The silence crushed down on us like a weight, the forest suffocating under the absence of the Choir's howl. My breath hitched, still sharp from the chant tearing itself out of me, glyphs searing across my skin like molten light. I felt exposed, marked, a beacon in a nightmare that suddenly bowed.
Every ash-formed figure sank low in perfect unison, as if a single thread pulled them all down. A thousand blackened heads bent toward me, their jagged shapes trembling like puppets in a wind I couldn't feel. Then the voice split the silence — not a chorus now, but one, close and unyielding. Daughter of the Hollow Song.
The pack recoiled as if struck. Gasps snapped through the ranks, some dropping into a half-defensive crouch, others frozen with their lips curled back, not daring to blink. The weight of the Choir's recognition was heavier than any strike.
Damon was in front of me in a heartbeat, fury bleeding from him in heatwaves, his wolf snarling so deep it shook my ribs. His hand clamped my wrist like he meant to weld me to him. But even in that snarl I caught it—fear, thin as a fracture running beneath the rage.
"They dare speak of you like this," he growled, voice a blade honed on jealousy and terror alike. His chest rose like a wall, his body a shield, but his eyes betrayed him. He wasn't just protecting me from them—he was trying to protect himself from the truth.
I swallowed hard, the word echoing through me still, the name they had given me. Daughter. Not prey. Not enemy. Something else. Something they already knew I was, before I could even choose it for myself.
And around us, the pack's fear wasn't just for me. It was of me.
---
The words hang in the ruined air, heavy as iron. Daughter of the Hollow Song. My heart pounds so hard it drowns the silence, and then—
The glyphs burn awake beneath my skin. No longer faint etchings I could pretend were scars. They ignite like molten threads, racing across my arms, coiling over my throat, spilling over my chest in patterns too intricate to follow. Gold and crimson, shadow and fire all at once.
A gasp ripples through the pack. Jareth stumbles back as though I've become something untouchable. Mira's lips part, trembling, her hand half-reaching for me, half-withdrawing. Even Damon's iron stance falters when the glow surges bright enough to wash the blood from his face.
It doesn't feel like fire this time. It feels like… recognition. A strange warmth, alien and intimate, pressing into me like unseen hands. The glyphs pulse in rhythm with my heart, and for one dizzy instant, I feel as though the Choir is inside me—no, around me—echoing my very breath.
Instead of shrieks, their voices fall into a low murmur, reverent, almost gentle. They chant not to destroy, but to honor. My terror spikes sharp, but so does something else, rising like a forbidden tide—an ache that feels like belonging.
I stagger, clutching my arm as light pulses brighter. Damon's growl cuts the air, raw and jagged. His shadow arcs over me, but his voice shakes as if even he doesn't know whether he's defending me or himself.
The Choir bows deeper, their tones rippling like dark water. Daughter. Chosen. Vessel.
And all I can think is—what if they're right?
---
The glow on my skin hadn't even dimmed when Damon's voice cut through the cavern like a blade. He rounded on Sareth, eyes molten, his wolf bleeding into his form with every breath. Why didn't you tell me? His words were more growl than speech, cracking stone with their weight.
Sareth stood motionless, hands clasped behind his back, as though Damon's fury were a storm he'd already weathered. His shadow stretched long across the hollow floor, brushing against the bowed Choir who dared not lift their eyes.
I warned you the Prophecy would not bend to your control, he said, his tone flat, as if speaking to a child who had ignored fire and now held burned hands.
The air snapped. Damon's teeth bared, his rage rising like a tide that could drown everyone in reach. His clawed hand twitched as if ready to rip Sareth's throat out. The pack felt it — muscles coiled, a ripple of readiness. One wrong breath and blood would spill across the glyph-lit cavern floor.
But Sareth didn't flinch. His eyes flicked briefly to me, and then back to Damon, a calm defiance that only poured oil on Damon's fire.
---
Even as Damon's fury scorched the air, I barely heard him. The cavern still thrummed with something deeper — the hymn hadn't left me. Its notes didn't just echo in the hollow space; they pressed against the inside of my skull, a ghost-choir humming through my veins.
I knew their rhythm now. Not because I'd studied it, but because it felt… remembered. Like a lullaby whispered before I could walk, a cadence buried beneath my heartbeat all my life. Every rise and fall of the melody bent itself around me as if my breath had been part of its making.
A chill dragged through my marrow. Fear clawed sharp and cold. Was I becoming one of them? Each glyph's burn on my skin pulsed in time with the hymn, as though it wanted to root me here forever among the Bloodsong Choir.
Or worse — had they always been part of me?
