Free To Choose

The world was strangely still in the aftermath of the fight. The ground bore the scars of their battle, claw marks etched into the stone, and the scent of blood—sharp and metallic—hung heavy in the air. Diva stood over Ronan, her chest heaving, golden eyes glowing with a flicker of her beast still pulsing beneath her skin. Her claws were out, bloodied, her body trembling not with weakness, but the force of what had just happened.

Ronan lay crumpled against the far wall, his massive frame twisted and broken. His fur was matted with blood, his breathing shallow, wheezing through broken ribs and a punctured lung. He had shifted halfway during the fight, stuck between wolf and man—no longer Alpha, no longer anything.

Diva didn’t speak. She watched him with narrowed eyes, her muscles still coiled, waiting.

Ronan coughed, dark blood spilling down the side of his mouth. His voice came out cracked and low. "You don’t even know what you’ve done."

Diva’s lips curled, her fangs still bared. "I know exactly what I’ve done. I ended your hold."

"You ended nothing," he rasped. "You just opened the door."

Before she could respond, Derek staggered to her side, still gripping his wound. The silver had done its damage, but he was a Beta of strong blood, and his healing had already begun. He leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on Ronan.

Diva turned slightly to him. “You okay?”

Derek nodded. "Still breathing."

Then it happened.

A strange hum filled the chamber, like the low vibration of thunder far beneath the earth. Ronan’s body arched once in a violent spasm, and from his chest, a pulse of deep crimson light shot out—wild and raw. The magic he’d bound them with, forged in blood and lies, exploded into the air like a scream.

Diva and Derek were hit with it squarely in the chest.

Their bodies jolted back as if slammed by an invisible force. Eyes widened, breath stolen.

Then the world shifted.

Darkness swirled around them, thick like fog. But they weren’t in the chamber anymore. They stood together in a memory not their own.

They saw Ronan—kneeling before a blood altar, carving the spell into the earth, his hands soaked in crimson. A false bond forged through a drop of Diva’s blood and a strand of Derek’s hair, bound under a moonless sky. The spell linked them, tethered their fates without consent. They felt the binding pull of it—the chains pressed against their souls, the way it had fed off their pain, their anger, their longing.

Then they saw themselves—moments over the past months, arguments, aches, dreams they thought were real. All blurred by that bond. All tainted.

Diva clutched her head as the vision blurred and faded. Derek groaned beside her, the weight of truth nearly knocking them both down.

Then they were back.

The chamber returned. The silence was louder now. Ronan’s body lay still, the light in his chest sputtering.

He looked at them with unfocused eyes, a small, mocking smile curving his bloodied lips. "It’s leaving you... isn’t it?"

Diva’s hand moved to her chest. There was something—some presence—that had always lived in the back of her spirit. Something she’d grown used to, though she never named it.

Now, it was vanishing.

The connection.

The false bond.

It was unraveling.

Derek let out a breath that shuddered through his whole body. He could feel it too—the pull between them loosening. The sensation was hard to describe, like watching the tide retreat from the shore, something vital being taken back by the sea.

"What... what’s happening?" Derek murmured, reaching out and touching Diva’s arm.

"It’s fading," she whispered. "The bond... it’s fading."

But the absence hurt.

Not like physical pain. It was deeper—like grief. Like mourning something that once connected them, even if it was forged in lies. It had intertwined them so closely that its absence now felt like a hollow echo through their bones.

Ronan choked on a laugh, blood bubbling on his lips. “You thought love made you strong? It was me. I made you strong. I made you one. Without me... what are you?”

Diva’s jaw clenched. Her claws retracted slowly. “Free.”

She stepped closer, kneeling by his broken form. The power that had once radiated from him was gone now. All that remained was a dying wolf, pathetic and defeated.

His chest rose one final time.

“You’re not ready,” he breathed.

Then, silence.

Ronan’s body stilled. His eyes lost the last of their fire. And the last of the crimson mist lifted from his skin and vanished.

The bond shattered.

Diva collapsed to her knees. Her body trembled—not from fear, but from the emotional aftershock. Derek was by her side in seconds, pulling her close.

She didn’t cry, but her breath was ragged.

“I didn’t realize...” she said quietly, “how much of me was tied to him. How much of us.”

Derek nodded, his forehead resting against hers. “It wasn’t real. But it left a scar.”

A long moment passed.

Then the chamber began to feel different. The weight that had settled over the territory since Ronan’s rise was lifting. The air shifted. The wolves outside—sensing the fall of their dark Alpha—howled into the night. A victory cry, mournful but free.

Diva stood slowly, pulling Derek with her. Her golden eyes scanned the chamber one last time.

“We need to burn the body,” she said, her voice hard now. “His kind doesn’t deserve to rot in sacred soil.”

Derek nodded. "Then we salt the earth."

They stepped away from Ronan’s corpse, and though their bond had faded, something still lingered between them. Not magic. Not false connection. But something real.

Unspoken.

Untouched.

But theirs.

And whatever came next, they would face it not as pawns in someone else’s game—but as their own.

Alpha and Beta.

Warrior and survivor.

Wolves, reborn.