Chapter 2 : The Burn

Serena POV

They bring me before the sun has even crested the horizon.

No words. Only hands, leathered and sure, wrenching me from my bed. The ropes clasp around my wrists again, sticky with last night’s blood. I stumble through the dust of the corridor, the air outside already that color between black and gray.

The fortress hums. Wolves waking. Doors banging. Metal clinking. Every sound echoes off the walls like a heartbeat but not my own.

The guards lead me out into the courtyard. Torches flicker in the dim light. A hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred eyes wait. Yellow. Gold. White. The smell of them—musk and ash—rushes over my skin like oil.

At the center, the brazier burns. The iron nestled in its coals glows bright red, alive, whispering heat into the morning air.

And Luca is beside it.

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches as they shove me to my knees on the cold flagstones. The ropes scrape against my wrists, biting deep, and my breath comes shallow.

Then he steps forward, and the crowd hushes. Even the wind seems to pause.

“Valente blood returns to the pack,” he says, voice level, reaching through the smoke. “But pride without obedience rots the line. Today she learns what it means to belong.”

The wolves answer with a low growl that rumbles like thunder under my ribs.

I lift my head anyway. “You’ll get no obedience from me.”

A few of the wolves near the front laugh. The others lean in, hungry.

Luca comes closer, the glow of the brazier painting his skin in molten gold. “Defiance again,” he says, mouth quirking just barely. “Good. It means you’ll remember the lesson.”

He motions to the guards. They tear the nightdress from my shoulders until only the brand of last night’s ropes marks my skin. The cold hits first, then the heat from the iron, beginning to pulse against the base of my throat even before Luca touches it.

My heart drums loud enough to make my vision tremble. I won’t bow my head.

Luca lifts the brand, still red and breathing. Smoke curls from its edges, prickly enough to sting my eyes.

“By blood,” he says, low.

The sound of the metal breaking free of the coals hisses like a serpent.

“By fire.”

The words echo through the circle, and the wolves echo them under their breath, a chant building in volume with every syllable.

“By oath.”

The iron descends.

Pain blooms white. The world narrows to the smell of burning flesh and the sound of my own breath tearing at itself. I don’t scream at first. I won’t give them that.

But then he presses further.

A cry tears free before I can stop it—half snarl, half plea. The pack answers with a roar.

Through the blur, I can see his eyes. Not cruel. Focused. Almost reverent.

He draws the brand back, and the air rushes cool over the wound. Smoke curls from my skin in thin gray ribbons. I feel my pulse beating through the fresh mark, a second heart beneath bone.

The scent of it—my blood, his iron—pulls something awake inside me. My wolf stirs, snarling. Not at him. At the power. At the way it thrums through the stone and the pack and the marrow of my own body.

Luca’s hand comes to my jaw, forcing my gaze up to meet his. “The mark binds,” he says softly. “Not chains. Not law. Flesh.”

I can’t tell if he’s warning me or himself.

He turns to the crowd, lifting his bloody glove. “You have seen it. She bears the brand of oath and womb.”

The wolves howl as one, a wall of sound that shakes dust from the rafters.

The noise pulses through my skull until I can’t tell where the world ends, and I begin. I’m shaking—part pain, part rage—but beneath it all, something new stirs. A pulse answering his.

Luca leans close enough that his breath ghosts over the raw skin at my collarbone. “You carry my fire now.”

I whisper back through clenched teeth, “You’ll choke on it.”

He smiles, just barely. “Then burn me, little wolf.”

The brazier spits sparks between us. His gaze holds mine a heartbeat longer before he steps away, leaving me kneeling in the smoke.

The guards don’t move. The pack doesn’t speak. Only the iron breathes.

Somewhere behind the noise, the Seer’s voice drifts from the shadows—low, rasping, certain.

“The queen’s gate is open. The blood remembers.”

Luca jerks to his feet, turning sharp toward her, but she has already melted away into the dark.

I press my palm against the brand. Heat flares beneath my hand like a living thing. My wolf presses closer to the surface, eyes blazing gold behind my lids.

When I look up again, every wolf in the circle is staring at me. Some with awe. Some with hunger. Some with fear.

I meet their gaze one by one, breathing through the pain until my voice returns. “I don’t belong to him.”

The words are soft, but they carry. The closest wolves flinch. Luca’s head tilts, unreadable.

For a heartbeat, silence holds. Then somewhere in the crowd, a single wolf laughs—a short, sharp sound—and the spell is broken.

They haul me to my feet, dragging me toward the gates. The runes carved into the stones beneath our feet pulse once, bright as blood before fading back to black.

I stumble, dizzy, the world swimming in heat and noise. Luca’s voice drifts behind me, steady as the brand itself. “By the next moon, she will bear my mark and my heir.”

The pack roars in approval.

I turn over my shoulder once, just once. The brazier flames higher, sparks spilling into the gray dawn.

And for a heartbeat, I swear I can see the shape of a wolf inside the fire—silver-eyed and waiting.

The ropes cinch. The heat follows me as they drag me into the dark hall, and I can still smell the burning on my skin when the heavy doors slam shut.