Chapter 3

Sable's POV

The chanting got louder, and the torches burned brighter with every word, until the light around the platform turned almost white.

I didn't know the old tongue. Nobody outside the Elders did anymore. But I understood the shape of it, the rhythm, the way it built toward something final.

"What's happening?" I asked, and this time my voice actually shook.

Alaric didn't answer me. He was looking past me now, at the Elder chanting behind him, like he needed to focus on anything except my face.

The burn started in my collarbone, right where the bond had first hit me, a sharp line of heat that spread fast enough to steal my breath. I grabbed at my chest without meaning to. My knees buckled, and I would've hit the ground if Corwin hadn't caught my arm.

"Easy," he muttered, but his jaw was tight, like the word cost him something to say.

"Make it stop," I gasped.

"It's almost done."

The crowd had gone dead silent except for the chanting and my own ragged breathing. Then, all at once, the heat spiked, white-hot, and I heard myself cry out before I could stop it.

The Elder's voice cut off.

The torches dropped back to normal light like someone had snuffed half the flame out of them.

I looked down. A mark sat just above my collarbone, two thin lines crossing like a brand, red and raw against my skin. It didn't look like a scar from a fight. It looked designed.

"What did you do to me?" I asked, staring at Alaric.

"I unbound you," he said. His voice had gone flat, almost bored, like he was reading off a report instead of talking to a person. "The mate bond doesn't exist between us anymore. It never will again."

Somewhere in the crowd, someone laughed. Not loud, just enough to carry.

"That's not a real rejection," a voice near the front said. "That's the Word. He used the words on her."

"Why would he waste that on an omega?" someone else muttered back.

I didn't understand what they meant, not fully, but I understood the way they were looking at me. Like I have been marked as something worse than rejected. Marked as something dangerous enough to need erasing.

"Alaric," Corwin said quietly, still holding my arm. "That's not usually how…"

"I know how it's usually done," Alaric said, cutting him off. He still hadn't looked at me again. "This is how it's done tonight."

He turned and walked back up the platform steps without another word, and the Elder beside him raised a hand to signal the Ceremony would continue. Just like that. Like nothing had happened. Like I wasn't standing there with a brand burning into my skin and half the pack staring at me.

Corwin let go of my arm slowly. "You should get home," he said, not unkindly.

I didn't move. I couldn't. My legs still felt like they belonged to someone else.

That's when Reva shoved through the crowd toward me, and I braced for whatever was coming before she even opened her mouth.

"Get out of my sight," she hissed,her voice so low that only the people closest to us could hear it. Her eyes dropped to the mark on my chest, and something in her face twisted, somewhere between fear and disgust. "Do you understand what you've done? The words haven't been used in this pack in thirty years."

"I didn't do anything," I said. "He did."

"You stood there and let it happen."

"What was I supposed to do, Reva? Fight the Alpha?"

Her hand came up like she wanted to slap me again, right there in front of everyone, and for the first time in ten years, I didn't flinch away from it. I just stood there and waited to see if she would actually do it.

She didn't. She lowered her hand, glanced around at the crowd still watching us, and pulled her composure back together in one visible effort.

"You're not coming back to my house," she said. "Not tonight, not ever. I have a daughter to protect, and I won't have her living under the same roof as whatever that mark makes you."

"Reva.."

"Go," she said. "Before I make Corwin drag you out himself."

I looked at Corwin. He didn't say anything, but he didn't argue with her either. He just looked at the ground, and that told me everything I needed to know about where I stood tonight.

So I went.

I didn't run at first. I walked, fast, away from the platform and the torches and every single pair of eyes still tracking me through the crowd. Petra's voice cut through the noise behind me, saying something to one of her friends that made them both laugh, but I didn't turn around to catch the words.

By the time I hit the tree line at the edge of pack grounds, I was running.

The mark on my chest still burned, a low, steady ache now instead of the white-hot flash from before. My lungs hurt from the cold air. My eyes wouldn't stop stinging, and I told myself it was the wind.

I didn't have a plan. I just knew I couldn't be anywhere near that Ceremony anymore, couldn't stand in that crowd for one more second while people whispered about what I might be now. So I ran until the noise from the pack grounds faded behind me, until the only sound left was my own feet hitting the dirt and my own breath tearing in and out.

Then I heard something else.

A branch snapped off to my left, too heavy to be a rabbit or a bird settling for the night.

I stopped.

The forest had gone quiet in that way it does right before something moves. I turned in a slow circle, scanning the dark tree line, trying to see past the shapes the moonlight carved out of the branches.

Another snap, this one was closer.

"Hello?" I said, and hated how small my voice sounded out here with nobody around to hear it but whatever was in the trees with me.

Nothing answered. But just past the edge of what I could see, low and steady, I heard something breathing.