CHAPTER FOUR- MARKED BEFORE BIRTH.

I'm sorry guys, I jumped chapter four and five but here it is

Please pardon me

“They call me Mira.”

My breath caught. “You brought me here?”

“No,” she said, sorting the herbs. “He did. Found you half-buried under pine and snow. No pulse. No color left in your skin. Took foxfire and lunar moss just to keep your heart from giving up.”

“‘He’?” I pushed. “Who—”

She cut me off with a glance. “Not your question to ask. Not yet.”

Silence pressed between us.

Mira pulled up a small stool and sat down with a groan. “You’re half-blood, aren’t you?”

My body went rigid. “So what if I am?”

“Not many of your kind make it that far into the wild. Thought you'd all break like frostbitten twigs.”

I sat taller, ignoring the sting in my chest. “I didn’t break.”

“No,” she said, studying my face. “But you’re splintering.”

I clenched my jaw.

She leaned forward slightly. “Still dying, you know.”

“What?”

“You’ve got a fever. You’ve lost more blood than you realize. But that’s not the worst of it.”Her hand reached out, fingers rough with age, and tapped just above my heart.

“It’s bleeding in here too.”

I didn’t flinch. But I couldn’t look at her either.

My voice came out hollow. “That kind of wound doesn’t heal.”

“It can,” she said simply.

“I don’t want it to.”

That surprised her.

“I want to forget it happened,” I whispered. “I want it gone. Erased.”

Mira let out a dry snort. “You think forgetting makes you strong?”

I met her gaze. “Doesn’t it?”

“No,” she said. “Surviving it does.”

The fire crackled louder behind her. The silence between us grew thicker.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I didn’t ask to be saved.”

“You weren’t,” she said. “You were chosen.”

“For what?” I asked bitterly. “To suffer more?”

“To become more.”

She stood slowly, her limp more noticeable now. “Eat. Drink. Rest.”

My brows pulled together. “Why? So I can go back out and get rejected all over again?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she looked back at me, eyes like steel.

“You’ve been surviving,” she said. “But soon… you’ll need to fight.”

Then she turned and walked into the shadows of the next room, leaving her words resounding loudly behind her, louder than the fire, sharper than Kieran’s rejection.

I floated between dreams and waking, each breath too loud, each twitch of my body like glass grinding beneath skin. Sometimes I heard the fire. Other times, Mira’s voice threaded through the haze like smoke, muttering low, ancient things I couldn’t understand.

Hands pressed a cool cloth to my forehead. Spoon touched my lips. Thick and herbal, it slipped down my throat.

Once, as the shadows deepened around me, her voice pierced the blur.

“You were marked long before you were born,” she murmured near my ear. “There’s power in your blood… but it always comes with a price.”

My body refused to move, and darkness swallowed me again, just as I was about to ask what she meant

When I finally opened my eyes without the ache lancing through my bones, the cabin was quiet. Pale light shone in the room through a narrow crack in the wall, soft and blue.

Dawn.

My breath came easier. My skin no longer burned.

I shifted beneath the blanket and pushed myself up slowly, hands bracing against the floor. And whatever fire had raged inside me was gone.

Bent over a bowl across the room, Mira sat, her hands moving in slow, practiced circles as she ground herbs with a stone pestle without looking up.

“About time,” she said.

I cleared my throat. “How long?”

“Five days.” She didn’t pause her grinding. “You nearly died out there. Would’ve, if not for him.”

There it was again.

Him.

The ghost with silver hair. The figure from the snowstorm, more myth than memory.

My lips parted. “Who is he?”

“You don’t need to know his name.” She spoke like she’d anticipated the question. “Not yet. He watches. That’s what he does.”

I frowned. “Is he part of a pack?”

This time, her hands paused. Only for a breath. Then they moved again.

“He was. Long ago. Not anymore.”

I waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t. The fire crackled behind me.

I pulled the blanket closer, my fingers firmly holding it. “Why help me?”

That made her glance up. Her gaze, sharp and measuring, didn’t soften.

"Why are you asking, as if I am doing you a favour?”

“Aren’t you?” My voice was quieter than I meant.

“I didn’t drag you in from the cold,” she said, tone clipped. “I just kept you alive.”

“That’s still more than anyone else has done.”

She studied me, pestle finally still.

“I know what it is to be thrown away,” she said. “You were cast out for something you didn’t choose. That makes you dangerous.”

I flinched. “I’m not….”

“Everyone is,” she said, her voice suddenly fierce. “When they have nothing left to lose.”

Her words hung between us, heavy and undeniable.

I looked down at my hands, cracked and bruised, still trembling faintly.

And said nothing.

Because she was right.

I had nothing left.

And that made me a threat.

Even to myself.

By the end of the week, I could stand without shaking.

Mira handed me a coat one morning, faded brown, two sizes too big. “Won’t win you any courtship offers,” she muttered, “but it’ll keep your bones from snapping in the wind.”

I pulled it around me, grateful for the weight. “Thank you.”

She grunted and tossed a pair of stiff boots to the floor. “They’ll blister. Better than frostbite.”

They blistered. But they were warm.

She walked me through the woods that afternoon, cane stabbing into the dirt with each step. “Firewood there,” she pointed. “Stream that way. St

ick to the east bank unless you want to glow green and die in your sleep.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She didn’t smile. “Not joking.”

I watched. Listened. Learned.