The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 74: Tethers of Fire and Frost

"This isn’t how you fight a war. This is how you lose everything."

Rhett’s voice carved through the flickering shadows of the war room, his body taut with fury. The candlelight played tricks on his features, sharpening the edges of his jaw, igniting gold in his storm-gray eyes. His hand slammed flat against the ancient map splayed out across the table, dust rising like the ghosts of forgotten generals.

Magnolia flinched, barely, but didn’t retreat. "And standing still while Sterling poisons the air we breathe is how we win? Tell me that again."

Around them, the gathered circle, leaders, warriors, and frightened kin, watched the unraveling of trust between two alphas who should’ve been united. The air crackled with opposing energies. Rhett, dressed in black tactical gear laced with crimson thread, radiated dominance. Magnolia, cloaked in midnight blue with her silver braid loose over one shoulder, carried the weight of the prophecy in her silence.

"Sterling is baiting us," Rhett continued, quieter now but no less dangerous. "Camille’s warning wasn’t just some confession. He wants me gone. Wants to rule through her. You think we’re just going to let him play gods with our bloodlines?"

Magnolia stepped forward, closing the space between them. Her voice was low, intimate, a whisper meant to slice. "Then let’s stop dancing around his fire and burn the bastard where he stands."

Rhett’s breath hitched.

Her words shouldn’t have stirred him, not in the middle of a command meeting, not with eyes watching and doubts thick in the air. But something in her, the rawness of her conviction, the quiet storm, lit a match in his chest.

He leaned closer, their faces inches apart. "And if you’re the one who gets scorched? What then, Magnolia?"

A flicker of hurt passed through her eyes before she masked it with steel. "Then I burn. But not alone."

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was filled with the weight of unsaid things, of unhealed bruises and buried desires. And as quickly as it built, it shattered, because Beckett crashed through the war room doors, blood on his chest, his eyes wide with something too jagged to name.

"It’s Celeste," he gasped. "She’s not breathing."

Magnolia moved before anyone else, her braid whipping behind her. Rhett was a breath behind, their feud abandoned like ash on the wind.

Celeste lay on the stone floor of the east corridor, surrounded by healers whispering words that didn’t make sense. Her face was ashen, lips blue. Her hands, usually warm and scented with herbs, now curled like brittle leaves.

Magnolia dropped to her knees beside her. "What happened?"

A young healer sobbed. "She was carrying the Luna scrolls... and just collapsed. We think, maybe, it was a trap."

Rhett’s jaw locked. "Show me the scrolls. Now."

The parchment was ancient, its edges frayed and etched with sigils that pulsed faintly in the dark. Rhett took one look and recoiled. "This isn’t just Luna knowledge. This is forbidden blood magic. Twisted. Weaponized."

Magnolia’s fingers hovered over the runes. "Why would Celeste give this to me? She knew, she warned me about this kind of magic."

Beckett stumbled forward, wiping blood from his brow. "Because she believed only you could use it without turning into what they fear. Because she believed in your restraint."

Magnolia’s breath caught. The prophecy. The vessel. The storm within her that had only just begun to crack the surface.

And then Celeste’s eyes fluttered open. Her voice, barely audible, slithered from her throat like smoke. "Don’t trust the white-robed one. He bears Sterling’s mark... hidden."

Then she went still.

Magnolia’s scream didn’t echo. It folded inward, raw and silent.

They buried Celeste under the nightshade tree behind the chapel. The roots would protect her, they said. The moon would remember.

Magnolia didn’t weep. She stood rigid, the scrolls clutched in her arms, a fresh scar across her palm from where she’d gripped too tightly. Rhett came to her only after everyone had gone.

He didn’t speak. Just stood beside her, letting the wind carry what words couldn’t.

"They’ll want me to use them," Magnolia finally said. Her voice didn’t shake. "The scrolls. They’ll say it’s our only chance."

Rhett turned toward her. "And what do you say?"

She looked at him. "I say we’ve already started a war. Might as well learn how to end it."

His hand brushed against hers, a fleeting touch that made her tremble. He didn’t apologize.

"You’re not alone in this," he said.

"I know."

But even as she said it, the ground beneath them shifted.

Because from the chapel, a low hum began to rise, soft at first, then searing, a vibration that shook the bones.

They ran.

Inside, the altar had split open. Fire licked the air, and from the cracks, shadows rose, cloaked figures, faceless, chanting in a tongue that hadn’t been spoken for centuries.

Rhett snarled. "The Hollowfang Circle. He’s unleashed them."

