Chapter 9 Soraya

The door opened again, but the hallway beyond was darker than before.

I lay on my cot watching them without lifting my head.

The door swung inward. Four elders entered. Selwyn first with a leather bag.

Marius came next, arms full—two shallow iron bowls balanced in one hand, a wrapped bundle of herbs in the other.

Rathus had a case of chalk sticks and a copper dish with a tight lid.

Hale shut the door from the inside. No one else followed. The corridor remained silent.

“The bond still holds,” the short shifty one said. “Ansel was right.”

“Where’s Lucien,” I asked, wary of these men.

Selwyn approached my cot with a determined look in his eyes.

“Then we will perform the reverse of the mating call,” he began, completely ignoring my question. Then continued, “Ancient magick designed to bring two wolves together, as if fated, can also tear them apart. We must do this now.”

“I’ll go get the Alpha,” Hale interrupted, almost too eagerly.

Then Selwyn added with a smirk, “Now and later, but for different reasons.”

The difference between now and later squeezed at my heart. Even though I loathed my fated mate, it still hurt to be rejected in the morning and then he takes another mate in the afternoon.

“It requires the bond to be severed during mating,” he continued. “You need to agree to this, or it will never work. Your wolf grows weaker by the minute; this is your only chance at saving her, or you. Do you agree?”

Lucien came in wearing just a tunic. His steps were even. He scanned the room, then looked to the elders. He didn’t look at me.

No guards were present. The cell was closed with only them and me inside. The elders who had argued earlier were not here.

They looked at me, waiting for an answer. This wasn’t how I expected my first time to be, but we wouldn’t survive another day of their experiments. I nodded my assent.

Selwyn set his bag on the small table and unfolded a square of clean cloth. He laid out what he’d brought in a row. He checked each piece with the same quiet focus.

Hale knelt at the foot of the cot and opened his chalk case. The sticks clinked together softly. He selected one and began to draw. He marked a wide ring around the cot first, then set a second ring outside it. At four points he added sigils.

Marius knelt near the door and set the iron bowls on the floor. He spooned resin into each, struck the brass striker to ignite the resin in each bowl. Smoke rose at once. He slid one bowl toward the head of the cot and one toward the foot. The heat from them didn’t warm the cell. It only made the air thicker.

The smoke smelled strong and sweet and sat in the back of my throat. My body felt languid, heat rose in places I’d never felt heat before. A slow smile crept across my face, and my eyelids drooped.

Rathus stood with his arms crossed until the marks and bowls were in place. Then he took the copper dish from under his arm and handed it to Selwyn without a word.

He didn’t move again.

Selwyn came to the side of the cot and stopped where he could reach me easily. He didn’t touch me right away. He spoke first, voice level. “Give me your left hand.”

The chain allowed me to sit and move my arms. I lifted my hand and smiled when I placed my palm in his.

He picked up one of the knives. He pulled it across the thick part of my palm with an even stroke. The cut wasn’t deep, but it opened clean and blood welled at once. It didn’t hurt, if anything it felt euphoric.

He tilted my hand over the copper dish and waited while it dripped. I watched it drip, amazed.

When he had enough, he set the dish on the table, pressed one of the linen squares into my palm, and folded my fingers around it. “Hold.”

I held as I watched. The pain was bright and local, my entire body thrummed as it healed with wolf speed.

Selwyn turned to Lucien. “Your hand.”

Lucien stepped forward without comment and lifted his left hand. Selwyn took it. A second knife cut along the same place on his palm.

Lucien didn’t flinch. Blood welled. Selwyn caught it in the bowl beside mine. He went back to the chalk and layered it into the points, one after the other. When he finished, both sets of blood sat in the sigils, dark and wet.

Marius began to speak. His voice was low and steady, not a song. He spaced the words evenly, repeated a sequence, then added a second line between the first.

Selwyn joined in, then Hale. Three voices, same pace, same rise and fall. Rathus stood silent, watching the lines and the four points for any change.

“Beautiful,” I said dreamily as my body swayed.

The smoke thickened. It gathered along the floor and began to rise. The bowls hissed softly. The resin smell filled the room. Each breath pulled the air through my nose and into my chest expanding the heat to my entire body.

Orielle stirred. She had been quiet for hours, small and tucked away. Now she lifted her head against my ribs and pressed closer. Her presence was thin. She wanted air. She wanted relief from the pull that had not stopped since the first night.

Selwyn returned to the cot with the copper dish and set it on the blanket by my hip. He took a step back so I could see his face.

“We are going to sever this once and for all.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He spoke as if he were explaining a rule.

I didn’t speak, but nodded along as if he was singing me a song. I looked at him, then at Lucien standing inside the ring with his cut hand open and drying, then at the chalk marks where our blood sat together.

“Do you accept?”

I checked inside. Orielle whined once. It was a thin, weak sound…there was nothing left in her.

“I will accept,” I said. “For her.”

Selwyn gave a short nod that said we had reached the expected point. He took up the second knife again. “Turn around.”