The scent of burning elderwood filled the cottage, thick and bitter. Outside, the forest held its breath.
Wren moved like a shadow through her space, her limbs sore but alive with power. Every step she took seemed to hum against the floorboards. Magic hung in the air like smoke—dense and old. A different kind of magic than she'd ever channeled before.
Thistle lay coiled near the hearth, his tail twitching with nerves. His fur had puffed out like brambles, and his ears remained flattened against his skull. He'd spoken no words since the night before.
Wren was grateful for that.
She wasn't ready to speak. Not yet.
The silence in the cottage was sacred. It cradled her transformation like a womb. Everything felt raw and sharpened. The morning light streaming through the leaded windows shimmered differently now—less golden, more silvery and blue, like the kind of moonlight that only appeared in forgotten parts of the woods.
She moved to the basin and splashed her face with cold water, but paused when she caught her reflection in the cracked mirror above it.
Her eyes had changed.
The once-solid grey of her irises now held a sliver of violet—thin as a cat-scratch, glowing faintly with every blink. It pulsed, soft and slow, like something breathing.
Wren reached up and touched her temple. The glow didn't fade. It was part of her now.
And so was he.
Not in the way he was supposed to be. Not as a mate or a partner or a tether to something gentle. No, now Cassian was bound to her through pain. Through the bond inversion magic that older witches had locked away deep in bone-caves, whispering warnings into the earth itself.
They called it the Bonefire Pact.
A cursed ritual. Forbidden since the Age of Shattering.
A scorned woman's final prayer.
Wren had performed it on instinct and rage—but she understood now. Every heartbeat she felt would echo in Cassian's chest. Every rage she carried would sting behind his eyes. He would never sleep without dreaming of her again. Never howl without tasting her name like blood in his throat.
And that was only the beginning.
"Your aura is unstable," Thistle said at last.
Wren wiped her hands on a rag and turned. "Define unstable."
"You're radiating ancient magic. The kind that makes trees flinch and ravens forget how to fly."
"Sounds powerful."
"It's dangerous." Thistle stepped forward, paws silent on the floor. "You've marked the Alpha of Redfang. The forest can feel it. The pack will feel it too."
"Good," Wren said calmly. "Let them."
Thistle studied her. "This isn't who you were yesterday."
"No," she agreed. "It isn't. Yesterday, I was someone's mistake."
She picked up the knife she'd carved the circle with. The bone handle was stained now—her blood, the spell's blood. The knife hummed in her hand, like it remembered the ritual and approved.
"I should destroy this," she murmured, eyeing the blade.
"Then why don't you?"
"Because I might need it again."
Far across the glen, Cassian stumbled into the healer's den, shirt torn open, gasping like a man chased by demons.
The den's stone walls trembled with each pulse of magic within him. Nessa, the oldest Pack healer, crouched beside him in an instant.
"What in the moons happened to you?"
"I—I don't know," Cassian rasped. "I can't shift. I can't breathe. It started last night."
He winced as another ripple of pain sliced through his ribs. His wolf was pacing inside him—terrified, clawing, confused.
"She did something," he said. "Wren. The witch."
Nessa's eyes narrowed. "You said the bond was broken."
"I rejected her," he snapped. "I felt the bond snap. But this is different. It's like… like she's inside me. Like she's watching me from beneath my skin."
Nessa's fingers hovered over his chest. "You're marked."
"What does that mean?"
"I haven't seen it in a hundred years," she whispered. "But I've read the old scrolls. You've been Bonefire-bound."
Cassian blinked. "That's a myth."
"Do you feel mythical right now?"
He said nothing. His breath came in shallow bursts.
Nessa shook her head, standing. "Only a scorned witch with the blood of the First Wives can make a Bonefire Pact. It means she's not your mate anymore—she's your reckoning. Your shadow. Every time she hurts, you will. Every time she grieves, you will dream of her."
Cassian's mouth went dry. "Is there a way to undo it?"
"There might be," Nessa said. "But it won't be clean."
By midday, the forest around Thornehill had turned quiet—too quiet.
Wren stepped outside for the first time since the ritual. The wards around her cottage flickered with new colors. Soft reds and silvers threaded the normal green glow, pulsing in time with her footsteps.
The trees themselves seemed to lean away from her path.
"Good," she whispered.
She carried with her a small leather pouch filled with clippings—wolf hair, thornroot, and a stone from her mother's grave. She needed one last ingredient for the protection spell she was working on: a fang from the wolf that cursed her.
Cassian's.
Not physically, of course. But something from him. Something left behind. A bit of sweat. A claw. An article of clothing.
And Wren knew exactly where to find it.
The old clearing, just beyond the training grounds, where they used to meet.
Where he used to bring her sugarberries stolen from the kitchens. Where he once promised to teach her how to run faster than the stars. Where he first kissed her, gently, as if she were something sacred.
She walked there slowly, letting the weight of her new magic settle around her like a cloak.
The clearing hadn't changed.
The grass still held the shape of their shared memories, even if they didn't. The air still remembered their laughter, and the trees bent toward the center like they, too, had once believed.
Wren crouched low near the base of the largest birch. There—caught on the bark—was a scrap of fabric. Deep red. Cassian's training tunic. Torn, from a night he'd shifted too fast.
She plucked it gently.
Held it close.
And for a moment, just a heartbeat, she let herself remember him.
His laugh. His hands. The way he'd once told her he could never hurt her.
She crushed the fabric in her fist.
"Liar."
By nightfall, the curse had begun to settle fully into Cassian's body.
He couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't shift. Every muscle screamed at him to run, to fight, to flee—and yet he was caged in his own skin. The mark didn't just echo her pain—it inverted his instincts.
He was a wolf.
And she had made him bleed like a witch.
He stood before the mirror in his private quarters, chest bare, breath ragged.
His reflection stared back—eyes gold ringed with violet. A pulse beneath his ribs that beat like a second heart. And across his collarbone, faint but unmistakable: a crescent intersecting a broken fang.
The sigil of the Bonefire Pact.
Cassian touched it, and in that moment, he felt her.
Not her thoughts—just her emotion. Her fury. Her loneliness. Her strength.
And something deeper, darker.
He whispered, "Wren, what did you do?"
Wren returned home under a sky of heavy stars.
She poured the crushed fabric into her brew and whispered the final words. The liquid turned silver, then black, then clear. The protection spell was complete.
But she wasn't finished.
At the heart of her soul, a new purpose had taken root. She could no longer afford to be just a healer. Just a girl in a forest cottage, waiting for someone to love her enough to fight the rules.
No, Wren had been reborn.
And the world would learn what a witch could become when left behind.