All Chapters of The Binding: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The Line We RefuseSaxaWe don’t find Tobin.Jana does.One minute Kaia is muttering over the map of ward lines on the kitchen table, her finger tracing invisible fault points, and the next—The front door slams open hard enough to rattle the frames.Cold air punches down the hallway.“Inside,” Jana snaps.Not shouting, but commanding.Tobin stumbles through the doorway ahead of her, snow dusting his shoulders. He looks… collected, too collected. Like he walked in under hisnown power.Except he didn’t.Her fist is wrapped tightly into the back of his jacket, knuckles white, dragging him like he’s a disobedient pup. Gran and Ingrid rush in behind them, breath sharp, cheeks flushed from running.Kaia straightens slowly. The hum of the wards tighten—not louder, just more alert—like the house itself is bracing for what’s coming.“Sit,” Jana says.Tobin opens his mouth.She doesn’t let him speak. “No. I said sit.”He sits, the kitchen chair creaking under his weight. His hands fold politely

The Thing That Steps ThroughSaxaWolves cram into Jana and Tobin’s home, bodies filling every inch of the downstairs. This house isn’t built for meetings. It creaks like it resents all the boots, all the breath, all the voices layered on top of each other. Wolves sit on the arms of chairs, on the floor, leaning against walls, pressed tightly into corners.No one is relaxed.They pretend, a little. A joke here, a snort there. But their shoulders tell the truth. Outside, the land is missing a piece. No amount of pretending changes that.Eirik stands near the hearth with Vuk–not above us, not on a raised step–just there. The room orbits around him anyway.Jana sits behind Tobin, one hand around his wrist like she’s tying him to this world with sheer stubbornness. Gran watches everything. Ingrid is angled toward the window as if she expects it to lunge.Kaia leans in the doorway, still as carved wood, her gaze distant.Elias sits cross-legged near my feet, chin tilted up, fingers tapping

The Year of no Turning BackSaxaWe don’t sing. No candles. No cake. No cheerful announcements. Someone shuts the door against the night like it personally insulted them.The house exhales.A trapped kind of exhale.I don’t sleep.Everyone else drifts off in layers—Ingrid first, slumped in the chair like she fought the dark and lost, Jana last, her hand still wrapped around Tobin’s wrists like she’s afraid he’ll dissolve into mist if she lets go.The house creaks in the way old houses do, like it remembers other winters, other nights like this. Eirik finally disappears down the hall after making one more loop through the entire house, like checking on us will keep the world together.It won’t.But I love him for trying.Elias and I end up sharing the couch again, feet tangled in the same blanket. Facing opposite directions like little kids do—except neither of us is little anymore and we never got the chance as kids.Midnight crawls away, the house begins to breathe silently. And the

The Breaking pointSaxaThe second the front door shuts my world explodes.Not so much outside, but inside me.I don’t remember crossing the threshold. I don’t remember walking past Jana or Gran, or Elias. I am suddenly just—Moving.My hands hit the table, hard.A mug tips.Crashes.Shatters.Someone says my name.I don’t hear it.“He just—” my voice cracks upward into something too thin to hold. “He just walked up like he owns the world.”Another cup goes flying, wood scrapes, the room jerks sideways.“He said daughter.” The word scalds my mouth, “he walked onto our territory and said daughter like he gets to do that. Like he gets to STILL BE—”I don’t know what I throw next. A spoon, a bowl, a chair leg, it doesn’t matter. Everything feels wrong, everything feels too small. My chest won’t open. My ribs are cages nailed shut.Jana flinches. Gran goes completely still. Elias' breath audibly catches. “I hate him—” It claws out of me. “I hate him, I hate him, I HATE HIM—”My voice doesn

The Weight of Being SeenSaxaMorning doesn’t arrive, it seeps. Thin light creeping in through the curtains like it’s apologizing for intruding, washing the room in a gray light that looks tired before the day even begins. The house smells of tea, woodsmoke, and the faint echo of last night’s fear. Everything is quiet enough that I can hear the snow shifting off the roof in slow, tired sighs.My eyes open without really waking up.For a moment, I don’t know where I am.Not the cellar, not the mountain, not Jana’s kitchen floor.My bed.Home.My brain catches up in slow pieces—eirik’s hands steadying me, the floor against my knees, the shaking that felt like it was never going to stop. Panic doesn’t feel like drowning from the outside. It feels like your lungs forget what they’re built for, like your body is suddenly convinced being alive is the worst possible mistake.Now everything feels..Empty.Like something inside of me poured out and didn’t ask if it was allowed to leave. Every