Twenty-Two: Lucian

The words that end a bond are ancient. I learned them before I could write my own name.

I take my place at the center of the dais, hands clasped tight behind my back so the pack won’t see them shake. The moon is rising now, full and intrusive, painting every face in the courtyard a shade paler. The banners overhead are snapping so hard they might tear off the poles. The sound is loud, then gone, then loud again, like the place itself is warning me not to finish what I started.

I look at Wren, still flanked by guards at the base of the stairs, her feet bare and her hair tangled, eyes fixed and hollow as a shot wolf. She’s biting the inside of her cheek so hard I can see the blood, her body stiff with the refusal to bend. The bond is a wire strung between us, vibrating in the wind, every pulse a threat and a promise.

I raise my voice. It echoes, just like my father’s did. “By right of Alpha, I address the pack. We are gathered to set the line, to witness judgment, to bear the law.”

I hear the words bounce from stone to stone, getting smaller and more brittle with every pass. The crowd leans in; some faces hungry, some uncertain, none willing to look away.

“The Moon ties us together,” I say, “but it also binds us to the law. Mate-bond is sacred, but the law is final.”

A murmur, then stillness.

I look at her. “The bond is not a gift, Wren Cade. It is a trick. A test, or a curse. The Moon makes mistakes, and it’s the Alpha’s duty to correct them.”

Her eyes flick, just once, a microsecond of something—pain or fury or both—before the mask slams down again. I want to look away. I don’t.

I recite the next words from memory, because there’s no other way.

“Tonight I name you mate, and tonight I break it. You are unbound. You have no claim. You are nothing to me and nothing to the pack. The law stands.”

There it is. The shape of the end. The crowd absorbs it with a shifting of shoulders, a subtle exhale, like the entire courtyard was holding a breath it didn’t know about.

Wren sags. Not much, just a notch, just enough to register in the shoulders and the jaw, the knuckles of her hands gone white as old bone. I see her swallow, the lump in her throat sharp in the cold. A single tear escapes her right eye, and she rubs it away with the back of her hand, angry, like it offends her to give up even that.

The bond doesn’t vanish. It snaps. The backlash is chemical—like someone stabs a wire brush through the inside of my ribs, then rips it out, and leaves nothing but raw, screaming skin. I almost double over. I don’t. Instead, I grip the stone edge of the dais, anchor myself to it, and ride out the pulse until my vision clears.

The wind surges. The banners overhead twist so violently they rip loose, one crashing down to the flagstones with a metallic clang. The crowd recoils, half in surprise, half in superstition. I feel a hundred eyes on me, some satisfied, most not.

I ignore them. I keep my gaze on her.

She lifts her chin again. It’s not bravado now—just the empty pride of someone who knows they’re beaten but won’t bow anyway. She faces me, and in that second I want to say something, anything, but there’s nothing left to say.

The pain is still there. The crowd doesn’t see it, but Jace does. He takes a half-step closer, maybe to catch me if I fall, maybe just to be close enough for what happens next.

I finish the ceremony, voice thin and glassy. “Prisoner will be held until the final phase. The pack will disperse, under my word and my law.”

Tradition demands a call to close the meeting. I raise my fist, and the pack answers—howls and yips, building in volume, a tidal wave of sound that cracks the night and makes every hair on my arms stand up. Even the wolves who hate me have to join in. It’s the rule.

When the noise dies, I signal the guards. “Take her inside. Isolate. No visitors until sunrise.”

She goes. She doesn’t look back.

The crowd breaks in slow motion, pockets of debate and anger and whispers as the hierarchy reasserts itself, old instincts rushing back in to fill the hole I just tore open. Some faces glare, some avoid me, a few look at me with a respect I never wanted. The wind is dying, but the air is colder now, emptier.

Jace stands beside me as the last of the pack files out. “You did what you had to do,” he says, voice soft.

“That’s the job,” I answer, not even sure I mean it.

The dais is empty now, just me and the ghost of what I said. I step down, my legs slow, the Alpha mask slipping at the edges.

At the far end of the courtyard, Wren waits while the guards unlock the door. She stands with her back to me, the silver chain at her wrists glinting in the porch light. For a moment, she’s just a silhouette—broken, but upright.

The snow starts then, soft and thin, settling on her shoulders, in her hair. She lets it happen, standing perfectly still as the guards open the door and gesture her inside. She pauses, as if listening for some last word or verdict, but I have nothing to give.

The regret is a living thing inside me, a wolf that paces and never tires.

I watch until she’s gone, until the door slams and the echo dies in the stone.

Then I turn away, and let the wind take the rest of it.

The snow keeps falling, erasing every footprint, even mine.