Chapter 10 Soraya

I shifted until my back faced him at the foot of the cot. He pulled the tunic down over my left shoulder. He made a short, sharp cut.

Selwyn turned to Lucien. “Do you accept?”

Lucien nodded, his eyes fixed on me. I could tell he was physically turned on. That made me tingle all over.

With the same knife, he slashed the palm on Lucien’s other hand.

Lucien stepped in close, to the line where the chalk came nearest the cot.  He placed his palm on my shoulder, sealed the wounds together, and forced his wolf forward.

There was no preamble, no warm-up. He simply came up behind me while the others turned their backs. Never giving up their chanting.

Heat moved from the cut down into my chest. It wasn’t a flash. It traveled in a straight path to a single point and stopped there, heavy, and hot. My ribs tightened around it, the space in my lungs narrowed until the world exploded.

Orielle surged toward the contact and then faltered. She cried out once inside me and went still.

Lucien stilled, released me, and stepped back out of the ring. His jaw locked. He looked at the floor instead of at me or at the Elders.

Marius adjusted the rhythm of the words and pushed harder. Selwyn matched him. Hale’s voice thinned, but he kept pace.

The heat spread again, slower now, and set along the line under my collarbone. I finally floated down to my bed and curled up in a ball, too tired to care what they did next.

My fingers numbed, then prickled, then numbed again. I flexed them once to make sure they still worked and then kept them still.

The bowls hissed louder as resin cooked down. The smoke climbed to eye level and made everything look flattened. The Elders were shapes and hands and voices. The chalk was lines and edges.

Marius introduced a new sequence of words. The effect was immediate: the marks at the four points brightened and then went dark in a strict order—south, west, north, east—leaving the outer ring lit and the inner ring faint. Selwyn added a pinch of crushed herb to the nearest bowl. The scent changed. It wasn’t better, just different, and it made my sinuses burn.

Orielle stayed quiet.

Selwyn watched me more than he watched the marks now. He checked my breathing without touching me. Hale wiped his brow with his sleeve and coughed once. Rathus crouched to look at the chalk from a different angle, then stood again.

Marius drove the last set of words to a stop and cut the sound without a fade.

My body sagged against the cot. The muscles that had held themselves in place let go. The hand around the linen relaxed and then tightened again.

Selwyn straightened. He wiped his hands on a fresh linen square and set it aside. He looked at Rathus. Rathus gave one slow nod.

Hale stepped back from the bowls and used a clay pot to smother the first, then the second. The hiss weakened and stopped. The smoke didn’t clear; it simply stopped getting worse.

Selwyn looked at Lucien. “It is finished. The Alpha is unbound.”

Rathus added, “It is enough, or she will die before the next dawn.”

Lucien didn’t answer. He looked at me for one breath, then at the chalk, then at Selwyn again. His lack of reply was a reply.

The bolt crashed back from the other side. The door banged inward with more force than any of them had used. Corridor air pushed in with it, cooler and thinner. Ansel stood in the doorway. His robe was pulled on over sleep clothes, uneven at the collar. His hair hadn’t seen a comb. His eyes were wild.

He took one look at the floor—chalk smeared where Hale’s boot had brushed a line, herbs ground into the stone, bowls cooling to gray—and at me on the cot with two fresh cuts and smoke in my hair. He didn’t step in yet.

He said, clear and hard, “What have you done?”

Heads turned—Selwyn’s first, then Marius, Hale, and Rathus. Lucien didn’t startle. He turned at the same rate he did everything else slow and deliberate.

Selwyn picked up his bag and folded the cloth over the blades and linen squares. He met Ansel’s gaze without blinking. “What needed to be done.”

Ansel stepped inside now. He wasn’t loud. He didn’t have to be. “You will account for this.”

Selwyn shouldered past him. Marius followed, lifting the chalk case and copper dish. Hale went next, careful not to brush his sleeve against Ansel’s robe. Rathus passed last with a brief look that carried nothing in it.

Lucien stayed a moment longer. He faced Ansel in the doorway. “Be careful where you stand. There’s a cell waiting if you choose wrong.”

He left. The door swung until the frame caught it. Their footsteps moved away up the corridor until the sound thinned.

Ansel didn’t move right away. He looked at the chalk ring, at the smeared marks where Hale had started to clean and then stopped. He came to the cot and leaned. He didn’t touch my shoulder or my face, just checked that I was breathing and that my eyes could track his, then went to the door.

It opened just enough to let him out. It closed again. The lock turned.

The cell was mine again. The chalk still marked the floor. The bowls still smelled. My hand ached. The cut at my shoulder throbbed. I drew air in as my head began to clear.

I pushed inward, but couldn’t feel my wolf. The steady ache under my collarbone didn’t change.

No one came back.

When I drifted, I did it with my hand closed over the linen and my mind on the same words that had been spoken in this room: it is finished.

I held to that and waited for the next sound at the door.