All Chapters of The Binding: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The Door Beneath the StoneThe ruins didn’t look like much at first. Just broken stone and half swallowed walls rising from the forest floor like the ribs of something long dead. Moss clung thickly to every surface, slick with moisture, and the air was colder here–unnaturally so. Not the kind of cold that came with weather, but the kind that lived inside stone and memory. The glyph in my palm warmed with every step.Not burning, beating.’She’s not right below us like the others,” Gran murmured, crouching beside one of the fallen pillars. Her fingertips brushed across a faint carving in the stone, and the symbol answered her touch with a dull, aching glow. “She’s deeper.”Eirik’s hand found mine instantly. Solid.Real. His thumb brushed over the pulse in my palm like he was trying to quiet it by force of will alone.My wolf lifted her head inside of me, alert and uneasy.Elias stopped abruptly.I felt it the same moment he did.The ground beneath us wasn’t solid.A thin crack spider

After the Pull*eirik’s POV*The forest is too quiet after the cave finishes screaming.Not birds. No wind. Just the hiss of settling dust and the sound of ragged human breathing pressed into my chest.Mine.Hers.Saxa is still in my arms when we finally stop running.Not because anyone told me to stop, not because it was safe. Only because my legs lock without warning and refuse to carry her another step. I drop to my knees in a mess of torn ferns and slick mud, holding her like the world might still try to rip her away if I loosen even a finger. Her body is burning hot–too hot. Fevered with residual magic, shock, and whatever she dragged screaming out of that dark cave with her.Blood stains the corner of her mouth, dust mats her hair to her cheeks and sashes. Every breath she takes sounds ragged and stolen.But she’s breathing.That’s the only truth I let myself hold.Ingrid skids to a halt beside me, I can still see her wolf just below the surface. Itching to tear something apart

What Still BurnsThe first thing I feel is weight.Not pain–yet.Just weight, heavy and pressing. Like the air itself has hands and my limbs don’t feel like mine. My body feels poured into the bed instead of laid on it. I try to move my fingers and nothing happens, I try to breathe deeper and my chest protests with a dull, aching resistance.For a moment I think I’m still under the mountain. Then warmth touches my hand, real warmth. Callused, familiar. Eirik.The bond stirs before my eyes open. A low, steady thrum that isn’t burning anymore–just… there. Present, alive. It answers the heat of his palm resting over mine like it has always been waiting for that exact shape.My eyes flutter, light seeping in around the edges. Wooden ceiling beams. Pale morning-gray slipping in through the side window. The faint scent of smoke, rain-soaked earth, something bitter and medicinal.I swallow, my throat feels like someone shoved a tiny razor down it.“Hey,” someone whispers immediately.His v

The Dream That Wasn'tThe house is too quiet. Not the peaceful kind either. It’s the kind that feels aware. Like the walls are listening, like the wards are holding their breath around me. Eirik left mere moments ago. I heard the front door shit, heard the muffled voices of two wolves outside falling into formation around the porch. Pack security.Damage control.Fear control.And now it’s just me, all alone in the quiet.A blanket, the faint smell of his shirt still on my skin, and a hollow ache beneath my ribs that feels too much like a cracked-open space where something else is trying to grow.I lay back slowly, careful not to tug at the fever still lingering under my skin. My wolf is restless again, paws pacing, breath hot against the inside of my chest, itching to be set free.She’s waiting. Which should have been my first warning.I close my eyes, only for a moment. A blink, a breath—And the bed disappears beneath me.

The Hunt BeginsThe forest does not settle after a scream.It holds the barren sound in its bones, lets it echo until even the birds forget how to sing properly again. The wards around the house hum low and tight, stretched thin like sinew pulled too far, and every few seconds I can feel the glyph in my palm twitch in response–something like an almost movement, like its adjusting its grip.Eirik doesn’t come back, not right away.I know he’s alive. I can feel where he is, roughly—the bond tells me that much. He’s moving fast, controlled, all sharp edges and restraint. Alpha-work, damage control. But there’s a distance and I can feel the strain of it in the way our bond stretches and resettles every time he shifts directions.I sit on the edge of the bed, wrapped in his shirt, knees pulled to my chest.Waiting.The house is not empty though, Jana moves through it quietly, checking the wards, muttering under her breath in a language that tastes like old roots and iron when it brushes th