Chapter 225
*Jiselle*
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The first to arrive came under cloud cover, their wolves silent as ghosts and eyes sharper than any storm.
They didn’t speak when they crossed the old leyline boundary–because there was nothing left to say. Not yet. Not after all the blood that had soaked the forest floor. Not after the fall of the Gate and the screams that had fractured the sky.
The second pack brought flags. The third brought a healer, as if expecting carnage rather than a gathering. And the fourth? They brought silence–the kind that carried old wounds and broken oaths like stones in their mouths.
Jiselle stood at the edge of the clearing, watching them come.
The stronghold had been partially rebuilt–walls patched with ashbrick and memory, the stone walkways traced with new sigils carved by Ethan and sealed with fire by Solara. But none of it felt steady.
Because power was a weight. And peace, a gamble.
Especially among wolves.
Nate was the first to break the stillness beside her. “They look like they’d rather be preparing for war.”
“Maybe they are,” Jiselle murmured. “Or maybe they just don’t know how not to.”
He didn’t argue. Just stood with her, quiet and watchful as the Alphas filed into the stone arena.
The arena had once been the training field–the place where she’d been broken more times than she could count, and rebuilt more slowly than she dared admit. Now it held no weapons, only a low–burning flame in the center, surrounded by twelve ancient stone seats, dusted clean for the first time in decades.
Eva guided the Alphas to their places. She moved with the grace of someone who’d seen too much, and still chose to hope anyway.
Ethan stood nearby, a quiet sentinel, arms crossed as he watched a few of the younger wolves jostle and whisper. Their eyes kept darting toward the flame. Toward the child.
Solara.
She sat cross–legged beside the flame, utterly still, her head tilted as if listening to something only she could hear.
Jiselle could feel it too–that low pulse in the leyline, like a heart beating just beneath the earth.
“This is going to go wrong,” Nate said, barely audible.
“Maybe,” Jiselle said. “Or maybe it’s time.”
וויד
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Chapter 225
He looked at her then. Not with fear, but with something older. Deeper. Faith, maybe. Or surrender.
Jiselle stepped forward.
The murmurs died.
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Dozens of wolves–Alphas, Betas, emissaries, broken leaders from shattered packs–watched her descend the curved steps toward the flame. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.
“We’re not here to forge an alliance,” she began, her voice steady. “Because alliances can break. Treaties can be burned. Oaths can be twisted. We’ve all seen it happen.”
No one moved.
“We’re here because we’re the ones left. Not because we’re the strongest. But because we survived.”
A low growl rippled from one of the Alphas–tall, scar–slashed, a grizzled brute from the Obsidian Pack. “And how do we know you didn’t cause the thing we’re surviving?”
Ethan stepped forward, but Jiselle raised a hand. She didn’t flinch.
“Because I was part of the fall,” she said. “But I’m also part of the rebuilding. And I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for memory.”
Silence stretched over the arena like a veil, thick and expectant. The breath of every wolf present seemed to pause, caught between tension and awe.
And then–Solara rose.
No one spoke. No one moved. The fire in the center of the ceremonial ring flickered sharply as if it felt the shift, the very air bending in response to her presence. A low wind brushed through the stands, carrying not dust, but the weight of something ancient stirring awake.
Every single wolf in that arena turned, eyes fixed on the child as she moved.
She didn’t speak, not at first. Her silence held power, threaded with a kind of reverence no title could command.
She walked barefoot over the stones. The ground seemed to soften beneath her steps, as though the land itself recognized her touch. The hem of her ash–grey cloak dragged lightly across the packed dirt, whispering secrets no one but the wind could translate. Her fingers glowed–not with fire this time, but with something more primal, more sentient. Not destruction, but memory. Not heat, but truth.
Then she began.
One by one, she approached the Alphas.
The Obsidian wolf was the first to face her. His body tensed the moment she stopped in front of him, rigid and unsure. But she did not flinch, and she did not hesitate. Without a word, she reached forward and placed her small hand at the center of his broad chest.
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Chapter 225
Light blossomed beneath her palm.
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A sigil appeared, not carved into his flesh, not forced or burned. It wasn’t branded like so many marks of allegiance before it. It was given–freely and wholly, stitched from something older than blood and more sacred than vow.
The sigil glowed gold, luminous and impossibly intricate, both ancient and newly born. It shimmered like it had been pulled from the marrow of time itself.
The Obsidian Alpha gasped–no sharp sound, just a breath that broke against the moment. His posture faltered, and his shoulders dropped slightly in stunned understanding.
Solara moved on without fanfare, her feet never hurrying, her pace that of certainty.
She reached the next Alpha and placed her hand gently over his heart.
A new sigil appeared, this one blue, deep and glacial. Then came green, bright as spring after a long winter. Then silver, sharp as a blade, before it slowly dimmed into a deep crimson glow, like coals waiting beneath
ash.
Each mark was different.
Each pulsed once–alive–and then dimmed softly beneath the skin, as though accepting the body it had chosen as home.
And then–only then–did Solara speak.
“Not enemies,” she said. “Not again.”
Her voice did not belong to a child anymore. It carried weight–layered and resonant, ringing like a bell tolling through the Hollow, through memory, through time. It echoed across the arena like something half- divine, brushing against the souls of everyone who heard it.
The response didn’t come all at once.
But it came.
One Alpha knelt, then another. Some bowed their heads low in reverence, their hands clenched over their hearts. Others remained standing, eyes wide with disbelief, but none turned away. Not a single wolf left the circle. Not one dared challenge what had just unfolded.
Because everyone present knew–instinctively, undeniably–that something had shifted.
There was no great quake to announce the moment. The ground did not crack. The sky did not shatter. Magic did not ripple through the clouds like thunder.
But they felt it.
All of them.
A pact had just been forged.
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Chapter 225
One not built on dominance, or fear, or desperation.
But on choice.
Real choice.
The kind that could change everything.
The kind that always did.
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Beside Jiselle, Nate exhaled, his breath more reverent than stunned. “She just rewrote history,” he said quietly, still watching Solara with something like awe.
Jiselle nodded, her throat thick. “She was always going to,” she replied.
Eva stood beside them, her hands clasped tightly over her heart like she was holding in a prayer. Ethan said nothing at all. His expression was unreadable–somewhere between fear and wonder–but his flame, usually restless beneath his skin, had settled.
The fire in the ceremonial ring burned steadier now. Higher. It no longer looked like a warning. It looked like
a crown.
Just when the hush seemed to settle, when the moment felt like it might give way to something softer—a voice rang out, clear and uncertain.
It came from one of the younger Alphas, a boy barely past twenty, with streaks of premature white woven through his black hair. He stood near the outer ring, eyes locked on the glowing mark Solara had given him.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said.
Jiselle turned toward him, narrowing her gaze. “Where?”
The Alpha sank slowly to one knee, not out of reverence, but in honest fear. “In the Hollow,” he said. “Burned into a wall. Near one of the fallen gates.”
The words landed like thunder across the arena.
It changed everything.
Solara tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable. Then, without lifting her hand, the mark on her palm began to glow. It pulsed once. Then again.
And for the first time, Jiselle felt it in her bones.
The Hollow hadn’t just been a prison.
It had been a map.
And maybe just maybe–it had chosen a Sovereign long before Jiselle ever stepped into the fire.
Because the Gate didn’t just open.
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Chapter 225
It called.
And Solara… had always been its answer.
AD
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
