She escaped the mate who broke her—only to bind herself to the monster sent to end her. Scarred by betrayal and branded by blood, Lira survives the Pit with nothing but fury in her lungs and a tether to a man she should hate. Kael is cold, brutal, and bound by secrets—but in the dark, their monsters recognize each other. And when the bond pulls tighter, it’s not just survival on the line. It’s surrender.
Lihat lebih banyakLira (POV)
I can feel the silver in my blood now. Not just burning—but grinding, like microscopic shrapnel chewing through my veins, slicing every time my heart dares to beat. It hisses against my bones and ignites my nerves like a fire, threading itself through my muscles like barbed wire soaked in acid.
It’s in everything. The chains digging into my wrists, fused with iron and blessed by cowardly priests. The collar locked tight around my throat, humming with old magic. And the carved symbols—cut into the skin just below my ribs—that pulse and weep with every breath I take. The skin there is flayed, blackened around the edges with dried wolfsbane, etched into me like a sigil of ownership. Like I’m livestock branded for slaughter.
I’m suspended like meat left to rot—arms stretched above me, feet barely brushing the blood-slick floor of this makeshift stone coffin that they call a dungeon. The air is wet with old screams, thick with rust and rot and piss. The stone walls bleed condensation, the way meat sweats just before it turns. I breathe in, and it tastes like mildew and iron. I breathe out, and something inside me frays further.
Sometimes, I think I hear my mother’s voice whispering from the cracks in the stone. She just breathes, long and slow, like she’s waiting for me to finally give in. Like she’s tired of fighting for me when I won’t do it myself.
During the last cleansing, they carved deeper than usual. The blade wasn’t sharp, and it tore more than it cut. There was chanting this time—low, droning, and wrong. A priest with silver eyes traced each symbol in my blood and smiled as I screamed.
My wolf stirs weakly like a dying flame under wet ash. She doesn’t snarl anymore but whimpers. I think she’s ashamed I let this happen; I would be, too.
My mother once told me, “Pain can be endured, Lira. But silence will hollow you out.” She used to say it after training when I’d stumble home with split lips and cracked ribs, but was too proud to cry. Now, those words echo louder than any scream.
I’ve come to realize it’s how they mute you, and every time my mind begins to claw its way back, when I start to be able to fight back, they jam another syringe full of thick, vicious wolfsbane into my neck. Wolfsbane: thick and cold like syrup mixed with broken glass. It moves through me like ice venom, seizing my lungs, curling my spine inward like I might snap in half. It paralyzes the wolf inside and binds her in silence.
I can’t shift either; the wolfsbane keeps me in this human shape, caging my wolf beneath my skin, and the longer I’m trapped, the more I wonder if the beast will ever come back or if this agony is all I’ll ever be again.
I used to run under the blood moon, all fang and fury, with fur slick from battle. My paws could crush bones. Now, I’m reduced to a whimper, a shell. I used to be a queen of claws. Now I’m a girl chained to rot.
Now, I can barely breathe, and that’s what they want. Not death. Just silence.
The guards call this place the Pit as if the name alone weren’t enough to make one’s skin crawl. It’s a stone womb six levels beneath the Alpha Hall. The walls are slick with centuries of blood—some of it fresh, but most of it congealed into a dark crust that flakes when you scream loud enough. Moss creeps over everything, not the soft green kind but the black, damp kind, reeking of decay, rot, and wet teeth.
