LOGINZORYAI felt Gunner before I saw him move.Not through sound or sight, but through the bond—through the way the air thickened, the way my wolf lifted her head as if something ancient had just stood up straight inside him.Kaelen was still on his knees, blood streaking his mouth, the remnants of the ritual circle smoking faintly around us. The blood moon hung overhead, swollen and cruel, casting everything in red that felt too intimate to be light. Finn’s fear had quieted, replaced by a steady, fragile equilibrium. Ares burned at my side like a drawn blade held in restraint. Kai’s presence wrapped us all together, calm but taut, as if he were holding the world together with his bare hands.And Gunner—Gunner stepped forward.He didn’t roar. He didn’t threaten. He didn’t bare his teeth.He knelt.The sight hit me harder than any violence ever could have.Gunner, who had always been the wall. The body between danger and the people he loved. The Alpha who solved problems with force becaus
ZORYAThe first thing I felt was Finn.Not his voice—his presence. A tightening in the bond that didn’t burn like Ares’s rage or brace like Gunner’s iron resolve or steady like Kai’s calm. Finn came to me as hesitation turned sharp, as fear finally named itself.The ritual chamber was collapsing in slow, violent breaths. Stone screamed. Light howled. Kaelen had retreated to the outer ring, his control slipping with every second, but he was still feeding the lattice—still trying to bend it back into his design.And Finn was shaking.Not physically. Finn never showed it that way. He shook in the place where doubt lived.I can’t anchor this, he whispered through the bond, voice fractured by the roar of power. I’m not built like them. I’m not dominant enough. I don’t command—Stop, I said, forcing the bond open wider, pulling him closer even as pain flared through my spine. Listen to me.But Finn wasn’t listening to me.He was listening to every failure he had ever cataloged in silence.I
ZORYAThe power didn’t stop when I stepped into the center.It answered.The sigils beneath my feet flared white-hot, no longer jagged but fluid, flowing like moonlight poured into stone. The air thickened, pressure bearing down on my lungs until every breath felt earned. My knees buckled, and I barely caught myself before collapsing again.Kaelen moved closer.Not rushing. Not striking.Waiting.“That’s it,” he murmured, voice velvet-soft. “Feel how much it takes to hold them all. Four Alphas. Four instincts. Four storms pulling at one heart.”I clenched my fists, nails biting into my palms. He wasn’t wrong. The bond was alive—too alive. Every emotion from my mates brushed against me at once: Ares’s barely leashed rage, Gunner’s burning fear, Kai’s relentless focus, Finn’s fragile hope stretched thin as glass.It was beautiful.And it was breaking me.“You don’t have to do this,” Kaelen continued, circling slowly. “You don’t owe them martyrdom. They are powerful enough to survive wit
ZORYAThe runes didn’t fade.They waited.I felt that truth before I saw it—before my eyes opened fully and took in the fractured circle etched into the stone beneath me, before the air stopped vibrating with Kaelen’s voice. The ritual wasn’t broken. It was paused, like a predator crouched in tall grass.I swallowed and forced myself upright. Pain rippled through me in slow waves, but the bond held firm, cushioning the worst of it. I could feel the Alphas now—not just as instinct or emotion, but as presence. They were close. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to listen.“Don’t come in yet,” I whispered into the bond.Ares bristled immediately. You’re injured.And alive, I countered. If you rush him now, he finishes what he started.Silence followed. Not resistance—consideration. That alone told me something had changed.I pressed my palm to the stone.The moment I touched the center sigil, the world unfolded.Not as visions. As structure.Lines of power bloomed beneath my hand li
ZORYAThe chamber breathed.That was the only way I could describe it—the walls expanding and contracting like lungs, the runes pulsing in uneven rhythms as if the place itself were uncertain whose will it should obey. Kaelen stood several paces away now, no longer circling, no longer confident. The ritual had slipped from elegant to volatile, and he knew it.But my attention wasn’t on him.It was on them.The bond stretched—taut, luminous, alive—and for the first time since Kaelen began tearing at it, it didn’t feel like a battlefield. It felt like a crossroads.I sank to my knees.Not because I was weak.Because I chose to be still.The restraints groaned again, reacting to the shift in my intent. The bond flared, and suddenly the distance between us collapsed—not physically, but internally. I felt them as if they were standing around me instead of scattered across the city, bloodied and furious and afraid.Ares was the first to feel it.His presence hit like heat—raw, unfiltered, a
ZORYAPain had a rhythm.That was the first thing I realized as consciousness returned in fragments—beats of agony rolling through me in time with the runes etched into the stone beneath my back. Each pulse pulled at the bond, not violently anymore, but insistently, like fingers prying at a lock they were learning how to open.Kaelen had started the ritual early.I tasted copper and moonlight. My wolf was no longer fighting. She was listening—coiled, alert, learning the shape of the cage.And through the bond, I felt them.Not together. Not united. But held—by my voice, by the choice they’d made to stop tearing each other apart long enough to hear me.That was when something changed.A new presence brushed the edges of my awareness. Sharp. Furious. Familiar in a way that made my chest ache.Vivia.I didn’t see her. I felt her like a spark ripping through the bond’s outer layer—too human to belong here, too stubborn to stay out.Her voice cut through the chaos like a blade.“Get your h







