Chapter 11
"Lie back," I breathed, forcing myself to step away from his touch, forcing my hands to steady as I reached for the slate table. "The Blood Moon has reached its zenith above the mountain chimneys. The ley lines are fully open. If we don't begin the excision now... the ambient pressure will force the knot to rupture on its own."
Merrick gave me a faint, reassuring smile. "Whatever you command, my Luna."
He lay back down on the black glass altar, closing his eyes, his breathing falling into the steady, rhythmic cadence of a wolf surrendering entirely to his mate.
I stood over him.
My trembling fingers reached out and picked up the silver scalpel.
The cold metal bit into my skin.
Beside it, the yellowed parchment from Torin’s journal lay exposed beneath the silver brazier’s light, detailing the ancient, terrifying bio-ritual I had performed with meticulous precision for three long weeks.
Every meridian strike. Every soothing infusion. Every whispered word of comfort.
It was all there. An engineered sequence. A parasite-farming rite designed by rogue shamans to harvest the greatest Alpha in the northern territories, using an orphaned carrier who thought she was an angel of mercy.
*The healer will cut the Alpha's flesh, offering her own blood to open the final meridian gate...*
*No blood,* I swore silently, my knuckles whitening around the silver hilt. *Only silver. Cut the root, flood the node with distillate, and burn the queen before she breathes.*
The parchment slipped from my frozen fingers, fluttering down to the cold obsidian floorboards with a dry rustle.
I raised the scalpel, positioning the razor-sharp tip directly above the perimeter of the dark knot on Merrick’s chest.
Just beneath the skin, feeling the proximity of my silvered aura, the black veins didn't retreat.
They began to stir.
Slowly, sickeningly, the geometric lattice swelled. The microscopic tendrils beneath his flesh writhed with an unnatural, ecstatic hunger—not in defiance, not in pain, and not in obedience to his primordial Alpha command.
They were answering to my pulse.
They were shifting in perfect, harmonious unison with the rapid, terrified beat of my own heart.
Merrick opened his eyes. He looked up at me, through the falling tears and the flickering torchlight, his amber gaze overflowing with pure, unyielding, absolute devotion.
"I trust you with my life, my mate," he whispered into the sacred dark.
Beneath my trembling blade, the black veins under his flesh suddenly reared up, pulsing with an eager, terrifying vitality that was entirely, monstrously mine.
