Chapter 3

For a moment, the world didn’t make sense.

Aria lay on the ground, breath trapped in her lungs, vision flickering in and out like a broken lantern. Every heartbeat felt like a blade dragging across the inside of her chest. The mate bond—beautiful, hopeful, glittering only minutes before—was now a jagged, tearing pain she couldn’t escape.

The rejection was still ripping through her.

Her wolf’s scream echoed in her skull, raw and ragged. He rejected us. He rejected us. He rejected—

“Aria!” Mia’s voice, panicked and distant, barely broke through the agony.

Hands reached for her—too many, too close.

And then the air itself split open.

A pulse of cold shot through the clearing, whipping hair and clothes and leaves into the air. Wolves staggered backward, instinctively baring their throats as a shadow poured from the treeline like liquid night.

The tear widened—

dark swirling mist spilling across the ground—

and the world fell completely silent.

From inside the rift, a figure stepped out.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Wrapped in shadows that curled around him like living smoke. His eyes—two burning fragments of twilight—snapped instantly to Aria, and the darkness around him thickened in response, as if reacting to her collapse.

The Dark King.

A murmur rippled through the stunned crowd.

“W-What is that—?” someone whispered.

“Is he a rogue? A demon?” another stammered.

“No,” Alpha Rowan said hoarsely. “No, this… this is something else.”

The King crossed the clearing in a single stride—impossible, inhumanly fast. Blake instinctively stepped between him and Aria, his wolf flashing in his eyes despite the trembling in his hands.

“Stay back,” Blake warned, voice breaking.

The King didn’t even look at him.

He raised one hand lazily.

A wave of shadow burst from his palm and slammed into Blake like a physical blow. Blake was flung backward across the clearing, hitting the dirt with a choked gasp.

“Blake!” Theo sprinted toward him—but another flick of the King’s wrist sent him crashing into a tree.

Warriors shifted into partial wolf form, snarling in warning.

None dared get closer.

Aria dimly registered their panic, their fear, the chaos exploding around her—but all she could feel was the crushing, suffocating pain inside her chest. The mate bond was still snapping, tearing, unraveling.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her vision blurred again—long enough that the world turned into streaks of color and sound.

But when it returned, he was kneeling beside her.

The Dark King.

His shadows retreated around them, giving her space, forming a protective circle. His face—sharp, angular, impossibly beautiful—softened the second he looked at her.

“Little wolf,” he murmured, voice a rich, low thunder. “Who dared to break you?”

Aria tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat.

Pain crashed through her again, so violently she arched on the ground, gasping.

Erevan’s expression darkened, as if the pain physically hurt him too.

Then, gently—so gently it didn’t match the terror he’d unleashed—he slid an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her against his chest. The moment his skin touched hers, the pain dulled just slightly, like warm hands pressing over a wound.

Aria shivered.

His presence felt… strange. Dark, ancient, powerful—but also grounding in a way she couldn’t explain.

“Who touched you?” he asked again, voice dangerously calm.

Aria’s lips trembled. “H-He… rejected… me…”

A horrific silence fell.

Blake, still groaning as he tried to push himself up, froze.

Every warrior went still, as if the world itself stopped breathing.

Erevan looked up slowly, turning his head toward Blake with such lethal intent that the temperature in the clearing seemed to drop ten degrees.

“You,” the Dark King said, his voice a razor wrapped in velvet. “You tore the bond.”

Blake’s face drained of color. “I… I didn’t know— she wasn’t supposed to be—”

“Silence.”

The shadows surged across the ground like a living storm, swallowing the lantern light, stretching toward Blake as if eager to consume him.

Aria forced her shaking hand up, weak fingers brushing the King’s wrist.

“Stop…” she gasped.

The shadows froze instantly.

Erevan looked down at her, eyes darkening. “You are in pain. Your heart is breaking. I feel it.”

“I don’t… want… anyone hurt,” she whispered.

“Then tell me who to spare,” he murmured.

Blake flinched.

Aria’s breathing hitched. She opened her mouth to speak again—but the bond inside her twisted violently one last time, sending a shock of agony through her so strong her vision exploded into white.

She cried out—

and the shadows reacted before Erevan could.

The entire clearing plunged into swirling darkness.

Warriors stumbled back, choking on fear.

Alpha Rowan shouted something, but his voice was swallowed by the rising storm.

Aria clung weakly to Erevan’s shirt as another wave of pain tore through her.

“Hold on,” Erevan murmured, pulling her tighter against him. “I’m taking you away from this place. You will not break where he can see you.”

The shadows rose higher—

curling around them—

swallowing the clearing whole.

Blake’s voice cut through the chaos, desperate:

“Aria—don’t go! ARIA!”

But she was already fading, her consciousness slipping as the darkness wrapped around her like a cocoon.

Her last coherent thought was a whisper of disbelief:

Someone came for me.

Someone powerful.

Someone furious.

And then, as Erevan pulled her fully into the shadows—

Everything went black.