Chapter 8 Soraya

The bolt scraped again. I snapped upright, My feet dangled off the cot, toes grazing air. I think I’d been here for a few days, or at least I smelled like I’d been here for a few days.

I longed for a shower or a good soak. The thought of a bubble bath made me smile, even though I knew that wasn’t happening.

Lucien walked in first.

He didn’t look at me. He looked past me, like there was something on the wall worth more of his attention.

All seven elders followed. Robes. Bowls. Bundles of herb tied with twine. One had silver chalk in his hands. Another kept his eyes on everyone, but hung in the back near the door. Another with white brows sharp over steady eyes, stayed next to Lucien.

The one with the chalk threw something at me. As my hands lifted it, I saw it was just a plain beige tunic. Thinner than thin.

“Change,” he instructed.

Wolves didn’t care about stripping, but somehow this just felt icky. That said, no one, not even Lucien looked in my direction.

“I can’t change while chained,” I informed them in a small voice.

Lucien came forward with a key. “Don’t even try.”

“Try what?” I replied, hands stretching around the room.

He turned his back toward me, and I quickly shed the stinky clothes and put the shift over my head. I leaned down to pick up my clothes and folded them at the end of the cot.

With nothing else to do, I sat and watched.

Elder Selwyn crouched to reattach the shackle, then set a shallow iron bowl on the floor just inside the reach of my chain. He struck a match. The resin caught fast.

Smoke rose.

Orielle pushed up against my ribs. Don’t breathe it.

I couldn’t help it; I had to breathe.

Elder Selwyn looked over his shoulder. “Hale.”

Elder Hale drew a circle around the cot. The line met the iron chain at the wall.

Elder Selwyn instructed, “Be clear on your intent. Break it clean.”

Lucien closed his eyes, his steady breathing giving nothing away.

My eyes darted between all of them; my breath held deep in my chest.

Elder Ansel said nothing. He watched me, eyes steady.

Elder Marius started to chant. The sound took my breath away. Orielle whimpered, pawing inside me, almost suffocating.

“Stop,” I said. “You’re hurting her.”

No one stopped.

Selwyn crushed another bundle of herbs into the resin. My eyes burned until the room ran and doubled.

Elder Ansel moved closer to the chalk line. He did not cross it.

“Take care,” he told the others, quietly, but firmly. “You do not understand what you are asking the moon to do.”

Marius did not answer. He pressed his voice harder into the chant. Selwyn pressed his palm to a sigil and the circle brightened. The pressure in my chest turned into a slow, steady squeeze.

Orielle flattened her ears. The sound she made was small. It made me scared for her.

“Enough,” I pleaded. “Please.”

Selwyn glanced at Lucien. “It’s working Alpha. The wolf is not stronger than the rite.”

Lucien’s mouth barely moved as he ground out. “Continue.”

Elder Galdo’s gaze cut to him. “Your father is not yet laid to rest. Do you mean to stand before the funeral with this lie burning in your chest?”

Lucien did not look away from the smoke, strain evident on his face. “If there is a lie, it is not mine.”

Marius dipped two fingers into the ash in the bowl, brushed a streak across my wrist where the iron had rubbed me raw.

The bond came to life.

A silver-bright shock that ran under my collarbone and snapped into my spine. For a second the room fell away. No circle. No chain. Only Orielle hitting the surface hard, claws raking for purchase, desperate to make us move.

I saw Lucien’s eyes flare gold. His breath caught. Then the storm rolled over it and smothered the light.

Ansel’s voice showed his first crack of feeling as he looked toward the others. “You see it. You feel it.”

Selwyn shoved more herbs into the fire. “Drown it.”

He pressed thumb to chalk at three points. The lines around me turned sharp. Cold lifted from the floor and climbed my bones.

Marius said, “A new bond will live again, Alpha.”

Elder Ansel interjected. “The bond may live again, but weak. A second choice never carries the fire of the first. A weak bond leaves the Alpha exposed. That leaves the Pack exposed.”