Kael (POV)The fire had sunk to its smallest shape, nothing left but a faint glow beneath ash. I leaned forward, nudging one of the coals back into place with a stick, more for something to do with my hands than for warmth.Across from me, Lira had slipped into sleep again. Her face was still drawn tight, a shadow of the snarl she’d carried out of the dream. Even in rest, she looked ready to fight. Her hand stayed curled over her stomach, as if she were guarding more than herself. For a moment, it looked the same as another night long ago, another body I hadn’t been able to keep safe.My gaze dropped to my wrist. The scar there caught in the flicker, pale and thin but unrelenting. Old as it was, it hadn’t faded. Some marks didn’t.My fingers dragged over it, rough against skin that had never softened again. It didn’t feel like me anymore. It felt like her, still marked there, refusing to fade.The fire cracked once, sharp enough to echo. For a moment, I thought I heard her laugh again
Kael (POV)The river ran colder than it looked. White water slipped fast over black stone, biting at my ankles when I stepped close enough to drink.She was already there.Lira waded knee-deep, her shirt clinging in patches where the water had soaked through. She didn’t speak. Didn’t notice me at first. Her palms moved over her stomach, slow, deliberate. At first, I thought it was only the chill, the way people brace against cold. But then her hands stayed. Pressed.And something in her face changed.Her jaw tightened; not in pain, but in knowing. Her body had answered her.I froze on the bank. The air hit the back of my throat like stone dust. My fingers wrapped around the hilt of my blade
Lira (POV)The trees changed when we crossed deeper.Their trunks thickened, bark dark and furrowed, rising higher than the reach of light. Branches leaned inward until the sky narrowed to a gray slit. Moss climbed in sheets, swallowing stone and root alike. The air felt damp and close, not heavy with threat, but with something that remembered before we did.Each step sank quieter into the earth. Roots coiled across the path like ribs. The silence was not empty; it was listening.Kael walked half a pace behind me. His presence filled the space the way it always did; steady, bone-sure, unbending. But here even that seemed small. The Wilds pressed around us, old and unhurried, as if they had been waiting for centuries for someone to walk through again.A stone jutted from the slope ahead, taller than my hip, its surface swallowed in lichen. At first, it looked like any boulder broken loose from the ridge. Then I saw the marks. Faint, almost worn smooth, but carved too cleanly to be mist
Kael (POV)She didn’t pull away when I touched her wrist. But she didn’t lean in either. Her stillness held something I recognized. Not hesitance exactly. Not fear. Just the careful kind of waiting people do when they’re trying not to break what barely holds. The silence between us stretched, not tense, but fragile in the way of something newly formed. I let go first. Not because I wanted the distance, but because she needed to know she could have it. That she could choose. It wasn’t the tether, or duty, or the weight of shared survival that brought us here. It was just us. That had to be enough. She didn’t move, not right away. Her hands rested in her lap, one still faintly curved toward her middle. Her eyes tracked mine like she was still deciding if this was something that could last, or just another moment waiting to be taken. But she didn’t look away. “I never wanted the bond,” I said. My voice came quieter than I expected, more steady than soft. It didn’t shake. It didn’t ple
Kael (POV)She walked past me, quiet and measured, her hand hovering low over her stomach like it had started meaning something without her permission. She didn’t look at me when she passed, and I didn’t follow her with my eyes. I followed her presence instead. That quiet weight she carried now, steadier than when we’d escaped the Pit. No spiral glint. No unnatural heat. Just the shift of something real inside her. And it wasn't mine. Not yet. But I still felt it.I stayed seated on the root, elbows on my knees, watching the coals blink against the moss like slow breath. The ruin we’d taken shelter in was half-swallowed by the earth; moss-laced stones crumbling into themselves, ceiling low enough that even I ducked to enter. It wasn’t a place meant to hold fire, but the warmth had stayed longer than I expected. Long enough to make the silence feel like comfort, not absence.Across the fire, she knelt to sort through her pack. Her movements were slow, but not weary. Careful. She wasn’t
Lira (POV)I hadn’t named it yet. The thought. The shape of what might be growing. But my body had already started acting like it knew. And I hadn’t told it no.We kept walking.The trail curved beneath us in quiet loops, lined with bark-heavy trees that creaked in the wind. Every so often, a branch brushed my shoulder like it was reaching. The ground sloped up gently ahead, the moss thinning where rock took over. I felt it in my thighs. That same pull low across the hips. Not pain. Just presence.Kael didn’t speak. He let the silence stretch between us like something earned.The spiral hadn’t stirred in days. I still felt it, sometimes, a phantom echo beneath the scar. But now even that had faded. Like the fire that once moved through me had found another place to live.I paused where the trail narrowed against a shelf of stone. Lichen traced curling lines across the surface, pale green and soft with age. At first, it looked like nothing. Just erosion. Weather marks.But when I stepp
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