LIES BETWEEN TEETH

The Luna's chambers remained destroyed, so they sealed the damage behind closed doors and pretended everything was normal—a strategy that worked about as well as pretending a sword wound would heal itself if you didn't look at it.

Nyx and Caelan retreated to his chambers on the Alpha level, where the walls were thicker and the privacy was absolute. Stone and reinforced wood and the weight of centuries kept the noise of fortress life at a distance. Here, they could breathe. Here, they could navigate the wreckage of their discovery in something approaching privacy. The problem was: the tether made lying nearly impossible now. Every deception registered as a dissonance in the bond, a wrong note that both of them could hear like fingernails on slate. It was a terrible design feature of a bond that predated human language or sophisticated deception. The old Skinwalkers who'd formed tethers with their mates probably hadn't needed to lie to each other. They'd been in love in the way that required no translation, no interpretation, no carefully constructed falsehoods.

Nyx wasn't in love with Caelan. She was bonded to him. She was confused by him. She was beginning to care about him in ways that terrified her absolutely, which might have been the same thing but felt different.

"My father hunted Skinwalkers," Caelan said abruptly, turning away from the window. He'd been staring out at the training grounds for hours, watching his warriors move through combat drills. "Did you know that?"

"The priestess mentioned it," Nyx admitted carefully.

"He was one of the Goddess's chosen enforcers. A weapon. She gave him the knowledge of how to identify them, how to hunt them, how to kill them." Caelan's voice was hollow. "And it drove him insane. The corruption of hunting a species that the humans—the people who served Skinwalkers before the purge, I mean—the corruption destroyed him. Made him into the monster I eventually had to kill."

He crossed the room and sat beside her on the bed. Not touching, but close enough that the tether hummed between them. Through the bond, she could feel him working through his thoughts like a man assembling a puzzle while the picture was still moving, still shifting, refusing to cohere into a single image.

"The priestess said a blood tether can only form with the First Kind. That it's absolute. That we can't escape it without dying."

"That's true," Nyx said quietly.

"Then you're Skinwalker. Completely. Not half, not diluted, but genuinely the thing the Goddess tried to erase." Caelan looked at her. "And the Moon Goddess would want you dead. Would have always wanted you dead."

Nyx nodded. Caelan was quiet for a long moment. The silence stretched between them like something tangible. Through the tether, she felt him working through what this meant—not just for her, but for him, for his pack, for the entire territory he'd inherited and was still learning to rule.

"Why didn't you run?" he finally asked. "From the cellar, before the wedding. You could have escaped. The guards weren't stationed perfectly. There were gaps. You could have disappeared into the forest and they'd never have found you."

"Because running would have meant war," Nyx said quietly. "My pack—Ashwood—we're weak. If I'd fled, they would have sent warriors after me. And when Ashwood couldn't produce me, they would have destroyed the whole pack for harboring an abomination." She looked at her hands—still her own hands, unblemished and human and fragile. "And I wasn't sure where to run. If the Goddess wants Skinwalkers dead, then there's nowhere on this continent that's safe. No mountain high enough, no forest deep enough. So I chose to survive the way I always survive: by being invisible. By being nothing. By making myself so unremarkable that people stop looking."

"Except you're bonded to me," Caelan said. "And the bond is visible to every wolf in this fortress through the pack network. They can feel the connection, even if they don't understand what it is."

Through the stone walls, Nyx could hear movement in the fortress. Morning routines. Breakfast preparations. Warriors heading to training. The normal rhythms of a pack that had no idea their Alpha had married a creature that should have been dead for three thousand years. Through a crack in the window shutters, she caught a glimpse of Kira entering the courtyard. The Head Warrior was moving with that controlled intensity that suggested she had somewhere important to be, some problem that needed solving. Her eyes swept across the fortress walls, and when they touched the windows of Caelan's chambers, Nyx felt her gaze like a physical weight.

"Your sister knows something," Nyx said. "She's piecing things together."

"Kira's smart," Caelan said. "Dangerously smart. And she loves me more than she loves pack law. Which means she'll do the right thing, even if it costs her everything. Especially if it costs her everything."

He stood and pulled Nyx to her feet. Through the tether, she felt his decision crystallize. This was the moment. This was where he chose. "From now on, you stay in my chambers," he said, moving to the door. "You eat with me. You sleep in this bed. You stay near me as much as possible so that the pack gets used to the scent-mixing. We're going to normalize this until it doesn't raise questions anymore."

"They'll still suspect—"

"Let them suspect. Suspicion is easier to manage than certainty." He called for the guards. "I want the Luna's chambers sealed until further notice. No one enters. No one exits. Tell the pack we're conducting a protective ritual and there's to be no disturbance. This is an Alpha order."

The guards accepted without question. Caelan Voss had earned that kind of authority through blood and leadership and the sheer force of his will. When he gave an order, wolves obeyed. Once they'd gone, Caelan turned back to Nyx. The tether between them was glowing now, visible only to them, thrumming with his decision. "The tether is real. The bond is real. And I can't reject you without dying. So you're here. You're mine. And any wolf who has a problem with that can challenge me for it."

Through the tether, Nyx felt his wolf settle into that strange certainty. The beast had always known what she was. It didn't care. It had chosen her in that cellar when she was small and frightened, and that choice was absolute. She buried her face against his chest and breathed him in—cedar and stone and something wild underneath. Through the bond, she sent one clear message: *I'm sorry for what I am. I'm sorry for what this costs you.* His response came back immediately, a flood of emotion so powerful it nearly knocked her over: *I'm not sorry. I chose this. I'd choose it again.*

And just like that, the Alpha of the Obsidian Throne had declared war on th

e Moon Goddess herself.