Chapter Four: Blood That Remembers
Sleep became a negotiation I kept losing.Every time I closed my eyes, the same images rose to meet me. Not dreams, but fragments of memory that did not belong to a single lifetime.Silver fire tearing through darkness.
Wolves kneeling with their heads bowed, not in submission but in recognition. Shadows screaming as the moon judged them, their forms unravelling like smoke in a gale. I would jolt awake with my heart racing, the echo of moonfire still humming beneath my skin.
Rowan had given me a chamber set into the hillside, carved from stone and reinforced with timber darkened by age. It was warm. The hearth was kept steadily fed. The air smelled of pine resin and smoke. Furs covered the bed, thick and heavy, inviting rest.
I barely touched them.
The power inside me refused stillness. It moved like a tide. Never violent, but relentless. It sharpened my senses and widened my awareness, as though the world had tilted just enough for me to see the cracks beneath its surface.Outside my door, Ashfang moved with quiet purpose.
The demon breach had left its mark, but not chaos. Wards were reforged. Runes were re etched with careful hands. Patrols rotated through the forest in steady patterns.
I heard voices through the stone. Low. Focused. Unafraid. They had faced demons before.I had not.
I rose from the bed and paced the length of the chamber, bare feet whispering against the stone floor. My reflection wavered in the small mirror near the hearth.
I barely recognised the woman staring back.
My eyes looked too bright. My posture too alert. Even at rest, I felt coiled. Ready.
A knock sounded at the door, firm but unintrusive.
"Come in," I said.
Rowan entered, closing the door quietly behind him. He looked tired. Dark shadows sat beneath his eyes, the strain of command etched more deeply into his features than before.
Still, he carried himself with the same grounded authority, as though the weight he bore was familiar enough not to bend him.
"You haven't slept," he observed.
"Neither have you," I replied.
A corner of his mouth lifted faintly. "No."
He leaned against the wall near the hearth, arms crossed loosely, gaze intent.You are the Covenant bearer. I stopped pacing and faced him. "You keep saying that like it explains everything."
"It explains enough," he said. "To be dangerous."
I crossed my arms, mirroring his stance. "And what does that make you?"
"Responsible."
The word surprised a short laugh out of me. Brittle. Humourless. That sounds like a sentence.
"It is," he agreed without hesitation.He pushed off the wall and moved closer. Not invading my space, but closing the distance enough that I could feel his presence. Steady. Grounding.
"The Covenant is not just power," he continued. "It is memory. Judgment. Balance. It will demand things of you."
I looked away, staring into the fire. "I didn't ask for this."
"No," he said quietly. "But blood rarely does."
The words struck deeper than I expected.
Blood remembers.
He had said it before, but now I felt it. Threads pulling at something older than my own fear.
"My mother," I said suddenly. "She knew, didn't she?"
Rowan did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was careful.
"We believe so."
I turned sharply. "Believe?"
"There were rumours," he said. "Whispers that one of the Ashborne survived the purge. That she hid among weaker packs. Greyfen's territory was named more than once."
My chest tightened painfully.
"They watched her."
"Yes."
"They waited," I said. "And when she had me…"
"They waited longer."
The fire crackled, the sound unbearably loud in the silence that followed.
"She didn't disappear," I whispered. "Did she?"
Rowan's jaw clenched. "No."
The word landed like a blade.
"She was taken," he continued. "By those who wanted the Covenant extinguished or controlled. We never found her body."
Hope flared. Sharp. Dangerous.
"Then she could be alive."
"It's possible," he admitted. "But the ones who took her were not wolves."
Demons.
The word did not need to be spoken.
I sank onto the edge of the bed, suddenly dizzy. Everything I had believed about my life felt like a lie built on omission.
Greyfen had not tolerated me.
They had been keeping me close.
"You don't look at me like a weapon," I said quietly, meeting Rowan's gaze again. "Everyone else always has."
His eyes held mine, unguarded.
"Because weapons are used until they break," he said. "You are not something to be expended."
Something fragile and dangerous stretched between us then.
Understanding.
Recognition.
The beginning of trust.
"We need to teach you control," Rowan said after a moment. "Moonfire answers emotion as much as will. Anger will make it burn hotter. Fear will make it lash out."
"And what happens if I lose control?" I asked.
He did not soften the truth.
"Then you could destroy more than demons."
I nodded slowly. "Then we start now."
We spent the rest of the night talking. Not as alpha and asset, but as two people standing at the edge of something vast.
He told me of the Covenant's history. How the Ashborne once served as judges when the boundary between worlds was thinner. How they stood between wolf and demon alike, feared by both, trusted by few.
"They were too powerful," Rowan said. "So the packs turned on them. Or looked away while others did."
"Greyfen included," I said.
"Yes."
Dawn crept through the narrow window by the time we finished. My mind ached, heavy with truth, but something else had settled into place.
I wasn't cursed.
I was inherited.
And inheritance could be reclaimed.
As Rowan rose to leave, he paused at the door.
"The elders will come," he said. "They will demand you be surrendered in the name of balance."
"I won't go," I said.
"I know," he replied. "But defiance has a cost."
I met his gaze, steady despite the fear curling in my stomach.
"So does obedience."
A flicker of approval crossed his face.
When he left, I lay back on the bed at last. Not to sleep, but to listen to the steady pulse beneath my skin.
The blood remembered.
And through it, so did I.