Chapter 5 Something Wants Out

Sierra Lane's POV

Pain like that doesn't whisper. It screams.

I clutched my ribs as moonlight carved itself into the stones beneath me, symbols older than language burning into the courtyard with a precision that made my blood crawl. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. My skin felt too small for my body.

Alaric's voice sliced through it all like silk on a blade. "You feel it, don't you?"

I wanted to scream at him. Instead, I choked on the fire blooming inside my chest. It wasn't just pain. It was memory, it was recognition.

Something ancient was waking up.

Dominic lunged again, half-shifted and wild, but the priestesses lifted their arms. A wall of invisible force cracked the air and threw him backward like a rag doll. He hit stone hard, shifted fully, and slid into the wall with a grunt that snapped the air in two.

I screamed his name, but my voice sounded wrong. Like someone else was using it.

My body wasn't mine anymore.

I was standing but I didn't remember standing. My hands lifted, but I didn't will them to move. My fingers stretched, and light poured from my palms in threads of silver and ash.

The priestesses stared like they were seeing God.

"She's awakening," the white-robed one whispered. "The blood remembers."

Alaric stepped back, but not out of fear. Out of reverence.

"She's more than prophecy," he said. "She's the key."

Dominic tried to rise again. His claws dragged against the stone. Fury turned his wolf eyes molten.

"Let her go," he growled.

"She's not yours," Alaric answered calmly. "She never was."

I turned to Alaric, and I don't know how or why, but I knew things.

His real name.

The oaths he broke.

The children sacrificed in his name.

I saw bloodlines unraveling behind his face, ancient wars inked into his bones. I saw my mother, standing over a basin of silver water, whispering my name before I was born.

I fell to my knees, heaving.

And then it stopped.

The light vanished. The power faded, then I collapsed.

Dominic caught me before I hit the ground. He scooped me into his arms like I was all that mattered. His hands shook, but his voice didn't.

"You touch her again, and I'll gut you with your own spine."

Alaric smirked. "She will come to me willingly. When she's ready."

Then they were gone.

The priestesses, Alaric, the glow and everything.

Like a dream that left bruises.

Dominic carried me inside. I wanted to speak, but I couldn't find my voice. I wasn't scared. I was changed.

Elias was already waiting in the hallway, a gash bleeding down his shoulder.

"She needs answers," he said.

"She needs time," Dominic snapped.

"No," I croaked. "I need truth."

He paused. Then nodded once.

They brought me to a locked room I hadn't seen before. It smelled like cedar and something colder like snowfall on iron.

Inside, there were records, maps, books with titles that looked more like warnings than stories.

Dominic opened a chest at the back of the room. He pulled out a velvet-wrapped blade and handed it to me.

"Your mother left this for you. Told me to give it when the time came."

I unwrapped it.

A dagger, bone-hilted, carved with symbols that matched the ones that burned beneath me hours ago.

"This was hers?" I whispered.

"It's yours now," Dominic said. "And it only glows for one kind of blood."

"Crux," Elias added.

I turned the dagger in my palm.

It glowed.

A soft knock interrupted us. One of the guards stepped in, pale-faced.

"There's a woman at the gate," he said.

Dominic frowned. "Who?"

"She says her name is... Isla Lane. Says she's Sierra's mother."

My blood turned to ice.

"She says her name is Isla Lane," the guard repeated, clearly shaken. "She claims she's Sierra's mother."

"That's impossible," I whispered. My voice felt like it belonged to someone else. "My mother's dead."

Dominic didn't speak. He just watched me with a stare so unreadable it made my skin itch.

"Could it be someone playing games?" Elias asked.

The guard shook his head. "She knew the gate password. The one you said no one outside the bloodline could know."

Dominic swore under his breath. Not a soft curse. A deep, guttural sound that scraped out of his chest like it had claws.

"She's lying," I said. "She has to be."

But even as I said it, something inside me cracked. A small, painful splinter that whispered maybe not.

Dominic turned to me. "Do you want to see her?"

No... Yes... Maybe.

"I want to know who the hell she is," I said instead.

The ride down to the estate gates felt longer than it was. Dominic didn't say a word. Elias flanked me silently. I held the bone dagger in my hand like it might burn a hole through my skin if I let go.

When we stepped outside, moonlight bathed the gravel path in silver. And standing on the other side of the wrought iron gate was a woman.

Tall, wrapped in a hooded black cloak. Hernair dark like mine, threaded with silver. Eyes I recognized too well.

"Hello, Sierra," she said softly, as if we were meeting for coffee and not crashing through the ceiling of everything I'd ever believed.

My breath caught. My knees threatened to give out.

"You're not my mother," I said. It came out harder than I meant.

She smiled, sad and slow. "I was. Before they buried me alive."

And just like that, the ground was gone.

Dominic stepped closer, his body half-shielding mine. "If you touch her-"

"I didn't come to harm her," the woman said. "I came because the bloodline's awakening will tear her apart if she doesn't learn the truth."

My grip on the dagger tightened. Every instinct screamed to run, but my feet stayed rooted. Her voice... it was familiar. Not in memory, but in my bones. Like a lullaby I'd forgotten. Like grief that finally had a face.

"Then start talking," I said.