Chapter 3
And right beneath his collarbone, hidden beneath his tunic, I knew there was a jagged, raw mark that mirrored the burning ache currently searing my own chest.
The mate bond.
It was an impossible, blasphemous thing. Wolves mated with wolves. Alphas mated with high-ranking Lunas whose bloodlines brought territory, strength, and ferocious offspring. For an Alpha’s son to be fated to a fragile, scentless human was considered a cosmic joke—or a fatal curse. We had realized it three years ago, the night of my eighteenth winter, when an accidental brush of our fingers in the courtyard had sent an electric shockwave through both our souls, cementing a bond so violently powerful that it had dropped Lucian to one knee.
We had never spoken of it aloud to the pack. If Fenris found out, he would use it to brand Lucian an abomination and slaughter me in public to break Lucian’s spirit. Lucian had voluntarily taken an exile post on the frozen western border the very next morning, putting three hundred leagues between us just to keep me breathing.
Now, he was back.
"Lucian," I breathed, my hand fluttering up before I could stop myself, my palm flattening against the hard, leather-clad plane of his chest. His heart was hammering beneath my touch—wild, frantic, and entirely out of rhythm with his outward calm. "You shouldn't be here. Oberon said—"
"I don't care what Oberon said," Lucian growled softly, leaning down until his lips were inches from my temple. He inhaled deeply, his eyes fluttering shut in a moment of pure, agonizing relief as he drank in the scent of my hair. "He called me back. The raven reached the western outpost four days ago. He told me the Frenzy was accelerating."
"He called you back?" I frowned, my pulse stuttering. "Fenris thinks you returned to contest his claim to the mantle."
"Fenris is an idiot who thinks the world begins and ends with teeth," Lucian muttered, his thumb tracing the high curve of my jawline. His touch sent liquid fire racing along my veins, so intoxicating that my head tilted into his hand before my rational mind could protest. "I didn't come back for the mantle, Rosalind. I came back for you."
The sincerity in his voice felt like a punch to the chest.
"You can't save me, Lucian," I whispered, the harsh reality of Wraithwood crashing back over me like cold river water. "When the crimson eclipse hits, this place will be an abattoir. Fenris has the pack elders in his pocket. The law is absolute. He will butcher Oberon, eat the heart, and claim the Alpha's seat. Once he sits on that throne, his first decree will be to purge the keep of everyone loyal to the old regime. Starting with me."
Lucian’s jaw hardened, the storm in his gray eyes turning dark and turbulent. His grip on my waist tightened, pulling me flush against his hard chest until I could feel the desperate, protective heat radiating from every inch of him.
"I won't let him touch you."
"You can't challenge him!" Panic flared in my chest, hot and sharp. I grabbed the lapels of his leather vest, pleading into his eyes. "Fenris has spent five years feeding on Alpha-blood elixirs and training with the berserkers. If you enter the ring with him during the Succession Rite, he will kill you, Lucian. The pack law only allows one victor, and the loser's heart is fed to the hounds!"
"Then we run," Lucian whispered, his face dipping lower, his forehead resting gently against mine. His breath was warm, mint and pine, washing over my trembling lips. "Tonight. I have three mounts stabled at the western ravine, past the scent markers. We take the mountain pass into the human realms. No packs, no mantles, no cursed bloodlines. Just you and me."
For a heartbeat, the sweetest, most agonizing temptation paralyzed me.
To leave. To wake up in a place where I didn't have to check the shadows for claws, where the rising of the moon was just a pretty light in the sky, where I could sleep in Lucian’s arms without fearing that his pack would tear our door down to execute us for heresy.
*Closed door. A soft, quiet life.* It was the dream of a girl who had spent fifteen years living on the knife's edge.
Then, the heavy bone hilt of the dagger pressed hard against my ribs.
*“When the third moon rises, don’t let anyone else into this room.”*
Oberon's voice echoed in my head, cracked with black rot, suffocating under the weight of fifteen years of cold, calculating dominance. Why had he summoned me? Why had he locked out Fenris, ignored the pack council, and placed the ceremonial steel in my hands?
If I ran, Oberon would succumb to the Frenzy entirely alone. The rabid monster within him would slaughter every servant in the high tower before Fenris hacked him to pieces. And worse... what if Lucian’s escape triggered the very bloodbath we were trying to avoid?
"I can't," I choked out, a tear finally escaping my eye and tracing a hot path down my cheek.
Lucian caught the tear with the pad of his thumb, his expression shattering into profound pain. "Why, Rosa? What hold does that tyrant have over you? He kept you as a prisoner! A trophy!"
"He is your father," I whispered. "And something is wrong, Lucian. Terribly wrong. He gave me this."
I pulled back the cuff of my sleeve just enough to reveal the bone hilt tucked against my skin.
Lucian went utterly still. The warmth drained from his face, his eyes widening as he recognized the craftsmanship.
"The Fang of the First," Lucian breathed, his voice barely an exhale. "The ritual blade of the Alpha's private quarters. He gave *you* the executioner's steel?"
"He ordered me to bar the solar doors from the inside during the eclipse," I said, searching his eyes for answers. "He told me not to let Fenris in. He told me I would not need to fight."
Lucian stared at the dagger, his mind working furiously behind those storm-gray eyes. For three years, he had operated on the borders, fighting rogue wolves and ancient forest beasts, but this—this defied every doctrine the Wraithwood had operated under for a thousand years.
"The heart," Lucian whispered, horrified realization tinting his voice. "The Succession Rite requires the living heart to be taken *in the circle*, before the elders. If the doors are barred... if Fenris cannot enter..."
"Fenris will tear the door down with battering rams," I said. "And I'll be inside with an Alpha turning rabid."
Lucian grabbed my shoulders, his fingers biting into my flesh with a desperate, possessive fury. "Then you cannot be there! Do you understand what the Frenzy does to our kind, Rosalind? He won't know you. He won't remember fifteen years of whatever strange mercy made him spare you as a child. He will see a sack of warm meat, and he will rip your throat out before Fenris even touches the outer gate!"
"I have to know why," I said, a strange, unyielding stubbornness settling into my bones. For fifteen years, I had been the passive human, the pet dragged wherever the wolves willed. But holding that cold bone dagger in my sleeve, feeling the impending collapse of the only world I had known, something within me hardened. "He chose me, Lucian. In a keep full of warriors, he gave the blade to the only person who cannot shift. There is a reason. I am going to find out what it is."
