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Everything broke.

CHAPTER11

The altar cracked beneath my body, a deep groan ripping through the clearing as the ritual circle ruptured outward, shattering the symbols carved into the earth.Magic flared wild and uncontrolled, surging through the ground, the trees, the stones.The acolytes staggered back, their chants breaking into panicked shouts.

The apple slipped from her trembling hand, but I caught it before it hit the ground, my fingers closing around the gnarled, pulsing fruit.

The sickly green glow of the ritual circle flickered… then ceased entirely.

The bonds connecting me to my mates roared to life.No longer a whisper.No longer distant.They flooded me, seven distinct threads weaving tighter, closer, stronger.Garrett's rage.Ronan's defiance.Kade’s relentless focus.Evander’s sorrow-turned-fury.Cassian’s wild glee.Leif’s sharp, cutting urgency.Nikolai’s cold, unwavering devotion.

They were here.They were mine.

My stepmother stumbled backward, face blanching as she watched the ritual she had crafted for two decades crumble before her eyes.

"You don't know what you're doing," she gasped, voice breaking."You're going to destroy yourself."

"Good," I said, voice low, raw, burning from someplace far deeper than my throat.

Without hesitation, I lifted the apple to my lips.I bit deep.

The taste hit instantly… fire and rot, ash and sugar.It spread through my mouth, down my throat, into my bones.The world tilted around me as magic flooded every vein, not siphoning away my power, but multiplying it.Twisting it.Strengthening it.

I heard her scream.

The bond flared first… sharp, urgent, a crack of lightning across my nerves.

From the treeline, they burst into the clearing together, seven forces of nature cutting through the smoke and wreckage.Garrett led, massive paws slamming into the ground, his bear form barreling toward the altar.Ronan was a blur of gray fur and bared teeth, low growls vibrating in his chest.Kade slipped between the broken runes like a living shadow, the sleek, black ripple of his panther form nearly invisible against the shattered darkness.

Above them, Leif shrieked, a golden hawk slicing through the smoke.Cassian’s fox form darted between fallen acolytes, sharp and precise.Evander’s stag body crashed through the outer edge of the clearing, antlers lowered like a battering ram.Nikolai slithered low and silent along the altar stones, a pale serpent glinting in the moonlight.

All of them surged toward me.Toward the altar.

Ready to fight.

Ready to bleed for me.

And then they saw what was happening.

They froze.

The bond between us spasmed, confusion and fear slamming into me all at once.

I wasn’t helpless.I wasn’t chained.

I stood upright on the cracked altar, blood streaming from my wrists, the black apple in my hands… partially eaten, pulsing with magic so dense it made the air vibrate.

I wasn’t the girl they'd raced to save.

I was something else.

Their forms shifted mid-stride, half-shifting in flashes of muscle and magic… Garrett’s paws slamming into bare earth, Ronan snarling as he staggered into human shape.Cassian dropped into a crouch, half-shifted, fox ears flickering before vanishing.

“What—” Garrett’s voice cracked across the bond, raw and bewildered.

I raised my head, meeting their eyes one by one.

And then I took another bite of the apple.