LOGINThe waiting was worse than the bleeding.I lay on the stone floor, the cold seeping through my uniform, settling into my marrow. My muscles vibrated—a low, constant hum of tension that wanted to snap something. Anything.Three minutes, Wolfy’s voice pushed into my skull. It wasn't sound; it was a cold pressure behind my eyes, precise as a scalpel. Do not engage early. Wait for the cycle.I held my breath. My lungs burned, the need for air clawing at my throat, but I forced the diaphragm to lock. I bit down on my tongue—hard enough to taste copper, hard enough to trigger the saliva glands. Foam gathered at the corners of my mouth, thick and bitter.I let the tremor start in my hands. Not a shake. A spasm."Guard!" I choked the word out, letting it gargle through the foam. I thrashed my legs against the metal cot. The impact jarred my shin bones, dull and rhythmic. "Help! The Rot! It burns!"It was a clumsy lie. A Berserker doesn't beg for help when the Rot takes him. We tear our own sk
[POV: Neoma]Stone walls had ears. But they also had cracks.And through those cracks, if you knew how to listen, you could hear the universe breathing.I sat in the center of my isolation cell. The dampness of the Undercroft seeped through the thin fabric of my ruined dress, chilling my skin to the bone. It was pitch black—absolute, sensory-deprivation darkness intended to break the mind. To make you forget who you were.But I wasn't broken. I wasn't even alone.I closed my eyes. I didn't reach out with my hands. I reached out with the light inside my chest.Before the ballroom, the Pack Bond had been a series of strings—fragile, easily tangled threads connecting us. But now? Now it was a cable. A golden, humming conduit of pure energy that burned through the stone, the steel, and the miles between us.The True Bond.It felt like a second spine. It felt like I had five hearts beating in my chest, syncing their rhythm.Guller? I projected, pushing the thought down the gold wire.I am
[POV: Barzil]Waking up alive was the first surprise. Waking up in chains was the second.But waking up silent? That was the miracle.I opened my eyes to the darkness of a high-security containment cell. My wrists were shackled to the wall above my head with heavy Barzil-steel cuffs, the metal biting into my skin with a familiar, cold pressure.My ankles were bolted to the floor. My back—still raw from the fifty lashes Vane had given me weeks ago, and likely torn open again from the shift—throbbed with a dull, distant ache. Every muscle in my body felt like it had been pulled apart and stitched back together wrong.But inside my head?Quiet.The constant, low-frequency static of the Feral Rot—the noise that had been the background radiation of my life for five years, a ceaseless buzzing of aggression and paranoia—was gone. The chemical fire Nergal had poured into my throat had burned it out, or rather, she had burned it out.Neoma.The memory hit me like a physical blow to the chest.
[POV: Neoma]If love was a bond, then this was the knot that couldn't be untied.The wolf that lunged at me wasn't Barzil. It was a nine-foot avalanche of black fur, muscle, and chemical madness. His jaws were wide enough to crush my skull like an eggshell. His eyes were pits of red hellfire, burning with a hunger that recognized nothing but meat.The air pressure in the ballroom dropped as he displaced the atmosphere with his sheer, terrifying mass. The vibration of his growl rattled my teeth in their sockets.I didn't flinch. I didn't close my eyes.I opened the door.Come home, I screamed silently, projecting the thought with every ounce of will I possessed.I threw my hands out. I didn't create a shield to stop him. I created a gravity well to catch him.Impact.He hit me with the force of a falling building.If I were just human, I would have been paste on the marble floor. My bones would have been powder. But the Void drank the kinetic energy of the impact instantly, turning his
[POV: Neoma]If love was a bond, then this was the knot that couldn't be untied.The wolf that lunged at me wasn't Barzil. It was a nine-foot avalanche of black fur, muscle, and chemical madness.His jaws were wide enough to crush my skull like an eggshell. His eyes were pits of red hellfire, burning with a hunger that recognized nothing but meat.The air pressure in the ballroom dropped as he displaced the atmosphere with his sheer, terrifying mass.I didn't flinch. I didn't close my eyes.I opened the door.Come home, I screamed silently.I threw my hands out. I didn't create a shield to stop him. I created a gravity well to catch him.Impact.He hit me with the force of a falling building.If I were just human, I would have been paste on the marble floor. My bones would have been powder. But the Void drank the kinetic energy of the impact instantly, turning his momentum into a anchor that locked my feet to the ground. I didn't slide an inch.His jaws snapped shut inches from my fac
[POV: Neoma]If love was a bond, then this was the knot that couldn't be untied.The wolf that lunged at me wasn't Barzil. It was a nine-foot avalanche of black fur, muscle, and chemical madness. His jaws were wide enough to crush my skull like an eggshell. His eyes were pits of red hellfire, burning with a hunger that recognized nothing but meat.The air pressure in the ballroom dropped as he displaced the atmosphere with his sheer, terrifying mass.I didn't flinch. I didn't close my eyes.I opened the door.Come home, I screamed silently.I threw my hands out. I didn't create a shield to stop him. I created a gravity well to catch him.Impact.He hit me with the force of a falling building.If I were just human, I would have been paste on the marble floor. My bones would have been powder. But the Void drank the kinetic energy of the impact instantly, turning his momentum into a anchor that locked my feet to the ground. I didn't slide an inch.His jaws snapped shut inches from my fac
POV: NeomaThe red dot on Kaine’s chest was steady.It didn't waver. It didn't tremble. It sat perfectly over his heart. A tiny, glowing eye promising the end of my world.On the screen, Kaine looked around the rusty cage. Wiping blood from his lip. He looked so small. Fragile. Meat and bone waitin
POV: ViggoPain is information. That is what the Rorik clan teaches.If it hurts, you are still alive. If it burns, your muscles are changing. If it snaps, you found a weakness. Dead things do not hurt. Dead things stay broken."Move," I growled. My breath steamed in the cold night air—white clouds
POV: WolfyEvery prison has a flaw.Architects design for structural integrity. They reinforce walls with Barzil-steel. Install dampener fields to neutralize magic. Program locks with rotating encryption keys. But they always forget the variable that cannot be engineered.The human element.Usually
POV: NeomaThe arena roared with the sound of ten thousand Lycans.It wasn't a cheer. It was a wall of noise—a chaotic mix of screams, stomping feet, and the deep, subsonic drumming of fists against chests. Thum-thum-thum. The sound vibrated in the nanoweave of my suit. Making my teeth ache. My bon







