A Werewolf's Unexpected Mate-Chapter 147: Seals and Shadows

[Ray’s POV]

I knew Gale wasn’t the type to waste coin on trinkets. His cynical, transactional nature was one of his few reliable traits. But hearing him confirm it—that the dull hexagon in his palm was a sealed elemental mana stone—sent a jolt through me. Those were relics, artifacts of a more magically turbulent age. They were rarer than diamond and worth more than a division’s annual payroll. The shock that tightened Ace’s jaw and widened Ann’s eyes for a fraction of a second mirrored my own.

More importantly, it confirmed a suspicion. None of us—not Ace with his witch-sharpened senses, not Ann with her assassin instincts, not me with my general awareness—had detected even a whisper of power from that stone. It was inert. Dead. Just like the spent black magic restraints we’d been collecting. The similarity was too precise to be coincidence.

As Gale’s greedy, triumphant smile faded back into his usual mask of weary annoyance, the atmosphere in the room shifted. We all leaned in, the dessert forgotten. Ace put his spoon down. Ann set her bowl aside. Ovelia stopped chewing, her eyes darting between us. We were knights awaiting a vital intelligence report.

"Listen carefully," Gale began, his voice dropping into a low, deliberate monotone. He fixed each of us with a stern look. "I don’t like repeating myself, so get it the first time."

We gave silent nods. The only sound was the faint, distant murmur of the festival from outside our locked door.

Gale ate his last bite of pudding, the sweet finale to a conversation about dark power. He set the spoon down, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned back in his chair, creating a deliberate distance.

"This sealed elemental mana stone," he said, holding it up again, "and those used black magic restraints share a key property: their power is contained. Locked away. You cannot sense the mana inside because it is sealed." He let the word hang. "This stone was sealed by a fairy or an elf, using techniques of containment and preservation. Those black magic restraints, however... they are sealed using dark mana stone as a fundamental component of their construction. The witch who makes them isn’t just casting a spell on normal materials. She’s weaving its dark mana into the very fabric of the restraint." He sighed. "The darkness isn’t an addition—it’s the foundation. That’s why they feel like nothing. The dark mana stone shell absorbs any outward signature, rendering them perfectly inert to detection once their mana storage is full."

"Dark mana stone?" I interjected, my voice tight. "Are you certain?" This escalated the threat from a criminal enterprise to a potential catastrophe. "All kingdoms have strict accords. Dark mana stone deposits are guarded; their mining and use are forbidden. Only a handful of the Crown’s own Arcanists and High Questioners of the Sacred Order are even permitted to study samples, and only under the heaviest guard."

"If that’s the official story," Gale said with a dismissive flick of his wrist, "then you have a traitor among those authorized personnel. Or the location of a deposit has been leaked. Or," he added, his gray eyes glinting, "a sufficiently powerful and reckless witch has used a combination of spells and potions to compromise one of your ’authorized’ people and steal a sample. The dark mana within that stone is addictive. It whispers. It finds cracks in resolve."

"Another question answered," Ace muttered, running a hand through his silver hair in a rare gesture of frustration. He picked up his spoon but only pushed the remaining pudding around his plate. "But it just creates three new, worse ones." The strategic nightmare was expanding.

"I agree," I said, the weight of it settling on my shoulders. "What if the choices Gale listed aren’t alternatives? What if all three have happened? A traitor, a leak, and a subverted expert." The scale of the conspiracy was beginning to feel bottomless.

I forced my mind back to a more immediate, tactical problem. "Regardless of the source, we have a physical obstacle. We werewolves clearly do not possess the specific strength needed to break these magical restraints." I turned to him. "Can you dismantle one? Disassemble it without triggering it, so we can study its construction?"

Gale gave a short, sharp shake of his head. "The amount of innate mana a werewolf possesses is minimal. Of course you can’t break them. As for me..." He sighed. "I am an elemental fairy. My affinity is for the raw forces of nature—wind, fire, water, earth. I am not a light fairy, like our Queen. Light magic is for purification, for delicate unbinding. I could certainly break a restraint." He made a crushing motion with his fist. "But it would be like smashing a vial of poison. The dark mana inside, along with all the stolen mana it has absorbed, would spill out violently." His gaze shifted, landing squarely on Ann. "Dark mana corrupts. It feeds on and amplifies negative emotions, especially hatred and despair. Uncontrolled exposure is dangerous. It can twist a person from the inside."

Then he looked back at me, his expression grim. "But if one could learn to control that dark mana, to channel it... it could grant significant power. It could fuel dark magic spells. However, the cost is absolute. It eats at the soul, little by little. It is a bargain with a parasite. A slow, insidious curse."

A cold suspicion prickled at the back of my neck. Why did he look at Ann like that? As if she might already understand the seductive, corrosive danger he described?

"So, only a witch can safely dismantle them?" Ann asked, her voice carefully neutral, as she ate the last bite of her pudding.

"A skilled witch could," Gale confirmed. "They are the makers, after all. Or an elf who has lived for centuries and accumulated profound knowledge of mana in all its forms. Their understanding is... comprehensive."

"But the last confirmed sighting of elves was at the end of the Great Species Wars," I said, the history lessons from my tutors surfacing. "The war between Werewolves and Humans, and the later, more brutal conflict of Werewolves against the Witches and Elves. They vanished afterward." I glanced at Ace, the implication clear.

"So, my mother is our only viable asset," Ace stated flatly. The words sounded heavy, reluctant. His relationship with his witch mother was complex, stained by the prejudice it had brought him. Relying on her was a bitter pill.

I gave a single, firm nod. It was the logical conclusion, however personally difficult for him. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Beside me, I glanced at Ann. She was staring at the table’s surface, her face a perfect, unreadable mask, but I could see the subtle tension in her jaw. She was processing, analyzing, filing every piece of information away with the efficiency of the assassin she used to be.

My gaze softened as it found Ovelia. The spoon was still in her mouth, her cheeks slightly puffed as she stared down at her half-eaten pudding without seeing it. Her brow was furrowed in intense, almost comical concentration, her red eyes holding the distant look of someone trying desperately to process a flood of complex and dangerous information. The sight was, as so often, a piercing reminder of the ordinary world we were dragging her through.

Finally, I looked back at Gale and Ace. They were both waiting, watching me, expecting me to steer the conversation forward. The first bombshell about the restraints’ nature had been dropped. It was time to deliver the second.

I took a steadying breath, the savory-sweet air of the room feeling suddenly thin.

"Now," I said, drawing in a steadying breath and squaring my shoulders. My voice took on the definitive tone of a general moving to the next point on the agenda. "Let’s proceed to the next piece of intelligence I extracted from the black market contact." I met their eyes, each in turn.