BLOOD RITE

*Chapter 4: Blood Rite*

The Healer’s Den smelled like wolfsbane and death.

Not the clean kind. The kind that clung to your throat and made your wolf, if you had one, claw to get out.

I didn’t have a wolf. I had a bleeding baby and an Alpha who was currently putting his fist through a stone wall.

“Again,” Kieran snarled at Healer Morin. “Say it again.”

The old healer didn’t flinch. She’d stitched Alpha Rourke’s wounds during the Northern Wars. Kieran’s rage was nothing new. “The pup is in distress, Alpha. Wolfsbane + silver + stress. At seven months, his lungs aren’t ready. If the bleeding doesn’t stop in the next hour, we lose him.”

The world tilted.

I was on the cot, Kieran’s jacket wadded under my hips to keep the blood from soaking through. It wasn’t working. The linen was red. My hands were red.

“He’s not—” My voice broke. “I can feel him. He’s still—”

A weak flutter. Like a moth against my ribs. _I’m here, Mama. Don’t let go._

Kieran was at my side in one step. His hands hovered over my stomach, terrified to touch. “What do we do? Surgery? Drugs? Name it.”

Morin’s eyes were ancient. Pitiless. “There’s one way. Old Law. Blood Rite.”

Darius, who’d followed us in, went pale. “No. That’s forbidden unless—”

“Unless what?” Kieran snapped.

“Unless the pup is Alpha heir,” Morin said quietly. “And the mother is the true mate.”

The room went dead silent.

True mate. Not rejected mate. Not “mother of my son, nothing else.” _True mate._

Kieran’s jaw ticked. “I rejected her.”

“And the Moon Goddess laughed,” Morin said. “You think you can unmake a bond with words, boy? The Pack Stone glowed. That doesn’t happen for ‘rejected’ strays.”

She pointed to my stomach. “That pup is yours. Alpha blood. But he’s dying because half his biology is yours and you’re _refusing_ to claim it. Your rejection is poison in his veins.”

I remembered the Trial. The stone screaming. _ARIA OF NO PACK_. And Kieran’s mouth on mine after. That flicker of gold.

“What’s the Blood Rite?” I whispered.

Morin met my eyes. “Alpha blood. Directly into the mother’s heart. It forces the bond back. Full claim. No more rejection. No more half-measures. Your life for his, her life for his. The three of you, or none of you.”

Kieran was already rolling up his sleeve. “Do it.”

“Kieran—” Darius grabbed his arm. “If you do this, the rejection is gone. Permanently. You’ll feel everything she feels. Her pain. Her fear. If she dies in labor, you—”

“Then I die in labor,” Kieran said. Flat. Final.

He looked at me. Really looked. For the first time since the diner, there was no hate. Only terror. _For me_.

“Aria.” My name in his mouth sounded like a prayer and a curse. “I can’t lose him. I… I can’t lose you.”

He didn’t say mate. He didn’t have to.

Morin pulled out a ritual blade. Black steel, etched with old runes. “This will hurt. Both of you. The bond doesn’t like being forced.”

“Just save him,” I gasped. Another cramp ripped through me. More blood. The flutter was fading.

Kieran knelt by the cot and took my hand. His was shaking. Alpha Kieran Dragos, who executed rogues without blinking, was shaking.

“Hold her down,” Morin told Darius.

“What? Why—”

“Because when I cut into his heart and hers, the mate bond will slam back into place after six months of nothing. It’s like getting hit by lightning while on fire.”

Darius pinned my shoulders. Gently. Apologetic.

Kieran pressed his forehead to mine. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For the trial. For the rejection. For being my father’s son.”

I wanted to say it didn’t matter. It did. But the baby gave another weak kick.

“Just do it,” I told Morin.

She didn’t hesitate.

The blade went into Kieran’s chest first. Right over his heart. Not deep — ritual cuts never were. Just enough to bleed. Alpha blood, thick and glowing faintly gold, welled up.

He didn’t make a sound.

Then she turned to me.

“This is the part that kills most,” she said. “Ready, Luna?”

Luna. Not stray. Not weakness.

“Yes.”

The blade was ice and fire. It slid between my ribs, straight to my heart. I couldn’t scream. My lungs forgot how.

Morin grabbed Kieran’s bleeding hand and pressed it to my wound. Blood to blood. Heart to heart.

“_By blood unbroken, by bond denied and returned, I claim thee,_” she chanted. “_Three as one. One as three. The Moon Goddess demands it._”

For a second, nothing.

Then the world exploded.

Gold. White. Agony.

The mate bond roared back to life like a star going supernova. Six months of nothing became _everything_.

I felt him. All of him.

His rage at Luna Mother. His fear for the baby. His guilt, thick and black, for every word he’d said to me. His bone-deep exhaustion from carrying a pack that hated him. And under it all, a raw, ugly want he’d been choking down since the diner.

_Mine,_ the bond howled. _Mine mine mine._

Kieran threw his head back and _roared_. Not a human sound. Alpha. Broken.

His pain became mine. The cut on his chest. The bruises from punching the wall. The ache in his jaw from clenching it for seven months.

