carried across 58

 

58 Weapon 

Sera 

“What did you say?” 

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“You lost the right to dictate my behavior the exact moment you sat at that table and let Father sell me off to this pack,” I said. I took a step closer to her. She flinched backward, but I didn’t stop. “You watched him trade my life for a border treaty. You sent me here to die or be bred, and you didn’t say a single word So do not stand here now and preach to me about acting like a princess.” 

My mother’s face flushed a deep, angry red. “I am your mother.” 

“A mother protects her child,” I countered instantly. “I had to protect myself today.” 

“That wasn’t defending yourself!” my mother shouted. Her voice echoed off the high stone wall behind us. Several heads turned in our direction, but I didn’t care. “Do not stand there and call that self-defense, Seraphina. You entered a fighting ring. You accepted a challenge from a trained killer to prove a foolish point. It didn’t make any sense. You nearly died for pride.” 

I stopped. I clamped my jaw shut. 

I looked at her. 

She wasn’t wrong. 

The Sera from three years ago would never have stepped into this ring. The Sera from Blackwater would have hidden in her guest room. She would have apologized to Taya the moment the threat was made. She would have begged Kane to intervene. She would have offered gold, just like my mother suggested 

yesterday. 

My mother was right. I didn’t have to fight. Fenris had offered me an out in the council room. I could have taken the public flogging. I could have taken the shame. 

But I stepped into the dirt. I let Taya break my nose. I forced my body to heal using an exhaustingly painful technique I barely learned yesterday. I broke another woman’s arm and rearranged her face because she called me a broodmare. Because she insulted my worth in front of the pack. 

I did it for pride. I did it because I was exhausted from shrinking. 

“You fought to prove you belong here,” my mother continued, sensing my silence. She pushed her advantage, her voice dropping into that lecturing, disappointed tone she used when I was a child. “You fought to impress him.” She gestured toward Fenris again. “You threw away everything you were raised to be, just to survive a week in this horrible place. It is foolish, Sera. It is madness.” 

I looked down at my hands again. The blood was completely dry now. It flaked off the edges of my knuckles like red dust. 

I thought about the feeling in my chest when I broke Taya’s arm. I thought about the absolute, terrifying clarity I felt when I was straddling her, pinning her to the ground. I hadn’t been afraid. I hadn’t been 

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helpless. For the first time in my entire life. I was holding the weapon I was the one deciding how the story ended 

I looked back up at my mother. 

“I am not the girl you raised anymore,” I said. 

“Sera- 

“That girl died in Blackwater,” I said. My voice was completely steady. There was no tremor. No hesitation “She died waiting for an Alpha to choose her. She died waiting for her parents to bring her home I am never going back to being her.” 

“You are my daughter,” she said. Tears welled up in her eyes again, spilling over her eyelashes. “I love you. I want to take you home. Torin can arrange it. We can leave tonight. We can fix this.” 

I stared at her. I stripped away the title of ‘mother’ in my mind. I just looked at the woman standing in 

front of me. 

She was weak. She was a flawless product of the South. A place where women were traded like cattle over dinner tables and expected to smile about it. A place where preserving your image was infinitely more important than preserving your life. She wanted me to come home so I could sit quietly in a palace and pretend I hadn’t been discarded. She wanted me to apologize for bleeding. 

There was absolutely nothing left for me in the South. 

It was a fact. 

Valdris was a cage lined with velvet. Ironmaw was a cage lined with ice and iron. But here, they let me hold the key. Here, Fenris handed me a padded pole and told me to defend myself. He didn’t lock me in a room for my own safety. He put me in the dirt and told me to survive. 

“I am home,” I said. 

My mother shook her head frantically. The tears spilled over her cheeks, cutting through the dirt on her face. “No. No, Sera, this is not a home. This is an abattoir.” 

“Then you should leave,” I said. “Before you get blood on your dress.” 

I didn’t wait for her to respond. I didn’t want to hear her cry anymore. The sound of her weeping grated against my nerves. It sounded exactly like defeat. 

I turned my back on her. 

I faced the yard. The healers were lifting Taya onto a heavy, rigid wooden stretcher. Kael was walking beside them, his face pale and tight with unfiltered fury. The massive crowd was slowly dispersing. breaking into smaller groups. The betting ledgers were being settled. The violence was over for the day. 

I scanned the edge of the ring. 

Fenris was still standing in the exact same spot he had been when he called the match. Lord Torin had 

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backed away from him and was glaring from a safe, cowardly distance 

Fenris was watching me. 

I started walking. My left leg dragged slightly in the dirt. The adrenaline crash was hitting me much harder now. My stomach twisted with violent nausea. The edges of my vision pulsed with a dull, throbbing grey blur. The massive physical toll of forcing my body to heal my crushed nose and my ripped thigh was aggressively demanding its payment. 1 

But I kept my head up. 

I walked past the splintered wooden post where Taya had slammed my spine. I walked over the dark patches of blood freezing into the dirt. My blood. Her blood. 

I walked directly toward the Alpha. 

Fenris did not move to meet me. He waited. He stood tall, his heavy fur cloak shifting slightly in the freezing wind. His grey eyes tracked my every step. He looked at my ruined hands, my torn tunic, the deep bruising already forming along my jawline. 

He didn’t look at me with pity. He didn’t look at me with the disgust and horror my mother had. 

He looked at me like I belonged there. 

I reached him. I stopped two feet away from his chest. 

I looked up into his face. The cold wind bit sharply at my split lip. 

I didn’t say a word. I just stood there, covered in dirt and violence, breathing the exact same freezing air as the man I was going to marry. 

Fenris held my gaze. His grey eyes dropped to my ruined, bleeding knuckles, then dragged slowly back up to my face. 

The hard lines around his mouth shifted. 

For the first time since I arrived in Ironmaw, a real smile broke across his face. 

He leaned down slightly, bringing his face inches from mine. 

“You made me proud out there,” he said, his voice close to a whisper. 

He gave a single, slow nod. 

For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like a trade piece. I felt like a weapon. 

*** 

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