The Cursed Alpha's Substitute Bride

On the twenty-third day of training, Aldric placed something new on the floor between us.

Not iron this time. A glass vial, stoppered with black wax, containing something that moved inside it even though it was sealed - a dark liquid that shifted and pressed against the glass like it was looking for a way out.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Concentrated dark magic," Aldric said. "Extracted from a cursed object three years ago. This is the same class, same generation, same structure as what is in Caius. Not diluted. Not contained in metal. Pure."

I stared at it and swallowed my saliva.The current in my blood reacted immediately. It was not the gentle hum of the candle sessions, it was something more urgent. A pulling sensation, like the ability recognized what was in the vial and was leaning toward it without my permission.

"I'm not ready for that," I snapped.

"No, you definitely are not" Aldric agreed. "But you need to know what it feels like before you encounter the real thing. Knowing and encountering are two different speeds of shock."

I looked at the vial for a long moment. Then I reached.

The contact was nothing like the iron.

The iron had pushed back; aggressive, awake, fighting. This was worse. This was seductive. The dark magic in the vial reached back toward me with the particular pull of something that wanted to be touched, that had been waiting to be touched, that was actively pleased to find something it recognized on the other end of the contact.

It felt like drowning in warm water.

I yanked back hard physically flinching, my whole body jerking like I'd grabbed a live wire and the contact broke and I was on my feet without knowing I'd stood up, backing against the wall, breathing in short hard pulls.

"Sera- "

"It pulled," I said. My voice was not steady. "It wasn't like the iron. It wasn't fighting me. It wanted contact. It was pulling me toward it."

"Yes," Aldric said. He set the vial down carefully. "That is the nature of old dark magic when it encounters a Bloodanchor. It recognizes what you are. It wants to be near you because proximity to your blood is comforting to it. The way a flame is drawn to oxygen."

"Comforting," I repeated. I laughed - sharp and short and not funny. "That's - that's horrifying."

"It is also the mechanism by which you can break it," he said. "It leans toward you. That's not a weakness. That is a door."

I pressed my back against the cold stone wall and felt the residue of the contact buzzing in my hands like pins and needles and thought about Caius. About the curse markings that pulsed like a second heartbeat. About three years of being eaten alive by something that apparently found him comfortable to inhabit.

My stomach turned. I sighed.

"Try again," Aldric said.

"I just told you it pulled me in, won't that- "

"And you pulled out," Aldric said. "You recognized what was happening and you broke contact. That is the skill. Not avoiding the pull - managing it. Now try again."

I stared at him. Sixty seconds of genuine internal argument. I was hesitant. Then I pushed off the wall and sat back down.

I reached for it again.

The pull came immediately. Warm. Seductive. Familiar now, which made it both easier and more frightening. I held the contact and felt it lean toward me and instead of yanking back I pushed my awareness into the structure of it - the architecture of the dark magic, its logic, the way it was built.

It was like learning to read in a language made of pain.

I held the contact for forty seconds before I released it deliberately, not yanking, releasing, the way you set something down instead of dropping it.

When I opened my eyes my nose was bleeding. It felt intense.

I touched my upper lip and looked at my fingers and felt a bolt of genuine fear shoot through me not for myself but for what it meant. If a sealed vial did this to me, what would direct contact with an active living curse do?

"Don't," Aldric said. "Don't go to that conclusion yet. Your vessels are adjusting to the contact. It will stop happening within the week."

"And if it doesn't?" I asked.

"Then we adjust the approach," he said. "But it will. Your mother had the same response in her early sessions. She grew out of it in six days."

My mother. Who had been here before me, in some form. Whose blood had been preparing this for a generation.

I wiped the blood off my nose. Looked at the vial.

"Again,"

Aldric blinked. Then he nodded.

✦ ✦ ✦

 We had soon finished and I came up from the training room an hour later with dried blood on my lip and the buzzing in my hands and ran directly into Caius in the corridor. It was not an accident this time, I realized. He had been waiting.

He saw the blood immediately. His eyes was drawn to it and something flared in his face. It was sharp and urgent, the expression of a man seeing something that cost him something to see.

"What happened?" He asked.

"Training," I said. "But I'm fine. Aldric said it's an adjustment response."

"You're bleeding from your face, Sera." Trying to touch my face.

"I know where I'm bleeding from," I said and pulled back a bit. Not that I didn't want him to but I was just overwhelmed from all that.

He grabbed my wrist suddenly - enough to stop me and when I looked up at him the urgency in his face was so raw and unguarded I went completely still.

"Tell me it's not getting worse," he said. Low. Direct. Not a command. Something closer to a plea.

I had never heard that from him before. That edge in his voice that had nothing to do with authority.

"It's an adjustment response," I said again, softer this time. "Aldric said my mother had the same thing. Six days and it stops."

He held my wrist for another second. Then released it.

"Six days." he repeated.

"Six days." I said.

He stepped back. Let me pass. But I felt his eyes on me all the way down the corridor and the mark on my neck burned so hot I had to stop twice and breathe.

He was afraid for me.

Caius Dravhen who had spent three years making peace with his own destruction was afraid for me.

I didn't know what to do with that. So I kept walking and filed it with all the other things I didn't know what to do with yet.

That collection was getting very full.