All Chapters of Bloodied Ashes: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Lira (POV) The moment we step beyond the tree line, they start to appear.Not with shouts. Not with warnings. Just silence. Just eyes.One by one, figures slip from shadowed doorways—wrapped in weather-heavy wool, some barefoot, others cloaked in layers so thick I can’t tell where the fabric ends and skin begins. None speak. None rush forward.They simply watch.The hush settles like ash, thick and suffocating. It’s not fear. It’s expectation.The tether tightens—not sharp, not pulling. Just… tense. Like it feels the weight of being seen. Or remembered.Kael stands just behind me. I feel his presence like I feel the cold: constant, heavy, built into my breath. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t step forward. But when I glance to the edge of my vision, I see how they part around him—not like they’re making room for an Alpha. Like they’re giving space to a ruin.They don’t look at him with reverence. They look at him like he might rot where he stands.I turn back to the villag

Lira (POV)Something’s wrong with the air.I don’t know when it started. Maybe after Kael gave the coin. Maybe after they whispered that name.Maybe before.The longhouse walls don’t creak. The wind doesn’t rattle the doorframe. But the air still feels like it’s moving. Pressing. Breathing.I sit up slowly, hand braced against the cold stone. My muscles ache in places they shouldn’t—low in my back, between my ribs, across my thighs like I’ve run too far on broken ground. My mouth is dry. My skin too tight.The tether hums faintly.Not pain. Not connection.Something quieter. Closer.I glance toward the window slit—just a seam of bruised sky and snow beyond it. No movement. No sound.Then I feel it.Not a ripple. Not a pull.A flicker.Inside me.My hand goes to my chest, palm splayed over the mark above my heart. The spiral isn’t glowing. Not visibly. But it’s hot under my skin, like something old has stirred and hasn’t decided yet whether to wake or to warn.I lower my hand slowly. M

Kael (POV)The village doesn’t say goodbye.Not with words. Not with warnings. Just eyes.Lira walks half a pace ahead of me. Her steps drag, but she doesn’t stumble. Not now. Not in front of them.The snow’s crusted with old ash, and the wind doesn’t blow. Still, the air moves like something exhaling through its teeth. Every breath tastes like burned pine and old rites.Behind us, the longhouse door doesn’t creak shut. It just stays open. Watching.No one comes to close it.At the edge of the village, Maedra waits.She doesn’t gesture. Doesn’t blink. She just opens her palm.I place a small pouch of coin into it—dull metal, frostbitten. She doesn’t look at it, and then I offer the blade.Just a touch. One knuckle across its edge. The blood beads are thick and dark, sluggish in the cold. I let it fall into her other hand.She catches it on a scrap of woven flax, folds it twice, and presses it to my skin.The mark she draws over my wrist is simple: charcoal and an old habit. It smells

Lira (POV)The wind changes first.Not sharp, not sudden. Just a shift—like something exhaled near my ear and turned the air to frost.Kael doesn’t speak, but I feel the tension in him coil tighter. His eyes scan the horizon like the land itself might bite back. There’s a line between his brows that’s only there when he’s listening—not with his ears, but with something older. Something buried.I feel it too. That... pressure in the air. Like walking into the scent trail of something that doesn’t want to be found.Every step he takes sounds wrong now. Like we’re walking over something we shouldn’t be.We crest a rise and I see it— The structure tucked into the cliffside, half-swallowed by ash and thorn. A shrine, maybe. Or a ruin pretending to be one. No smoke, no markings, no sign of life. Just stone choked in moss and clawed by time.But it hums, not with power.With memory.I stop walking.Kael stands beside me, jaw tight. “We don’t have to stop here.”But we do. I know it in my bo

Lira (POV)The storm has a voice—not a scream or a howl, but a low, steady gnashing that grinds against the cabin walls like teeth on bone. Wind worms through every crack in the timber, hissing secrets I’m too tired to translate. Inside, the air is thick and sharp, soaked with the scent of pine sap, old ash, and sweat—the kind that comes from restraint, not exhaustion.I can’t sleep. Not really. The tether hums under my skin, coiled tight at the base of my spine like a snake ready to strike—or maybe ready to die. It flares with every breath, every twitch, every thought that strays to the wrong place. To the wrong name.Not Kael.Draven.He’s not here, but his presence lingers like smoke, stale and choking. I taste him at the back of my throat, feel him in the hollows between my ribs. His claim isn’t warm anymore—it doesn’t sear. It just seeps, cold and sick, through every part of me he once touched.It hadn’t always been cold. There was a time I mistook the way he smelled—iron, cedar