The Virgin Wolf

chapter 20

“Is this bond… reversible?”

The words tasted like ash in my mouth, bitter and dry. I didn’t look at the Seer as I said it; my jaw locked, and my shoulders braced as if the question itself might draw blood.

She sat in the center of the cave, ringed by flickering candles and the scent of crushed sage. Her gaze didn’t flicker. “You already know the answer, Silas Vale. Or you wouldn’t be here.”

She always called me by my mother-name—Vale—the way Seers did when they wanted truth to cut cleaner.

“I want to hear it,” I said, my throat tight and uncooperative.

She tilted her head, those glassy, ageless eyes narrowing. “The bond can be undone. But not without cost.”

I swallowed hard, forcing the motion past a stubborn ache. “How.”

“There is a flame,” she murmured, reaching for a carved stone bowl. “Ancient. Not physical, not spiritual—something between. It can purge the scent of your mate from your blood. It can silence the bond.”

My pulse stuttered and then hammered, a misfired rhythm that hurt. “That’s it?”

Her eyes sharpened, the look like a blade being turned. “No. That is just the start.”

I steadied myself, drawing a slow breath to keep my hands from shaking. “What else?”

“You must choose silence,” she said. “No touch. No closeness. No thought of her. No longing. No memory you feed on when the nights are cold. You must fast from her entirely. For one full moon cycle. Thirty days of abstinence. Thirty nights of denial.”

I blinked hard until the candles doubled and merged again. “And if I break that?”

“Then the bond returns,” she said. “But damaged. Mutated. Painful. And never again will it anchor you to her or to anyone else.”

I stared at the floor and at the way the candlelight danced across the stone, turning rough edges into gold. “So either I lose her clean… or live with her twisted inside me forever.”

“That is the shape of your choice.”

“And she’ll feel it?” I asked. “If I start the flame?”

The Seer nodded once, a grave assent. “Not the moment it begins. But by the third night, her wolf will know. And by the seventh… it will be like waking with no pulse.”

I sat with that, letting the weight settle in my ribs. I pictured the shape of her absence echoing through every place she had once filled. No more sparring matches that ended with her on top of me, breathless. No more arguments threaded with lightning. No more dreams with her lips against mine. No more wondering if she wanted me as much as I burned for her.

“She marked me,” I muttered, the guilt loud in my voice. “She didn’t ask. She just… did it.”

“And you?” the Seer asked, raising an eyebrow.

I didn’t answer at first, the silence prying at me until it hurt.

“You didn’t reject it,” she said softly. “You let her in.”

“I didn’t know what I was letting in,” I snapped. Then, quieter, I admitted, “I didn’t know what I’d become.”

“Scared?” she asked. “Or loved?”

I shook my head slowly, not ready to give the word a shape. “It doesn’t matter. I ruin what I touch.”

“She will not hate you for fearing yourself,” the Seer said. “But she may hate you for doing this in the dark.”

I looked away, studying the soot on the ceiling like it could offer absolution. “She deserves someone solid. Someone who doesn’t have to claw his way through dreams just to breathe.”

The Seer didn’t argue. She simply handed me a pouch—leather, old, stitched with bone thread. Inside lay everything I needed: flintstone, crushed herbs, ash-stained fabric, and a thin silver blade.

“Begin the fire tonight,” she said. “Do not speak her name again once it’s lit.”

The pouch felt heavier than it should have, as if the contents carried a verdict. I left the cave without another word, the sage smoke clinging to my clothes like a warning.

Outside, the wind bit hard, cold against the sweat clinging to my back. I walked faster, breath fogging the air while my heart beat too loud in my ears. I did not stop until the path gave way to the grove and the trees closed around me like witnesses. Only then did I kneel and set the stones, each one a measured promise.

With shaking hands, I built the circle. I crushed the herbs, mixed the ash, and soaked the fabric in blood from my palm. The cut stung more than I expected, sharp and honest.

My jaw clenched as I whispered the ancient words the Seer had inked onto bark and tucked into the pouch—words meant to unravel something sacred, syllables that tasted like iron and smoke.

The flame sparked just before dawn—blue and silver, hungry and cold-bright, reaching for me like a verdict.

And then—just as the circle caught and the air tightened like a snare—“YOU WERE GOING TO BREAK THE BOND WITHOUT TELLING ME?!”