Housebound with the Blackridge Heirs novel Chapter 123

Chapter 123

Maya

The silence was a physical weight, pressing against my eardrums until they throbbed. I had spent my entire life feeling a hollow space where a family should have been, but this was different. This was a silence that lived inside my marrow.

I was naked, chained to a headboard of cold, rune–etched iron, and for the first time since my awakening, I was alone in my own head.

“Aelara?” I whispered.

Nothing. Not a growl, not a flicker of heat, not even the familiar, predatory hum that usually sat at the base of my spine. The wolf that had ripped through the grove to save me, the wolf that had claimed three Alphas as her own, was gone.

Rohan remained crouched by the bed, his expression maddeningly patient. He watched me struggle against the cuffs, watched the way I pulled until the metal bit into the soft skin of my wrists, drawing thin lines of red.

“She can’t hear you, Maya,” he said softly. “This room… it’s a dead zone. A frequency tuned specifically to the Eclipse wolf. You’re fighting a shadow that’s been cast out by the light.”

“Let me go,” I spat, my voice cracking. “When Tylon finds you and when Caden and Leo get their hands on you–there won’t be enough of you left to bury. You think a few runes can stop them? You think they won’t feel me?”

Rohan didn’t flinch. If anything, a flicker of pity crossed his face, which was far worse than his arrogance. “They are searching south. They are following a trail of breadcrumbs I laid weeks ago. But more importantly, they can’t feel you because the parasitic link of your wolf has been severed. For now.”

“Parasitic?” I hissed. “She’s my wolf. She’s part of me.”

“Is she?” Rohan stood up, pacing the small, stone–walled room. “Or is she a stowaway? Aelara isn’t the ‘good‘ half of your soul, Maya. She is an ancient entity that has used your bloodline as a host centuries ago. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t even see you. You are just a vessel, a battery she uses to hoard power.”

I shook my head, my hair tangling around my face. “You’re lying. She saved me. She’s the reason I’m strong.”

“She’s the reason you’re in danger,” a new voice vibrated through my mind, but it seemed Rohan could somehow hear.

It wasn’t the guttural, wild snarl of Aelara. It was the voice from the end of the heat–the silk over the blade. It was calm, weary, and resonated with a power that felt older than the stones of Blackridge University.

Astrid.

“You’re finally speaking,” I thought, my breath hitching.

“I couldn’t speak, little one,” Astrid’s voice drifted through my consciousness, warmer now, like a hearth fire in a winter storm. “Aelara is a storm that drowns out all other whispers. I am your ancestor–the original host of the Eclipse. I had to wait until you were fully mated. I needed the combined energy of the three Alpha bonds to act as a shield, to give me the strength to withstand her power and finally speak without her crushing my voice.”

I froze. “The three bonds… they were for you?”

“No,” Rohan interrupted, as if he could sense the internal conversation. He stepped closer to the bed, his eyes dark and intense. “The bonds were Aelara’s greed. My ancestor was Astrid’s true mate. The only mate of the Eclipse. But Aelara didn‘ t want a soulmate; she wanted an army. She didn’t want the quiet devotion of one man; she wanted the raw power of three. So she broke the natural order. She bound herself to three Alphas, tearing Astrid away from her true mate to fuel her own divinity.”

I stared at him, my mind spinning. The history books–the few scraps I’d found–talked about the Eclipse Wolf as a goddess, a bringer of balance.

It spoke about Astrid being bad.

“When Astrid realized what Aelara was doing,” Rohan continued, his voice growing tight with a centuries–old grief, “when she saw how Aelara was using her power to force mate bonds that shouldn’t exist, she tried to stop it. She crafted a curse to bind the wolf, to trap Aelara within a sigil and free the bloodline. But the cost was blood. When the wolf was suppressed, the three forced bonds snapped. The Alphas died instantly. Their hearts couldn’t handle the sudden void.”

I felt a cold shiver race down my spine. Tylon. Caden. Leo. If the bond snapped… they would die? “Aelara didn’t go quietly,” Rohan said, reaching out but stopping before he touched my skin. “Before she was fully bound to the sigil–the same one that released her into you–she ensured Astrid would not be blameless. She used her Eclipse ability to weave a lie into the very fabric of history. She convinced everyone that Astrid was the traitor. That Astrid killed her mates. She ensured that Astrid could never rise again without her. She tied their souls together so tightly that you wouldn’t

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Chapter 123

even feel like a whole person unless you were mated to three men, because Aelara designed the lock and the key”

“I don’t believe you,” I whispered, though a sickening memory surfaced of Aelara’s ravenous hunger during the heat, the way she had seemed to drink the energy from the guys until they were staggering. “She cares about them. I feel it.”

“That isn’t love, Maya. That’s a leash,” Astrid whispered in my mind. “She has colored your vision. She made me the villain so you would fear the only person trying to save you.”

I looked at Rohan, my chest heaving against the cold air. “If this room is a dead zone for her… if she’s trapped… then why am I still in chains? Why am I naked? Why the humiliation?”

Rohan sighed, and for the first time, he looked genuinely uncomfortable. He walked over to a small stone table where a bowl of dark, shimmering liquid sat beside a silver dagger.

“The room only muzzles her,” Rohan explained. “It doesn’t remove her. To truly free you–to let Astrid take her rightful place as your wolf and end the cycle of parasitic bonds–we have to perform a separation. It is the only way to get you away from the heirs‘ influence without them simply dragging you back into the cage Aelara built for you.”

“A separation?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

“You have to be stripped of everything, Maya,” Rohan said, his eyes scanning the runes on the floor that I hadn’t noticed until now. “Your clothes hold the scent of the heirs. Your jewelry holds the vibrations of their packs. Even the oils on your skin are tainted by their claims. To excise a soul–parasite like Aelara, you must be a blank slate. You must be unbound from every physical and emotional anchor of this world so the spell can find the line where you end and she begins.”

He picked up the bowl, the liquid inside swirling with a bioluminescent light. He began to pour it in a perfect circle around the bed, the scent of ozone and ancient earth filling the cramped space.

“Wait,” I gasped, yanking at the cuffs again. My mind was a battlefield. Astrid’s calm certainty versus the memory of Caden‘ s laughter and Leo’s steady hand and Tylon’s protective shadow. “If you do this… if you separate us… what happens to her? What happens to me?”

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