Page 4

FOUR

KAEL

T he burning didn’t stop.

It crawled under Kael’s skin like wildfire—raw, electric, wrong. He’d felt pain before. Bone breaks. Blade wounds. The kind of agony that tore flesh and pride in equal measure. But this?

This was something else entirely.

He shoved through the knot of stunned courtiers, ignoring the whispers and the gaping stares as if they were ghosts. His boots hit stone like hammer falls. He barely registered the scent of old incense, or the clang of ceremonial bells still echoing from the priest’s tower.

The Bond had taken hold.

The Mark had chosen.

And it had chosen her .

Kael clenched his fists as he stormed into the empty corridor behind the ritual grounds. His breath came hard, shoulders twitching with the need to shift , to run, to tear something apart with his own hands.

The image of her hit him like a punch to the gut—pale skin gone luminous under the moons, blood streaming down her hand, hair a black waterfall over her shoulders as her eyes found his in the middle of all that light.

And the mark, glowing like fire carved into her chest. He’d felt it brand into his skin too, like the stone had reached into his soul and slammed the door shut behind it.

He could feel her now. Not just the scent of her, not just her heartbeat when she was close.

Inside. A thread pulled taut between them.

Every breath she took tugged at something deep and primal in him.

Every emotion flickered like heat under his ribs—confusion, fear, fury, even that sharp spike of defiance she wore like armor.

Kael slammed his fist into the stone wall, skin splitting open on impact. The pain helped. A little.

Footsteps echoed behind him. Not hurried. Not afraid.

Only one person in the damn Dominion walked like that.

Ruarc.

“Don’t speak,” Kael snarled, turning before his father could open his mouth. “Not yet. Just—don’t.”

But of course, Ruarc Fenrir never obeyed anyone’s command but his own.

“You should be grateful, boy.”

Kael turned fully, blood dripping from his knuckles. “Grateful?”

“She’s the one,” Ruarc said, voice level, eyes glowing faintly gold in the torchlight. “The Bond is sealed. The prophecy fulfilled.”

Kael let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “Prophecy. You’ve based my entire life around some rotted, bone-carved bedtime story from the age of monsters.”

Ruarc’s eyes narrowed, the calm in his face like a still pond hiding jaws beneath.

“That ‘story’ has kept our people alive. And it chose her. You felt it. You know it.”

“I didn’t ask for this!” Kael snapped. “I didn’t choose her. I didn’t choose any of this!”

“No,” his father said coldly. “But destiny did. And it’s about damn time you stopped pretending you can outrun it.”

Kael’s hands dropped to his sides, shoulders rising and falling with each breath. There was a tightness behind his ribs that wouldn’t ease. A howling in his skull that wouldn’t stop. His wolf—the part of him buried beneath control, beneath politics and titles—was pacing. Agitated. Aroused. Drawn .

“I won’t claim her,” Kael said, voice low. “I won’t play your puppet.”

“You will honor the Mark,” Ruarc said, stepping forward. “Because the other Houses saw it. The Court saw it. And if you defy it now, you don’t just shame yourself—you fracture everything we’ve built. They’ll see it as weakness.”

Kael’s laugh was bitter. “They already think I’m weak.”

“Then prove them wrong.”

Ruarc’s gaze was iron. “Seal the Bond. Make her yours. And show them what Fenrir blood is still worth.”

Kael didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Because the truth he didn’t want to admit—the truth he’d buried deep for years—was that part of him had already started to want.

Not just her body, though gods knew that was there. Not just the flash of her temper or the way she stood straight in the middle of their snarling court like she had teeth of her own.

No. It was something worse.

It was the part of him that recognized the way her eyes flickered with hurt when no one was looking. The way she had stood in front of that ancient stone with her chin high, blood dripping and shoulders squared, like she was already used to being sacrificed.

He understood that kind of armor. He wore it too.

“They’re escorting her to the guest wing,” Ruarc said after a moment, tone shifting. “Let her rest. Tomorrow, you’ll begin the public bonding rites. We’ll hold the first audience at moonrise.”

Kael barely heard him.

Because in that moment, the thread inside him pulled.

A sharp pang of panic. Somewhere not far off. Her panic.

Kael didn’t think.

He moved.

She was outside the guest chamber door, leaning hard against the wall, her breathing shallow, eyes closed. A servant girl hovered nearby, uncertain whether to help or flee.

Kael stepped into the hall without announcing himself. His shadow stretched over the stone, and her eyes flew open.

For a split second, everything in her face—confusion, exhaustion, even pain—gave way to something else when she saw him.

Relief.

Quickly masked. Gone before he could fully register it.

“You,” she said, straightening, voice tight. “What the hell was that?”

Kael didn’t answer. Not yet.

He stared at her, taking in the faint shimmer of sweat on her brow, the ragged line of the cut on her palm, the glow of the Mark beneath the silk of her tunic.

He felt her.

He didn’t know how the hell he was supposed to survive this.

“You should rest,” he said instead.

Selene arched a brow. “And you should go throw yourself off a cliff, but here we are.”

A laugh almost escaped him. Gods help him.

“I didn’t ask for this either,” she said, softer now. “But I’m not going to break just because your damn moonstone thinks we’re soulmates.”

Kael stepped closer.

She didn’t back away.

“Good,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “Because I don’t need a soulmate.”

Selene’s eyes flicked down to the Mark, then back up again. “Then what do we do?”

Kael stared at her. The ache behind his ribs sharpened, but he gritted his teeth against it. He didn’t have an answer to that, for now.