All Chapters of THE CURSE OF LUST: Chapter 21 - Chapter 24

Three days passed in a blur of blood and breath.Christopher trained until his body forgot the meaning of rest. Rowan did not spare him. Neither did I. We came at him from different angles, different rhythms, forcing him to react rather than think. Rowan tested his instincts. I tested his restraint. Between us, there was nowhere to hide.He bled every day. Sometimes from his hands, torn open by claws not yet fully his. Sometimes from his ribs, struck too late or too slow. Once from his shoulder, when Rowan drove him into the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth. Each time, he rose again. Quieter. More focused. Less human in the way humans understood it.And yet he never vanished into the wolf. It surfaced in flashes. A deepening of the eyes. A shift in scent. A strength that arrived unannounced and left just as suddenly, as if testing him rather than obeying him. The wolf did not answer to command. It responded to something else entirely.By the second night, I understood what it wa

In the past, I had faced every trial the wolves had ever conceived. Blood. Dominion. Solitude. Command. None of them had ever unsettled me like this.The Trial of Bond was different. Not because it was sacred, or ancient, or feared. But because this time, I was not standing above it. I was inside it. Exposed. Bound by something I could not sever without destroying myself.The forest had not slept. Neither had the packs. Neither had us. Again.I heard them long before the summons. Low arguments carried on the night air, voices sharpened by fear and ambition. Betas whispering at the edges of fires. Alphas snapping at one another in tight circles, divided not just between packs, but within them. Some called Christopher unfit, an aberration that should never have been allowed to breathe among us. Others spoke of his endurance, his refusal to yield, his survival of the Trial of Blood with something close to reverence. Strength frightened them more than weakness ever could.Tension coiled ev