Updated Dec 21, 2025 • ~9 min read
The healing house smelled like herbs and desperation.
Lyla lay on a cot, looking smaller than I’d ever seen her. Without my power flowing through the twin bond, she was just a girl—fragile and scared and dying.
Part of me wanted to feel satisfaction. This was justice, wasn’t it? Her suffering the way she’d made me suffer.
But the larger part—the part that remembered braided hair and shared secrets—just felt sad.
“I don’t know where to start,” I admitted to Elder Edith. We stood in the corner while Kaian waited outside, giving me space to work. “I’ve never accessed my own power properly. How do I teach her to do what I’ve never done?”
The elder’s wrinkled hand covered mine. “You’ve been doing it for weeks, child. Your wolf is stronger now than she’s ever been. You shifted the moment you crossed pack borders—did you notice?”
I had. My wolf had pushed so close to the surface that I’d nearly lost control.
“That’s your true power,” Elder Edith continued. “Unfiltered by Lyla’s drain. That’s what we need to teach her to find in herself.”
“But her wolf is weak—”
“Is she?” The elder’s eyes were knowing. “Or has she simply never learned to hunt for her own strength because stealing yours was easier?”
The words hit like a blow. All these years, I’d believed Lyla’s wolf was dying, that she needed my help to survive. What if that was just another lie? Another manipulation?
“How do I know if she’s really trying?” I asked. “Or if this is just another scheme?”
“You don’t. That’s what makes mercy hard.” Elder Edith squeezed my hand. “But you’ll know by the results. If she truly tries, her wolf will wake. If she tries to manipulate you again—” The elder’s expression hardened. “I’ll help you sever the bond myself. No matter the cost.”
I approached Lyla’s cot. Her eyes fluttered open, glassy with fever.
“Lira,” she whispered. “I thought you’d let me die.”
“I still might.” I pulled up a chair. “This only works if you’re honest. Completely honest. Can you do that?”
She nodded weakly.
“When did you know? About the parasitic bond?”
Lyla’s face crumpled. “When we were twelve. My wolf started fading and I felt—I felt you getting stronger. Elder Edith told me it was temporary, that twin bonds balanced naturally. But it kept happening. You’d train and I’d get tired. You’d shift and I could barely manage a partial transformation.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was scared!” Tears leaked from her eyes. “You were already the better wolf, the stronger fighter. If the pack knew my wolf was dying, they’d outcast me. I’d be nothing. So I—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I learned to pull harder. To take your strength intentionally instead of waiting for the bond to share it.”
Anger and pity warred in my chest. “How long have you been actively stealing from me?”
“Since we were fifteen. After the first boy chose you over me. After I realized I’d always be second as long as you existed.” She met my eyes, something broken in her gaze. “I hated you. My own twin, and I hated you. Every day you got stronger while I got weaker, and I hated you for it.”
The honesty hurt more than lies would have. At least lies I could rage against.
“Did you love Drake?” I asked. “Or was he just a tool?”
“Both.” Lyla struggled to sit up, and I helped her despite my instincts screaming not to. “I loved him because you loved him. Because if I could have what you had, maybe I’d finally be good enough. But also—” She swallowed hard. “Also because if I bonded with an Alpha, the mate bond would sustain me. I wouldn’t need to steal from you anymore.”
“Except it didn’t work.”
“No. Because Drake’s bond was meant for you. The magic knew. My wolf knew. So instead of getting stronger, I just—” She gestured at her wasted body. “This.”
I should have felt vindicated. Should have reveled in her suffering. But looking at my twin—my mirror image who’d chosen such a twisted path—I just felt exhausted.
“I can’t give you my power anymore,” I said quietly. “The bond with Kaian is severing our connection. In a few weeks, maybe a month, the twin bond will break completely. If you haven’t learned to access your own wolf by then, you’ll die.”
Lyla’s face went white. “A month? That’s not enough time—”
“It’s the time you have. So we either use it, or we waste it talking about what you should have done differently.” I pulled magic-binding restraints from my pocket—Kaian had procured them from a witch. “These will block the parasitic pull. You won’t be able to steal from me anymore, even accidentally. Which means whatever strength you find has to come from inside you.”
“What if there’s nothing inside me?” Her voice was small, scared. “What if my wolf really is dying?”
“Then you die.” I said it bluntly, without softening the blow. “And I go back to Nocturne with Kaian and live the life you tried to steal. Those are your options.”
I expected her to beg. To cry. To try to manipulate me into sympathy.
Instead, she held out her wrists for the restraints.
