Chapter Four - The Blood Oath

Without warning, they change the room on me.

Not the cuffs. Not the knife. The room.

One minute I’m in Cassian’s tidy and polite little interrogation suite with the bowls and the book and his patient butcher hands. The next, a hood comes down,again, and I’m moving.

Hands on my arms guide me with the same careful pressure as before,polite, practiced, and not rough with me unless I try to be clever.

I’m not stupid though. I’ve been through situations like this a million times..well, apart from the whole blood obsession vibe that he has going on… and I know that unless I have a guaranteed escape out, physically resisting is not going to get me anywhere.

“Head down,” Cassian says at my ear, ever calm and composed and always too fucking close.

“I’m still adding all this to my billable hours,just so you know.” I mutter, because I always feel a little better with sarcasm.

We ride another silent elevator, more doors with codes, and then finally through one that opens by a key that sounds heavy when he turns it. The air changes distinctly as we walk through. It’s cooler, older and far less office-y smell, morelike…underground.

The hood comes off and the dim light assaults me.

Ah fuck. Basement, then. The real one. I might actually be royally screwed.

There was heavy stone underfoot and the walls looked like they were thick enough to smother a scream. The ceiling is low enough that tall men were going to have to remember how to bow to something. There are candles, guttering in iron cups, and silver bowls that have probably seen far too much, and a drain that says somebody, no prizes for guessing who, planned ahead for mess.

And then there’s him.

The wolf is here, collared and chained to a pillar sunk into concrete. He’s more man than monster at this second, with a ruined mouth, clean-cut jaw somewhere under all that blood, and his eyes are still as bright as the sun in the low light. The silver collar at his throat is a ring of symbols that I don’t understand but I’m astute enough to understand the malice behind its intent.

He looks at me like he wants to devour every inch of me and as I’m guided past him, I pretend I don’t feel it.

They chain me to a long steel table that’s been built with tidy little gutters that run straight into a bowl. Practical yet Horrifying.

The “altar with good housekeeping,” my brain supplies, because apparently my sense of humor doesn’t have an off switch.

Cassian rolls his sleeves up as he sets the black-bound book down and opens it to the page I hate already. Circles inside circles, and runes that I can't read. 

“Again?” I ask. “We had such a lovely time upstairs writing with my blood. You can’t even offer a snack break for round two?”

“Quiet,” one of his men says.

“Use your inside voice,” I shoot back. “Or is growling the only setting you’ve got?”

Cassian doesn’t even bother to look up.

“Salomé.”

Him saying my name does something to me that I refuse to name. I shut up though, if only to stop him from talking to me.

He takes my left hand and tilts it, assessing last time’s cut. It’s already sealed into a thin red line and he presses his thumb along the line. It opens easily like he planned it that way from the very beginning.

I don’t flinch though. I won’t give him a single sound that he’s waiting for.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, too softly and the words slide under my skin easily. My body perks without permission, like a chained dog when its master whistles. I hate that betrayal more than I hate the knife in his hand.

He slices his own palm again,precisely with no wasted motion,and he turns his hand so we mirror one another. Our blood finds each other instantly..

He doesn’t press our palms together yet. Instead, he moves to the wolf.

“You want him to heel?” I blurt before my brain can tell my mouth to shut the fuck up. “What’s next,roll over? Fetch? Good luck teaching obedience to something that eats faces for breakfast.”

“This isn’t a joke,” one of the men mutters.

“It’s order,” Cassian says, as calm as ever. “I command. He obeys.”

“Yeah, cute. Put a bow on a grenade, see how that works out.”

He stops in front of the collared man-wolf, thing… Monster. The chain is thick and the links look brutally heavy. The collar’s lines glow faintly, as if answering the sigil in the book. The wolf’s gaze tracks the blood on Cassian’s hand, then mine.

He inhales deeply and it sounds like it hurts.

“Don’t,” I hear myself say, my voice cracking slightly and I hate that I mean it.

Cassian rests a finger over a mark on the collar and the silver answers him, brightening like a lamp turned up a notch.

“You broke half a wing of glass and eight men,” he says to the wolf, almost conversational, like he’s discussing market shares. “Now you will obey.”

The wolf laughs. It’s a low sound that lifts every hair on my arms. He doesn’t look at Cassian when he laughs. He looks at me.

Cassian returns to the book and he angles our hands over the central sigil. The candles gutter as wax runs fast.

“By Gentle Light,” he says.

“By Blood Moon,” I echo, because the words pull out of me like a string hooked behind my teeth.

“Bind,” he finishes.

Blood falls and the ink comes to life.

It isn’t dramatic at first. Just a ripple, like breath under a sheet. Then the circles lift a fraction from the page, like veins swelling. The runes brighten, not a warm glow, but a cold one. The air tightens around me and suddenly every smell is amplified a thousand fold. My mouth waters in a way I don’t like.

Cassian doesn’t even bother to look at me.

“Keep your eyes on him,” he says. “Tell me if he falters.”

“I’m not your fucking lab assistant.” I hiss.

He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t need to. My eyes are already on the wolf because my body made that decision for me.

The collar stirs and the lines on it answer the book’s lines in a steady hum. The wolf’s throat works, straining against it and he lifts his chin like he’s offering it to a blade.

Cassian slides our hands together.

Then it hits.

Not a spark, not a warm glow, but pressure, like being shoved under water that is also a wall that is also a mouth. It bites down along my bones and it feels as though something takes my pulse between two cold fingers and squeezes.

My knees give way completely but the cuff at my wrist saves me from going down to the floor..

Across the room, the wolf yanks against the chain like the pain found a handle in him and used it to stoke his fury. The collar flashes white and he snarls, choking slightly as his claws scrape stone.

The sound of his struggle seems to scrape my heart, like the worst kind of grief and horror that you can imagine..

An echo. That’s what it is. It’s not sympathy and It’s not sharing.

His hurt is reflecting in my body like I’m a horrific twisted version of a mirror.

“Breathe,” Cassian says, steady, and I want to smash his perfect mouth with my fist.

“I am,” I grind out. I am, but my lungs feel like someone laced them up too tight.

He speaks the same old words in a lower tone, each syllable neat, and each one feels like a key turning in a lock:

“By the turning phases. By the ancient maw. Bend.”

The collar pulls again and the chain practically sings with the …whatever this was. The wolf drops half a knee, snarling so hard that it reverberated through me.

His eyes dart to me again, bright, feral, and,God help me, fucking hungry. The way he looks at me turns something low and traitorous inside me to face him.

“Fight it,” I whisper, before I can stop myself. “Don’t give into him,”

Cassian glances at me for the first time, his expression unreadable. Then he tilts our hands and lets another line of red feed the page.

That’s when it goes wrong.

Threads unspool from the sigil like wires searching for outlets. One stabs into the soft notch where my wrist meets my hand. Cold and then hot. It curls under my skin like a bracelet being clasped from the inside.

Another leaps and bites Cassian high on the chest where the collar of his shirt opens,exactly where he smeared the glow before,,and he goes very still, his breath hitching once.

A third shoots across the room and buries itself in the collar around the wolf’s throat like a key finding its home.

The air feels as though it pops.

Then it’s just…quiet.

My heart is as loud as the bassline in a techno club and as the candle flames thin, it feels as though the room is waiting.

“What the fuck did you just do,” I say softly.