The thought tasted like betrayal. Of Damon. Of myself. Of everything I believed about who I was. My hands trembled, not from weakness, but from the terror of recognition. The hymn was no longer foreign. It was mine.
---
Mira's fingers wrapped around mine, grounding me with a warmth I barely felt. Her grip trembled as if she sensed the hymn moving through me. Don't answer them, her eyes pleaded before her voice broke free. Dahlia, please. Don't let them in. Don't give them more than they've already taken.
Jareth's shadow loomed behind her, his voice a low cut of steel. Silence is deadlier than surrender. His gaze flicked to the hollow where the Bloodsong Choir's whispers still lingered. Refusal might be seen as rejection. And they don't forgive rejection.
The pack fractured in murmurs, voices colliding in the cavern like sparks. One urged silence, fear strangling every word — better death than corruption. Another rose in faith's defiance — trust her, she can bend this without breaking.
Their arguments tangled into a storm, but beneath it all, the hymn pulsed steady inside me. Waiting. Demanding. My choice hung between them — silence or surrender — each as sharp and damning as the other.
---
From the haze of shifting ash, one form stepped forward, its body barely clinging to shape. Hollow sockets glowed with glyph-light, runes burning through the cracks of its chest as though its bones themselves were etched with fire. The cavern quieted under its weightless stride.
It lifted a jagged hand and its voice rattled like stone dragged over stone. When the Hollow rises, the Daughter opens the Gate. The words fell crooked, fractured, as if time itself had broken them. The last Moonblood will not stand against it — only with it.
Each syllable branded itself into me, the glyphs inside its hollow form flashing in rhythm with my heartbeat. I felt their meaning not only in sound but in marrow, a truth laced into my bloodline long before I was born.
The prophecy was no longer shadow or riddle. It was sharpening, narrowing its gaze on me, and the pack's silence turned suffocating as every eye waited to see whether I was the Daughter the Choir had claimed.
---
Damon's growl cut through the suffocating silence, low and savage, vibrating the cavern walls. His eyes burned crimson, his voice raw with a fury that cracked the stillness. No Choir, no curse, no twisted prophecy will take her from me. His power surged, Alpha dominance spilling into the ash-thick air like a storm about to break.
But the Choir did not bow. The ash-forms swayed instead, their glyphs brightening, drawn not to Damon's command but to mine. I felt the pull without willing it, my skin prickling as their hollow gazes turned toward me in silent recognition. The cavern answered my presence, not his.
Damon's rage deepened — not fear, never fear, but the sting of something worse: inevitability. He lunged forward, dominance crashing against the Choir like a tide. Yet the ash did not retreat. They bent subtly, swaying in rhythm to me, their obedience unclaimed yet undeniable.
The pack watched, unsettled. For the first time, Damon Thorne Valemont — the Ruthless Alpha, breaker of bloodlines, unchallenged sovereign — was losing ground. Not in strength, but in destiny.
---
The ash-forms lowered as one, sinking to their knees in the black dust. Their glyph-lit faces tilted upward, hollow yet reverent, waiting. The silence that followed was unbearable, a pressure that made my lungs seize. They weren't here to strike me down — they were here for something worse.
They were waiting for me.
I felt Damon's grip clamp around my wrist, heat and fury searing through his touch. His claim, his anchor. My body trembled between him and them, pulled taut in two directions. His growl thundered at my back, but it faltered against the weight of their worship.
The Choir's stillness was not defeat — it was devotion. They did not see a prisoner in me. They saw a bearer. A chosen thing.
My knees shook. I wanted to turn, bury myself in Damon's rage, cling to his certainty. But the truth pressed into my skin like fire: they weren't going to leave until I acknowledged them. Until I answered.
And if I did… I wasn't sure I would still belong to him.
---
My hand lifted before I even knew I'd moved, trembling in the space between Damon's grip and the kneeling sea of shadows. The glyphs under my skin flared, burning bright as if answering something ancient, older than my fear.
Damon's roar cracked the silence. My name tore from him like a curse, raw and violent, echoing through the clearing.
The Choir's response swallowed his voice. A thousand throats spoke as one, breaking the world open with a single declaration.
"She is ours."
The words rang like a verdict, thunder and steel, a hymn older than kingdoms.
My chest heaved. My knees buckled. And then it struck me, cold and blinding—
They were not trying to claim me.
The Bloodsong Choir already belonged to me.
---
⚔️🔥 Dahlia's power is no longer in question—only her choice. Damon may fight to hold her, but destiny itself has just bent the knee.
👉 Continue to Chapter 13 and see if Dahlia will embrace what she is… or break everything to stay free.
---