21. The seven minutes of hell

The attack wasn’t physical. It was as if the air had turned into liquid lead, pouring into my ears and eyes.

    The Seven—the pack’s most ancient shifters—didn’t move. They simply stared. Through the Lien de Sang, I felt a sudden, violent surge of images that weren’t mine. I saw the cellar where I was first held. I heard my father’s voice, cold and mocking, telling me I was nothing but bait. I felt the sting of the silver harpoon in the North Tower.

    They were using my own memories against me, trying to find the crack in my soul where my humanity would break.

    “You are a toy,” a voice hissed in my brain. Soline? Or the pack’s collective unconscious? “A human parasite clinging to a god. He will grow tired of you. He will find a female of his own kind, and you will be discarded like a broken doll.”

    I fell to one knee, the stone of the amphitheater biting into my skin. My vision was blurring, the glowing eyes of the pack swirling into a dizzying vortex of gold. I could feel Girard’s agony through the link—he was being held back by the Enforcers, his growls of protest sounding like a distant storm. He wanted to help, but his power was the very thing they were using to drown me.

    “Give up, Arielle,” the voice urged, softer now, seductive. “Return to the world of men. Forget the blood. Forget the beast.”

    I reached for the obsidian stone. It was burning against my skin, but I didn’t pull away. I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the images. Instead, I dove into them.

    I didn’t look at the cellar as a prison; I looked at it as the place where I first felt the spark of the Devil. I didn’t look at the silver as pain; I looked at it as the price I paid to save my mate. I found the memory of Girard’s touch in the study—the way his hands had claimed me, the way his soul had recognized mine before his mind even knew my name.

    “I am not a guest in this pack,” I gasped, my voice barely a whisper, yet it silenced the voices in my head.

    I stood up. The pressure didn’t vanish, but it shifted. I wasn’t resisting it anymore; I was absorbing it. The Lien de Sang began to glow—not with Girard’s golden light, but with a brilliant, shimmering violet. My father’s serum, the Moretti labs, the ancient Roux blood—it had all combined in me to create something the elders hadn’t counted on.

    I was a hybrid of the two worlds. The bridge.

    I opened my eyes, and for the first time, I saw the Seven flinch. They weren’t looking at a human girl anymore. They were looking at a power that mirrored their Alpha’s, but with a sharp, tactical edge they couldn’t penetrate.

    “Is that all?” I asked, my voice echoing like a crack of thunder.

    I looked at Soline. The triumph was gone from her face, replaced by a raw, naked fear. She tried to bolster the mental attack, her eyes glowing a frantic blue, but I didn’t wait. I used the link to channel Girard’s raw, Primal energy and projected it outward.

    A shockwave of pure, golden-violet light erupted from the center of the circle. The Seven were thrown back, their connection to me severed with the sound of a snapping bone.

    The amphitheater went silent. Dead silent.

    I stood in the center, my hair wild, my eyes glowing with a steady, defiant light. I wasn’t heaving for air. I was standing taller than I ever had in my life.

    Girard broke free from the Enforcers, but he didn’t run to me. He walked. He stopped three feet away, his chest heaving, his amber eyes filled with a reverence that made the pack bow their heads. He didn’t need to say a word. The way he looked at me told them everything they needed to know.

    “The trial is over,” Silas whispered, his voice shaking. “The Luna has stood. The bond is sealed.”

    Girard stepped forward, his hand cupping my cheek. His touch was no longer just heat; it was home. He leaned down and kissed me—a deep, soul-shattering claim that was witnessed by every wolf in Marseille.

    “My Queen,” he growled against my lips.

    Soline turned to flee, but Bastien was already there, his claws out. But I raised my hand.

    “Let her go,” I commanded. “Let her wander the borders as a rogue. Let her tell the world that the Roux pack is no longer a cage. It’s a kingdom.”

    The pack let out a howl then—a sound that shook the very cliffs. It wasn’t a howl of war. It was a coronation.