. You can’t go up to them like this and in this manner. You’re not ready. You can’t fight this alone.”

But Serena muttered, and tried to pull away from him. “I’m not alone. I have you, and I have them.” An innocent phrase, little more than an utterance, not in the midst of a room full of all our well-meaning intentions and slightly exasperated sighs, but at a point when she ran her gaze between every one of us crammed into the same space as her — Kaelen, the wolves who’d stepped into the fold of a fight for her very life to stand beside her, even Elias, a few paces in the distance now, his expression still drawn tight with the ache of his own battle, fought years before — and caught it, on the cusp of our own crisis. But it wasn’t just them. It was Isolde. And the Onyx wolf that lived inside of her, watching and anticipating.

Isolde reached out for Serena’s hand as she stepped forward. Her hands were soft but persistent; they felt like the grounding Serena required. “This is part where I come in,” she said softly, taking on a sadness Serena had never heard from her before. “You can’t go up against them yourself. Not yet.”

Serena put out her mouth to object, but Isolde turned, stalking into the clearing. There was a light that surrounded her, not of magic or flame, but of something older. Something deep down informed Serena’s bones. Isolde’s form began to shift—her flesh running and her bones rearranging, her very being twisting into something larger, something stronger. In a separate entity, she was no longer simply a wolf, she was something stanza. Something eternal.

The first of those ancient beasts emerged from the dark, great and brutish, eyes aglow like embers in the dark, bodies twisted and cruel parodies of the human shape. The Onyx wolf sang in her blood, wanting to run with them. Yet Isolde, in this new guise, faced Serena and the beasts, arms raised high.

“You can’t take her,” Isolde screamed, her voice reverberating in the clearing. “She is of the Balance now. And I will defend her with my life.”

The biggest of the beasts roared, low and guttural, but dread didn’t pass through Serena. There was also a strange sense of inevitability. She understood now. It wasn’t only that Isolde was standing against them — she was sacrificing herself to save her. To give Serena the time to decide.

“Get back!” Isoldersquos body glowed brighter—she was crying. And now, even the light she radiated was almost too bright to be endured, and Serena had to turn her eyes away from her own illumination. The beasts charged. But Isolde didn’t flinch. Against them she began driving that energy away from her. The first wave of beasts were pushed back, yelping as they were consumed by the light. They had flesh, burning, their fibers like dust, and yet they came.

Lucian and Kaelen’s pack flocked into the fray, charging into combat with loaf-sized fangs bared, claws unsheathed, but Serena couldn’t look away from Isolde. She could sense it taking toll — her skin splitting, her body fatigue as she pushed herself to the limit of the dominion she held. Serena had wanted to do something, to help, but all she could do was watch as light seeped away from Isolde.

“No!” Lucian restrained her, Serena shrieked when she ran ahead.

“She knows what she’s doing!” Lucian called out in agony.

But Serena didn’t care. She shoved past him, her legs on autopilot. She reached out, her heart breaking when Isolde’s form began to flash like a dying star.

Feeling the warmth, Isolde gave Serena one last turn of her head, her eyes revealing something like peace. “The road you walk was never meant to be walked alone. But you must walk it.”

Then, one final, screaming, ear-splitting scream, and Isolde’s body exploded in a shower of brilliant gold.

The beasts lay around them: their corpses littered the clearing, and the clearing was silent, but the air itself still quivered with the residue of power Isolde had unleashed.

Serena froze, her chest convulsing with sobs. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think. Everything out there was falling to pieces and chaos, but in here she knew what Isolde had done. What she had sacrificed was not just for Serena — it was for the future. Serena angry with Future for abandoning alone

Lucian walked next to her, voice low. “Isolde gave everything. She created this so you could choose who to be. So that you could be the person you were always meant to be.”

Serena clasped the pendant Isolde had worn on a chain around her neck: singed, but whole, smooth in the palm of her hand. Embracing this darkness appeased the Onyx wolf in her like it had been fed. Isolde had bought her time. But time was running out.

Kaelen’s voice cut in to her musings. “The Balance is fragile, Serena. You must decide. Soon.”

Serena looked over the pack, the ones who had remained with her through it all. Isolde’s spirit still lingered in the air, as though on the breeze. Her legacy, now, was Serena, and she would not take it for granted.

“Izzy believed in me,” Serena said, tears now untempered. “She died for me. And for all of us.”

All that was left as comfort was Lucian’s hand on her shoulder.

“You are not alone,” he said under a whisper. “And you never will be.”

Serena nodded, the fire within her kindling again. She wasn’t alone. Not anymore.

Then when the winds shifted, so did the course of her fate.