“This will not make the bond true,” Ansel warned.

Marius did not break rhythm. “Truth is what the Alpha speaks.”

“The moon spoke first,” Ansel said exasperated.

The pressure kept building. They were not tugging the bond. They were separating me and Orielle; at all the places we fit each other. Prying us loose from each other.

They were intentionally trying to kill my wolf.

Orielle went still. Small and still like a wolf in brush. It made me want to set her free and lash out at these men.

My hands went numb. Then my feet. I bit my tongue; blood hit my taste buds nearly choking me.

Ansel said something under his breath. Not part of Marius’s chant. He did not lift his head when his lips moved. He aimed them at no one except the floor.

Orielle’s ears flicked up, barely movement, but enough for me to feel her.

Marius pushed harder. Sweat beaded along his hairline.

Selwyn ground his thumb against a mark. The circle flared. The breath left my chest in a fast, ugly rush. Orielle yelped and fell back.

Ansel pleaded one last time, “If you break the wolf to ease your pride, you will still feel the thread under your skin every time the moon rises. And you will have made yourself smaller trying to be larger.”

Selwyn snorted. “Old sayings. Old fears.”

“Old facts,” Ansel said.

Marius’s voice had gone hoarse. He finally stopped.

I watched Lucien’s face through blurred vision. He did not say anything, but his face showed strain and pain.

Selwyn said, to him, smooth as oil, “Tomorrow we bless your chosen mate and begin the ceremony for the new Luna. The pack needs certainty before the funeral. Your chosen mate will stand at your side. We will bless it.”

Ansel: “You can bless a thing and still curse yourselves doing it.”

Lucien moved for the first time. Backed up one step. Toward the door.

“It is almost done,” Selwyn said. “She is nearly quiet.”

Was quiet the code word for dead?

Silence. Smoke hissed. My pulse pounded in my neck.

Lucien’s eyes slid to mine. Not long.

They didn’t break him, just me and my wolf.

“It is done.”

Marius blew out the bowl.

Selwyn smeared his boot across a section of the circle so it dulled and broke.

Ansel stayed where he was, hands folded.

One by one they turned and left. The lock turned. The quiet closed in.

I sat very still and listened to the blood leave my ears.

“Ori,” I said.

I couldn’t feel her, but I thought she was still there.

I put my head against the wall and let the stone cool me.

The door opened again. Elder Ansel slipped inside. He shut the door. He stood just outside where the circle had been, as if the broken circle still meant something.

“They will be back when they realize it didn’t work.”

He slid something small over the floor with his shoe. A corked vial, thumb sized.

“I am not drinking anything you bring me,” I said.

“You do not drink it,” he said. “You break it.”

“Why don’t you just break it?”

“It can only be you.”

“Whatever,” I stared. “What does it do.”

“Enough,” he said.

“Why help me.?”

“Because I have seen men burn down their own houses to prove they were right,” he said. “Because the moon does not argue. It only waits to see who survives their pride.”

I gave him a flat look. “Say it straight.”

He nodded once. “If they kill your wolf, they will sever the bond the Luna created. This might prevent that. It is the only thing I can give you without directly disobeying Alpha.”

“Why do you care?”

He left without saying anything else.

I dragged the vial in, then lifted it. I set the glass against the edge of the cot and pressed until it cracked.

Drops fell.

Nothing changed.

I lay back, because sitting took more strength than I had.

Two guards came in and left the customary bread and cheese. Water in a tin cup. The cheese smelled wrong and I ate it anyway. The water tasted like old pipe.

I curled on my side facing the door, knees tucked.

“Ori,” I said.

Her head touched the inside of my knee. Still here, but I felt her despair.

Ansel said they’d be back tomorrow with who knows what to kill us off once and for all.

Then they would smile brightly and tell the Pack the wolf in red is the only choice that mattered.

I slept, not because it was safe.

But because I was too weak to keep my eyes open.