My pain became his. The cramping. The blood. The terror that my body was killing our son.

He seized. I seized.

“Hold them!” Morin shouted.

Darius and two healers pinned us down as the bond reforged itself, searing our nerves.

And under the pain, something else.

The baby.

A tiny, defiant pulse of gold. Stronger. Kieran’s Alpha blood was in me now. In _him_. Wolf recognizing wolf.

The bleeding slowed.

Then stopped.

A kick. Hard. Mad. _That’s more like it, Papa._

I gasped in air. Kieran collapsed against me, his face buried in my neck, breathing like he’d run for miles.

His blood was on my skin. My blood was on his. Our hearts were beating the same rhythm.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

_Mate. Mate. Mate._

Morin checked my stomach, then smiled for the first time. “Bleeding stopped. Pup’s heart rate is strong. He’s going to make it.”

The relief nearly killed me. I sobbed, fisting my hands in Kieran’s shirt.

He made a wrecked sound and gathered me up, cot and all. “She needs rest. Nobody comes in. Nobody. If my mother breathes near this door, you kill her.”

“Kieran,” Darius started.

“_Now_, Darius.”

He carried me himself to a room in the back of the Healer’s Den. Laid me down like I was made of glass. Wouldn’t let go of my hand.

The bond was new. Raw. Every time he moved, I felt the pull. Every time I winced, his eyes flashed gold.

“Does it hurt?” I asked. My voice was sandpaper.

“Yes,” he said. Honest. Brutal. “I feel everything. The cramps. The fear. Gods, Aria…” He closed his eyes. “How did you walk through that maze? I felt a _second_ of it and I wanted to kill everyone.”

“You’re Alpha,” I said. “You’re supposed to be stronger than me.”

He laughed. Broken. “I’m not. I never was.”

He brushed hair off my forehead. His thumb shook. “The healers say you and the pup need 48 hours of bed rest. No stress. No Trials. No mothers.”

As if summoned, the door slammed open.

Luna Mother stood there. Her wrist was in a splint. Her eyes were black with hate.

“You performed the Blood Rite,” she said. Flat. “You bound yourself to _that_.”

Kieran was on his feet in a second, body between me and her. A growl rolled out of him, inhuman. “Get out.”

“I am your mother—”

“You are the woman who just tried to gut my mate and son,” he said. Ice. Death. “You have three seconds to leave before I do what I should have done years ago.”

She looked at me. Really looked. And I saw it.

Fear.

The Pack Stone had glowed for me. The mate bond was back. I’d survived her Trial.

I was a threat now.

“This isn’t over,” she whispered. “Wolfless trash doesn’t rule Blood Moon.”

She left.

Kieran exhaled and the fight went out of him. He sat on the edge of the cot, head in his hands.

“She’s going to come for him,” I said. “For Rylan.”

“I know.”

“She won’t stop.”

“I know.”

He looked up. His ice-blue eyes were wrecked. Haunted. “So we don’t stop either.”

He laid down next to me, carefully, like I’d break. One arm went around me, his hand splayed over my stomach where our son was now sleeping, safe.

The bond hummed. Warm. Right.

“Does it still hurt?” he asked, meaning the cramps. Meaning everything.

“No,” I lied.

His eyes narrowed. He _felt_ the lie. Stupid mate bond.

“Rest,” he ordered. “That’s an Alpha command.”

“Make me.”

His mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “Brats don’t get to make demands.”

“Then don’t call me Luna.”

He went still.

Slowly, he leaned in. His lips brushed my ear. “Good night, _Luna_,” he murmured.

The bond purred.

I fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat. Safe. For the first time in seven months.

---

I woke to screaming.

Not mine. Not Kieran’s.

Darius.

I jolted up. Kieran was already on his feet, claws out, a snarl on his face. The bond poured adrenaline into me.

“What—”

The door burst open. Darius stood there, covered in blood. Not his.

“They took him,” he gasped. “Luna Mother. She had warriors. We couldn’t stop her. Kieran, she took the pup—”

I looked down.

The cot was empty.

The blankets I’d been holding were gone.

My stomach was flat.

Not flat like post-birth. Flat like _empty_.

“No,” I whispered. “No, he was _here_. He was inside me. He was—”

Kieran’s roar shook the Healer’s Den.

He grabbed Darius by the throat. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE TOOK HIM? HE’S NOT BORN YET!”

Morin ran in, face white. “The Blood Rite… it accelerated the pregnancy. The trauma, the Alpha blood… it finished the gestation in hours, not weeks. I was going to tell you at dawn. He was born an hour ago. Healthy. Silent. Luna Mother’s guards came while you slept. Took him from the nursery. Said it was ‘for his own protection.’”

Born.

He was born and I didn’t feel it. I didn’t get to hold him.

I didn’t get to—

Kieran let Darius go. He turned to me.

His face was broken. Murderous. Afraid.

And for the first time, I saw Kieran Dragos, Alpha of Blood Moon, beg.

“Aria.” His voice cracked. “She has our son.”

---