“Do it,” she said. “I’m done stealing. I’m done lying. If I die, at least it’ll be on my own terms for once.”
I locked the restraints around her wrists. Immediately, I felt the parasitic pull cease—that constant drain I’d grown so used to I’d stopped noticing. Power flooded back into me, and my wolf surged forward with enough force to make me gasp.
“Lira?” Elder Edith steadied me. “Are you alright?”
“I’m—” I looked at my hands, glowing faint silver. “I didn’t realize how much she was still taking. Even from a distance, even with the mate bond forming, she was—”
“Starving for any scraps she could get,” the elder finished grimly. “The restraints will stop that. But Lyla will feel the loss. Badly.”
She already did. My twin convulsed on the cot, her wolf howling in protest at being cut off from its food source. I forced myself to watch, to not intervene, even when she screamed.
This was necessary. Cruel, but necessary.
After ten minutes that felt like hours, Lyla collapsed, panting and drenched in sweat.
“Still alive?” I asked.
“Unfortunately,” she gasped. “Is it—is it always going to hurt like that?”
“Until you find your own power source, yes.” I pulled my chair closer. “Now, we’re going to meditate. Like the elders taught us when we were cubs. You’re going to go deep inside yourself and find your wolf.”
“I’ve tried. There’s nothing there.”
“Because you’ve been reaching for my wolf instead of yours.” I took her hand—not gently, not offering comfort, just creating a connection. “Feel that? That’s where you usually pull from. Don’t. Pull from yourself instead.”
“I don’t know how—”
“Then learn. You have a month.” I gentled slightly, remembering how Kaian had taught me. “Your wolf is in there, Lyla. She’s just been sleeping because she hasn’t needed to work. Make her work.”
For the next three hours, I guided Lyla through meditation, through breathing exercises, through every technique the elders had taught us. She failed. Repeatedly. Spectacularly. But she kept trying.
And somewhere around hour four, I felt it—a flicker of something that wasn’t me. Faint, weak, but there.
Lyla’s wolf.
“There,” I breathed. “Did you feel that?”
Her eyes flew open, glowing faint gold. “I—there’s something. It’s small but—”
“That’s her. That’s your wolf.” I squeezed her hand. “Now we build from there.”
By the time Kaian came to collect me at dawn, Lyla had managed to hold onto that flicker for ten whole seconds. Not much. Barely anything. But more than she’d done in years.
“Will she make it?” Kaian asked as we walked back to the guest quarters the pack had provided.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She’s trying. Really trying. But twenty years of parasitic bonding doesn’t undo in a month.”
“What if she doesn’t make it? How will you feel?”
I thought about it. “Sad. But not guilty. I gave her a chance. What she does with it is up to her.”
Kaian pulled me close, pressing a kiss to my temple. “You’re stronger than you know.”
“I learned from the best.” I looked up at him. “Thank you. For coming here. For supporting this even though you hate her for what she did.”
“I don’t hate her.” His lips curved. “I pity her. She had a sister who would have shared power freely if asked. Instead, she chose to steal and lie and hurt. That’s not strength. That’s cowardice.”
He was right. And maybe that’s what made Lyla’s betrayal cut so deep—not that she’d taken from me, but that she’d never once asked. Had never trusted that I’d help willingly.
“What if I’d been like her?” I asked quietly. “In the past life. What if I’d been selfish and cruel?”
“You weren’t.” His certainty was absolute. “You sacrificed yourself for strangers. Stood between darkness and innocence. That’s who your soul is, Lira. In every life. In every form.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to think I was someone inherently good.
But I also knew the truth: I’d felt satisfaction when Lyla screamed. Had wanted her to hurt the way she’d hurt me. That capacity for cruelty lived in me too.
The difference was choice.
Lyla had chosen to steal. I chose to help.
And maybe that’s what defined us—not what we were capable of, but what we actually did.
“One month,” I whispered against Kaian’s chest. “Then I’m coming home. To Nocturne. To you.”
“I’ll be counting the days.” His arms tightened around me. “But Lira? Even if helping your sister takes longer than a month, even if you need to stay—I’ll wait. I’m good at waiting.”
As I drifted to sleep in his arms, I thought about the warrior I’d been. The woman who’d accepted a curse to save a village.
Maybe I really was her, reborn.
Maybe this—helping my worst enemy because it was the right thing to do—was exactly what she would have done.
And maybe that meant I was finally becoming who I was always meant to be.
Strong enough to show mercy.
Brave enough to risk betrayal.
Whole enough to choose love over hate.
Finally, completely whole.
Reader Reactions