5: I refuse your rejection

Cryssara's POV

"On what grounds?" I questioned.

Quill's jaw tightens as he looks straight at me. "Dorian refused your rejection. By old pack custom, the Alpha can claim a mate's share, and that applies to you." His voice drops to something darker. "And the elders aren't helping him out of loyalty. They want the money. They always want the money."

I don't need him to say it twice. The trap is already closing, precise like iron settling around my wrists, tightening with every second I waste standing still. "If I reach the Hold first and hold it, the claim has no power."

That is what I think, even though I don't know if that will work.

But Quill nods indicating that he thinks the same too. Lyanna already has her bag slung over her shoulder, her face set with the kind of determination that used to terrify me when we were children, back when she meant every threat she made. Caelus waits at the door, his eyes scanning the dark beyond the threshold as though counting threats that haven't arrived yet. Threats he intends to tear apart with his bare hands before they move in my direction.

As we drive, the Mountains rise black against the sky, swallowing the last light. Snow begins to fall in the middle of the warm season. Quill glances up, uneasy. "Strange for this time of the year."

I say nothing. Nobody else knows what it means. This is the first sign. I count the days in my head, over and over. Sixty days left.

Caelus grips the wheel, his eyes never leaving the mirror; he is set like a man bracing for an ambush he can already taste on the back of his tongue. I watch the road map out itself behind us, every inch a held breath, every shadow felt like a possible pursuer, reaching to drag me back to a life I've already tried to escape.

***

CAELUS POV

Cryssara reads the mountain road like someone who has walked it in another life, each curve anticipated before it comes, as though the land itself remembers her. I have a map crushed in my pocket, the Hold's name circled so many times the paper has worn thin, nearly translucent at the fold. For months I have hunted for its owner, who was always unreachable, and untraceable every time I reached for it.

She is the owner. And she knows something I don't.

***

CRYSSARA'S POV

The Hold comes into view. It is huge, ancient, unnervingly still, as if it has been waiting the whole time for someone to remember it existed. The stone walls rise sheer from the earth. An iron gate stands unbroken against the snow. We stopped, and I took a step out first, my boots crunching into frost that shouldn't exist this time of year.

I walk the cellars alone. The air hangs with the scent of old stone and something old, probably minerals. Warm springs still run beneath it all, clear water, steady heat. For the first time in two lives, something is mine. I let myself cry, just for a moment, quiet and unwitnessed. Then I scrub my face hard, as if I can wipe away the weakness along with the tears.

Lyanna comes down the steps and hugs me fiercely. "You finally have a home," she says.

Then she turned over, and I caught her checking her phone, frowning at the dead signal, with worry flickering across her face before she smoothed it away for my sake.

Then the engines blared, snarling against the silence, closer than they have any right to be. A line of cars grinds up the road outside, headlights cutting through the falling snow. Doors slam, one after another, sharp as gunshots. Flanked by two elders and six guards, Dorian steps out.

He strides straight to the iron gate like he already owns it, as if the ground itself owes him passage.

He stands there, chest heaving with fury held on a leash straining to snap, every line of his body called for violence, and when he finally speaks, his voice rises, raw with a rage that makes even his own warriors shift uneasily behind him, some refusing to meet his eyes.

"I refuse your rejection," he snarls. "By pack law, you are still my mate. Everything you own is mine."

Caelus moves without a word, placing himself between us like a wall, a low growl building in his throat and rising with every step Dorian doesn't take back, his silence louder and more menacing than any threat Dorian could hurl.

One elder lifts a paper, his voice ringing cold across the courtyard, each word merciless, final as a verdict. "Cryssara Wolfe, you have one hour to open this gate."

I turn to Quill, my throat is tight, and I can feel the fear and resolve crashing through me and tangling together. "Did you bring the ceremony register?" I whisper, each word scraped against the rising dread in my chest.

He taps his bag, his eyes giving off a flicker of something like hope breaking through his grim expression, a challenge aimed straight at the men beyond the gate who still believe they've already won.

"Yes," he says. "And it's unsigned."