LEON’S POV The chamber was exactly as we’d left it. The Ancient Lycan at the center. The runes gold — alignment phase, pre-ritual, the passive hum of power that had been constant for as long as I could remember. The pulsing light. The cold. He looked up when we entered. At me first. Then at Isabella behind me. The pale eyes did the recalculation I’d been expecting — the specific shift of a creature whose assumptions have been violated and is rapidly constructing new ones. “The execution was incomplete,” he said. “Yes,” I said. “You deceived me.” “Yes,” I said. The binding drove forward. I absorbed it. Stood in it. Let it do what it did and didn’t move. I’d been practicing this for the last hour. Every time the binding had pushed I’d practiced standing in it rather than complying with it. It cost — it cost significantly, the specific effort of countermanding something that lived in the body rather than the mind — but it was possible. I’d always suspected it was possible.
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