Bound By Fire Novels & Stories

“Fire doesn’t stop once it starts feeding.” Suddenly, Riven was there, grabbing my hand, his mark pressed against mine. “Let me take some of it,” he gritted out. “Like before. Don’t fight me.” I shook my head. “It’ll kill you—” “Then we burn together,” he snarled. The fire surged between us, dark and golden, and I felt it split, half pouring into Riven, half searing into me. We both screamed, the bond between us twisting like it was alive.

When I dropped my hand toward the ground, the fire obeyed. The world ripped open with light. The blast tore straight across the battlefield, dividing it into two burning halves. Shadows disintegrated where the fire touched them. The shockwave hurled Serephine into a broken tree trunk, her scream cut short when the air smacked the breath from her lungs. Wolves braced against the force, claws digging into the dirt to remain standing. The fire stretched across the clearing in a perfect line. A boundary. A warning. A challenge. Lysandra’s hair whipped around her face as the flames reflected in her eyes. “You think this saves you. You do not understand what you are playing with.”

They were bound now: not by contracts or collars or chains of gold, but by something deeper, rawer, permanent. The fire they had started would consume everything. And neither of them wanted to be saved.

Immediately, a feeling of foreboding slams into me, but before I can even attempt to stop those that are closest to him, I watch a wall of fire erupt from the ground, burning those who are in its path. ‘NO!’ I roar. ‘DON’T GO ANY FURTHER!’ But it’s too late; the men on the border are already being consumed by the flames, and me and the rest of my men can only watch it. ‘Alpha!’ Warren calls, coming to stand beside me. ‘What’s the order?’

I stood where I was even when my instincts were hitting the flight part of it hard. Then I saw it… Streaks of red raced through the sky before coming down hard against the boundary in multiple points. Not ordinary fire. No…this was Phoenix fire. A sea of sparks exploded, sending them through the air. Everything shook. The ground. The trees. Our boundary held until one more round of Phoenix fire hit it. Victory was shouted out by the demons as if they’d already won the battle.

Then he shifted slightly, not backing down, but not pushing past me either. We moved together. Heat reached us before the flames did, thick and immediate, smoke rolling through the corridor as fire climbed faster than it should have. Accelerant, deliberate. Containment teams were already working, but nothing slowed the spread. Ray moved forward again, too close to the burn line. I caught his arm before he crossed it. He stopped without resisting. The bond surged again, stronger now, no longer unstable but aligned, pulling both of us into the same decision. Time was gone.

My imaginative and prescient blurs and the room spins. "Noah, please," I croak, my voice slightly audible. "You whore," he growls. "Two months far from me, and you’re already dozing with your ‘buddy’?" "It's not…" I attempt to explain, but the phrases catch in my throat as I choke. "Sir, please let her move!" Mary Anne’s voice cuts via the fog. Noah’s grip loosens, and I collapse to the ground, coughing violently. "She’s satisfactory," Noah snaps, his tone icy.

No mercy. Only fire.

The old texts called it the Binding Flame—a ritual older than the Vale itself. A last resort, meant to shackle what could not be tamed. Maxim had read the words by moonlight, the edges of the parchment scorched as if fire itself had tried to erase the warning. Only the soul willing to burn can command the blaze.