Chapter 08 (Part 03)

“Good,” I spit, though the words taste like ash in my mouth. “Let it tear. Let me bleed. I’d rather hurt than be someone’s property.”

She doesn’t flinch at my venom. “You’ll wish you were dead.”

“Let me.”

Her next words are so soft I almost miss them.

“He already is.”

I freeze. “What?”

She turns to face me, and her expression is heavy with something I can’t name.

“You think this bond is one-sided?” she says. “You think you’re the only one in pain?”

My chest tightens. The heat under my skin flickers, and for just a moment, I feel something else. Something that isn’t mine.

Emptiness. Longing. A hunger so deep it feels like starving.

“I saw him,” she says. “From the edge of the woods, when you were unconscious. Cassian. He didn’t know I was there, didn’t sense me watching. He wasn’t the composed predator you met. He looked…” She pauses, searching for words. “He looked like something was eating him from the inside. Like he was fighting a war with himself and losing.”

I want to argue. Want to scream that I don’t care, that he deserves whatever pain he’s feeling for doing this to me without my consent.

But something in me knows it’s true. I can feel it in the space between my ribs, in the hollow places the bond has carved into me.

Still—I clench my teeth.

“I don’t care.”

“You will,” she says simply. “The bond won’t let you not care. Eventually, his pain will become unbearable to you. You’ll do anything to make it stop.”

“I won’t.”

“You will. Because that’s what it does. It makes you need each other. Completely. Desperately. Until you can’t tell where you end and he begins.”

Then the pain hits.

Out of nowhere. Blinding.

Not my pain—I realize that immediately. This is coming from somewhere else, someone else, traveling down the invisible thread that connects us.

My mark pulses once—twice—then erupts.

Like a hot blade pressed directly against bone. Like acid poured into an open wound.

I scream.

The sound tears from my throat without permission, raw and animal. I collapse to my knees, hands braced on the floor, gasping for air as the heat crawls up my side, across my ribs, into my chest like living fire.

“Make it stop!” I sob, pressing my palm against the mark. The touch only makes it worse, like I’m pushing the burning deeper.

But Elsie doesn’t move.

She doesn’t try to help me.

She doesn’t even reach for me.

Because she can’t. This isn’t something she can fix.

“It’s him,” she whispers, and her voice sounds far away through the haze of agony. “He’s fighting it too.”

And that’s when I realize—

He’s feeling this exact same pain.

Right now.

Miles away, wherever he is, Cassian is on his knees just like me, burning from the inside out.

The thought should make me feel vindicated. He deserves this. He started it.

But instead, all I feel is the overwhelming urge to find him. To make his pain stop so mine will stop too.

The bond hums with satisfaction at the thought, and I hate it.

I hate this.

I hate him.

But mostly, I hate that I’m already losing the fight.

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**POV: Cassian**

The hollow beneath the mountain smells of stone, ash, and old blood.

Ancient blood. The kind that seeps into rock and never truly disappears, no matter how many centuries pass.

The air doesn’t move here. The light doesn’t reach. Not unless summoned by those with the power to command it.

I stand barefoot on black stone worn smooth by countless generations, shirtless, every inch of me marked with dirt and blood from the hunt. Some of it mine. Most of it not. The burn at my ribs hasn’t stopped in hours—if anything, it’s getting worse.

The chamber is circular, carved directly from the living mountain. The walls are etched with the names of every Alpha before me, along with the dates of their births and deaths. Most of them died young. Some in war. Some in madness. A few by their own hands when the bond they carried became too much to bear.

I try not to look at those names too often.

There are seven Elders arranged in a crescent before me.

All wolf. All ancient. Not a trace of human left behind their eyes, their features sharpened and elongated by centuries of transformation. They’ve held their animal forms for so long that changing back is probably impossible now.

They sit on carved stone thrones that have been worn smooth by age, each one positioned to form perfect angles of judgment. They don’t bow when I enter. They don’t blink. They don’t ask how I am or comment on the blood that still drips from my claws.

Because they already know.

They can smell it on me. The change. The bond. The claim I’ve made whether I intended to or not.

The one in the center speaks first. Her voice is like dry leaves scraping against stone, like branches snapping in winter wind.

“Your blood burns, young Alpha.”

It’s not a question.

I don’t answer. There’s no point in denying what they can sense as clearly as I can.

“You’ve scented her,” another says from my left. This one’s voice is deeper, rougher. Like gravel being ground to dust. “The girl.”

I nod once. That’s all they need.

“She is not one of us,” the third hisses. Her words drip with disdain.

“She’s human,” adds the fourth.

“She’s unmarked,” says the fifth.

“She *was* unmarked,” I growl, and the correction comes out harder than I intended.

The fire behind my ribs flares in response to my emotion, and I have to grit my teeth to keep from doubling over. The pain is constant now, a burning thread that connects me to something—someone—miles away.

“She bears your seal,” the sixth Elder says, leaning forward. “That mark is no accident, Cassian Thorne. You have claimed her.”

“I didn’t choose her,” I snap, my voice echoing off the stone walls. “The bond did. The land did. I had no more control over it than she did.”

Silence falls like a weight.

The only sound is the distant drip of water somewhere in the mountain’s depths and the quiet rasp of my own breathing.

Then the first Elder stands.

She’s smaller than the others, more human in appearance, but her presence fills the chamber like smoke. She walks slowly—limping slightly, bent with age—but her power is undeniable. Even in this weakened form, she could tear me apart without breaking a sweat.

She stops two feet from me. Tilts her head like an owl studying prey.

“You remember what happened last time,” she whispers, and ice floods my veins.

My jaw clenches. “Don’t.”

“You remember her name.”

“I said *don’t*,” I warn, and my voice comes out as more growl than words.

“You lost control then too,” she continues, ignoring my warning. “When the human girl you favored died. When the bond snapped. Do you remember what you did to this territory? To our people?”

“I buried her,” I growl, my hands clenching into fists. “I paid the price. I’ve been paying it for five years.”

“And you would risk that again?” Her voice rises, sharp with accusation. “For another human? For a girl who doesn’t even want you?”

“She’s not—” I stop, biting back the word before it can escape.

But it’s already there. Already hanging in the air between us.

Already heard.

Already known.

*Mine.*