The Bond

**POV: Aria**

His hand was still around her wrist.

Aria stared down at his fingers wrapped around her skin and felt the bond surge between them like electricity finding its path. It was not painful. That was the thing nobody ever warned you about. They always described the mate bond like something gentle, something warm and golden and full of light. Nobody ever told you it would feel like being struck by lightning and surviving it. Nobody told you it would feel like your entire body had been waiting for something it did not know it was missing.

She looked up at him.

Caden was already looking at her.

This close she could see things she had never noticed from a distance. The sharp line of his jaw. The way his silver hair fell slightly across his forehead. The grey of his eyes was not flat like she had always thought. Up close it had depth, layers, like storm clouds with something moving underneath them.

He was looking at her like he was trying to solve a problem.

She pulled her wrist gently from his grip.

He let her go but something flickered across his face when she did. Gone before she could name it.

"We need to move," Mara said tightly beside her. "People are staring and I mean everyone, Aria. Every single person on these grounds is looking at you right now."

She was not wrong.

Aria became aware of the crowd again all at once, like surfacing from underwater. Hundreds of pack members standing in the moonlight, turned toward her with expressions ranging from shock to outrage to open curiosity. She felt every gaze like a weight pressing down on her shoulders and her instinct, that old familiar instinct, told her to shrink, to disappear, to make herself small enough that they would all stop looking.

She straightened her spine instead.

She did not know where that came from. Some part of her that was tired, maybe. Some part that had been waiting a long time to stop apologizing for existing.

Elder Moss approached them, his white robes catching the night breeze, his lined face carrying an expression of complete calm as though the Moon Goddess revealed omega mates to future alphas every other Thursday. "The bond has been confirmed," he said, looking between Aria and Caden. "The goddess does not make mistakes. What has been drawn cannot be undone."

"I am aware of how the bond works," Caden said. His voice was low and even and gave nothing away.

Elder Moss nodded slowly and turned his gentle eyes to Aria. "Child, are you well?"

No. She was absolutely not well. She was standing in front of her entire pack while the bond between her and the most powerful boy she had ever avoided pulled at her chest like a hook. She was aware of Selene somewhere behind her, watching, that cold smile still sitting on her beautiful face. She was aware of Alpha Ryker cutting through the crowd toward them with Luna Sera a step behind him, his face unreadable and enormous with authority.

"I am fine," Aria said quietly.

Elder Moss looked at her like he knew exactly how untrue that was and was kind enough not to say so.

Alpha Ryker reached them and the crowd around them instinctively stepped back, giving the Alpha space the way they always did, the way bodies moved around power without being asked. He was taller than Caden, broader, with the kind of presence that made the air feel heavier. He looked at Aria and she resisted every urge to look at the ground.

She met his eyes.

Something shifted in his expression. Barely. Almost nothing. But it was there.

"Voss," he said. "Dorian Voss is your father."

"Yes, Alpha," she said.

He studied her for a long moment. Then he looked at his son. Whatever passed between them in that look was a language Aria did not speak. Caden's jaw tightened slightly and he looked away first.

Luna Sera stepped around her husband and did something nobody else had done tonight. She smiled at Aria. Genuinely. Warmly. Like a woman who had been waiting to meet someone and was quietly pleased that the moment had finally arrived.

"Welcome, Aria," she said softly.

Aria felt something crack open in her chest that had nothing to do with the bond.

She had not been welcomed anywhere in so long that she had forgotten what the word felt like landing on her skin.

The rest of the ceremony passed in fragments she could barely hold onto. Other bonds were revealed. Other wolves found their mates. The pack moved around her in a blur of noise and light and Aria stood at the edge of it all feeling like she had stepped into someone else's story by accident.

Mara did not leave her side for a single second.

"You are going to be okay," Mara whispered to her at some point, their shoulders pressed together. "You hear me? You are going to be more than okay."

Aria nodded because Mara needed her to.

When the ceremony ended and the crowd began to drift apart she finally let herself look for Caden again. She found him standing with Zane near the tree line, their heads bent together in conversation. As if he felt her gaze he looked up and across the distance, their eyes connected again.

The bond pulled.

She looked away first this time too.

She was walking toward the edge of the grounds with Mara when the voice stopped her. Not Selene this time. Someone she did not recognize. A pack warrior she had seen around the territory, broad and unfriendly, arms crossed over his chest.

"This is a mistake," he said flatly, looking at Aria like she was something that had gone wrong. "The goddess made an error. An omega cannot be Luna of this pack."

"That is enough." The voice came from directly behind Aria, low and sharp and carrying the kind of authority that did not need to raise itself to be heard.

She turned.

Caden stood two feet behind her, grey eyes fixed on the warrior with an expression that made the man take one visible step back.

"Walk away," Caden said. Just that. Nothing more.

The warrior walked away.

Caden looked down at Aria and for one single moment, something moved across his face that she could not name. Then it was gone, locked behind the wall he carried everywhere.

He turned and walked back toward his father without another word.

Mara let out a breath beside her. "Okay," she said quietly. "Maybe you are going to be more than okay."

But when Aria looked across the grounds she found Selene watching her from the shadows, arms folded, eyes burning with something that made the warm feeling in Aria's chest go cold.

This was not over.

It had not even started yet.