Chapter 10 - The Hunt Begins
Days turned into weeks as Ivy struggled to control the ancient curse she'd inherited.
But nothing she tried seemed to work.
The power was too ancient, too wild, too hungry.
And then the nightmares started.
Every night, the same dream—a woman with golden eyes and silver hair, reaching out to Ivy with bloody hands.
"You've awakened me," the woman whispered. "Now I'll never be silenced."
Ivy woke screaming, her nightgown soaked with sweat.
She knew the woman in her dreams wasn't real.
But the feeling of being watched didn't go away.
"Something's wrong," she told Damian one morning. "The curse is changing me."
"You're stronger than it is," he insisted. "You have to believe that."
"Strength has nothing to do with it," Ivy replied. "The curse is alive, Damian. It's been waiting for someone to carry it. And now it has me."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication.
"She's right," a voice said from the doorway.
Selene stood there, her expression grim.
"What do you know?" Damian demanded.
"The ancient curse isn't just a spell," Selene explained. "It's a prison. The original Lycans bound their most dangerous member within it—a wolf so powerful and so insane that they couldn't kill her."
"And now she's inside Ivy," Damian concluded.
"Not inside me," Ivy corrected. "She is me. The curse fused with my soul. We're the same being now."
The weight of that truth pressed down on her like a physical force.
She'd thought she was getting revenge.
Instead, she'd become the very thing the original Lycans had tried to destroy.
"I need to find a way to control it," Ivy said. "Before she takes over completely."
"Is that even possible?" Selene asked.
"I don't know," Ivy admitted. "But I'm not going to give up without a fight."
She was the Sterling heir.
She had survived betrayal, violence, and the destruction of everything she'd loved.
May you like
She would survive this too.
Or die trying.