Magnolia reached for the scrolls, her eyes flashing with silver.

"No," Rhett snapped. "Not here. Not now. You use that magic, you don’t come back the same."

"Then pray I don’t have to."

She stepped into the firelight, the runes already glowing in her hands. The figures turned to her. The chant changed.

And the war inside the walls began.

"The ink is moving," Magnolia whispered, her voice trembling as the scroll lay open before her on the altar stone. The parchment, aged, brittle at the edges, had not just lines of script, but a pulse.

The temple ruins around her groaned with old wind, branches creaking overhead. The clearing had been silent when she first arrived. Now, the trees whispered. The moon, swollen and red, hung above like an unblinking eye. Crimson. Too crimson.

She didn’t feel alone.

"Say the vow," the scroll demanded. Not in words, but in searing pressure against her skin, in a pulse that climbed her arms like fire slithering up a wick. Her fingertips scorched as she touched the glyphs. Not with pain, but with a strange, electric hunger.

"I don’t understand this power," she whispered.

But her wolf did.

From within, her beast stirred, restless, primal. The air thickened. Magnolia braced herself, inhaling deeply. The scent of moss, broken stone, ancient blood. The scroll’s script began to twist again, flowing like black ink stirred in water. Symbols rearranged into new phrases, some in tongues older than the Alphas’ lineages.

And then,

A scream shattered the quiet. Not hers. Someone else’s.

Magnolia flinched and looked up, eyes scanning the trees. Nothing moved.

The scroll glowed brighter, and her hands, pale but flecked with cuts and dried blood from the escape, locked onto the edges. Her vision blurred. Her pupils widened as the moonlight pulsed through her.

And the first vision struck her like a storm:

Chains.

Savannah.

Bent over in a chamber soaked in silver light. Her bones jutting through skin, her eyes wide and unblinking. Shackles made of bone encased her wrists. Someone sobbed behind her, and it was Rhett.

Rhett, kneeling.

Not to her.

To Sterling.

Magnolia gasped.

Another flash. Camille. Crowned. Crowned. And her smile, oh, God, that smile, wasn’t hers. The woman beside Sterling wore Camille’s face, but not her soul. That woman had teeth like knives and eyes like mirrors. Dead eyes. Hollow eyes.

"No," Magnolia rasped, trembling as she reached toward the image, only for the scroll to pulse violently, knocking her back.

She stumbled, catching herself on one elbow as the wind howled harder. Her eyes stung. Her skin burned. Blood from her cuts mixed with the scroll’s magic as it climbed her arms like veins of fire. But she couldn’t stop.

She turned back to it, drawn like gravity.

Another vision.

Her wolf.

But not her.

This creature rose in the reflection of her own eye. Taller. Leaner. Its fur was not auburn like hers, it was jet black, with eyes of burning gold and blood dripping from its fangs. It growled at her through the surface of a still pool.

And then it screamed.

She screamed.

The moon cracked.

Not metaphorically. The sky actually split, a vein of white fire ripping across the blood moon’s belly as if some divine hand had carved it open.

Every bone in her body pulsed with energy.

She fell to her knees.

"No, no, no, " Magnolia whispered, her voice breaking as she clawed at her temple. "This isn’t prophecy. This is a warning."

The scrolls disintegrated into ash.

And the ash didn’t fall, it rose. Spiraling up like smoke being breathed in reverse. It swirled into her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth. She choked. Gasped.

Memories not hers slammed into her mind like arrows.

Wolves kneeling before a woman of flame.

Alphas burning each other alive for her favor.

A throne made of bone rising in the East.

The Syndicate’s temples collapsing beneath war drums.

Camille, laughing, as Rhett bled out beneath her boots.

Magnolia screamed so loud the forest recoiled.

Then silence.

Her heart thudded, uneven and wild, and her fingers dug into the earth. Her lips bled from biting them. She saw her own hands, and they weren’t hers, they were clawed, thick, and trembling.

"I’m not a monster," she whispered to the ground. "I’m not."

But the beast inside laughed.

"You are," it said. "You were born to be."

She staggered to her feet, hair clinging to her sweat-soaked face. She looked at the sky, the cracked moon still weeping light.

And she heard footsteps.

Someone was coming.

She didn’t wait.

She turned and ran into the trees, away from the altar, from the moon, from the vision, from herself.

Behind her, something whispered in the voice of the old scroll:

"Only one will ascend. The others... will kneel or burn."

And the forest watched her flee.

The ground pulsed once.

Then it slept.