The stone corridors of the lower treasury levels were always cold, but tonight, the dampness felt like a physical weight pressing against Lyra’s collarbone.
Cassian didn’t offer to carry her, and she didn’t ask.
She kept her pace two steps behind him, her sneakers clicking softly against the uneven stone floor.
The rush of the rotunda was fading, replaced by the grim reality of the subterranean palace.
Every few hundred yards, a heavy iron grate separated the sectors, manned by guards wearing the dark grey uniform of the princes’ personal vanguard.
Each time they passed, the soldiers dropped their gazes instantly, ignoring Lyra as if she were a ghost.
But their nostrils flared.
They could smell her.
They could smell the heavy, thick scent of frost and midnight flora that still clung to her skin like grease.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Cassian said without turning around.
His long stride was effortless, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark trousers.
“I’m thinking about how your brother just lied to the entire High Council and got away with it,” Lyra said, her voice echoing slightly off the damp walls.
“The Blood-Tie.
Is it even real?” Cassian stopped at a heavy iron door, pulling a massive bronze key from his belt.
He slotted it into the mechanism, turning it with a heavy, metallic clunk.
“Oh, it’s a real legend.
A story our nannies told us to make us sleep at night.
Jaxon spent his entire youth memorizing the ancient archives just in case he ever needed to fabricate a political miracle.
He’s a bureaucrat with a killer’s instinct, little mouse.
That’s what makes him dangerous.” He pushed the door open, revealing a secluded, vaulted chamber that looked like a cross between a secure strategy room and a temporary safe house.
A low fire was burning in a hearth against the far wall, casting long, shifting shadows across a massive oak table covered in maps and tactical ledgers.
“Sit,” Cassian ordered, jerking his chin toward a wooden bench near the fire.
“Jaxon and Ryker are still finalizing the guard rotations in the main hall.
They won’t be down here for another hour.” Lyra didn’t sit.
She walked over to the hearth, her hands extended toward the flames to stop the shivering that had been rattling her bones since the rotunda.
“You said our wolves are burning themselves alive.
What does that mean?” Cassian walked over to the table, pouring himself a measure of dark amber liquid from a crystal decanter.
He took a slow swallow, his gray eyes fixing on her over the rim of the glass.
The playful, mocking edge that usually defined his face had completely vanished, leaving behind the stark, brutal lines of a predator that knew its time was limited.
“The fated bond is an biological lock,” Cassian explained, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly pitch.
“It requires two compatible keys.
In our world, that means two pureblood shifters whose internal magic matches.
When a wolf ties to a human, the lock forces itself shut anyway, but the human body doesn’t have the internal reservoir to handle the feedback.
Right now, your human heart is trying to pump blood at a rhythm meant for a three-hundred-pound Lycan beast.” Lyra’s hand went instinctively to her chest.
Her heart was beating fast—faster than normal—but she had assumed it was just the residual terror of the assassination attempts.
“And you?” she asked, her voice dropping.
“What is it doing to you?” “Our wolves think you’re dying,” Cassian said simply.
He walked over, stopping just two paces from her.
The proximity immediately triggered that heavy, electric heat under her skin, a low vibration that made her fingers twitch.
“Because your human biology is resisting the connection, our wolves are constantly pumping extra alpha energy through the bond to ‘heal’ you.
But there’s nothing to heal.
We’re over-saturating the link.
If it doesn’t stabilize by the new moon, the magical backpressure will cook our internal organs from the inside out.
We’ll hemorrhage in our sleep.” “So Jaxon’s ‘war brand’ on his wrist…” “Is a symptom,” Cassian finished.
“Our veins are literally bursting beneath the skin because the pressure has nowhere to go.” Lyra stared into the fire, the orange flames reflecting in her wide eyes.
It was a perfect trap.
She couldn’t leave because she’d be hunted by Elowen’s pack.
She couldn’t stay without slowly killing the three men who held the keys to the kingdom.
The heavy iron door behind them opened, and Jaxon and Ryker strode into the room.
Jaxon had stripped off his heavy formal jacket, wearing only a dark silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
The crimson lines along his forearm looked even angrier now, the skin around the veins raw and inflamed.
Ryker looked exhausted, his massive shoulders slumping slightly as he pulled a heavy iron chair out from the table and sank into it, his face pale beneath the smears of dried blood.
“The northern lords are packing their wagons,” Jaxon said, his tone businesslike as he walked over to the map desk.
“Elowen left the city limits twenty minutes ago under a heavy vanguard escort.
She knows she can’t openly challenge the succession now that the Council has validated the brand, but she’s setting up blockades along the supply lines.” “Let her,” Ryker growled, slamming his fist onto the table.
“My battalions can clear those roads in forty-eight hours.
What we need to worry about is the palace staff.
The rumors are already leaking.
Half the kitchen maids are whispering that Lyra was dragged into our wing and never came out.” Jaxon’s eyes shifted to Lyra, cold and assessing.
“Then we change the narrative.
Tomorrow morning, before the funeral rites begin, Lyra will be officially registered as a high-ranking political asset.
We will tell the court she is a seer from the southern borders whose bloodline carries the sensory trigger for the Blood-Tie.” “A seer?” Lyra let out a sharp, incredulous breath.
“I’m a maid, Jaxon.
I clean floors.
The moment someone asks me to read the stars or predict a border raid, your little lie falls apart.” “You won’t be reading stars,” Jaxon said, walking over to her until he was standing close enough that she could feel the cold, metallic scent of his aura.
“You will be standing beside us during court sessions.
You will look at the lords, you will keep your mouth shut, and you will let them believe you have the power to expose their secrets.
Fear is a far better shield than any title we could give you.” He reached out, his long fingers catching her chin.
Lyra tried to pull away, but his grip was firm, unyielding.
The moment their skin met, a violent wave of heat rushed up her jaw, making her gasp.
Jaxon’s eyes darkened instantly, his chest heaving as he fought the sudden, wild urge to pull her against his chest.
“We don’t have time to negotiate, Lyra,” Jaxon whispered, his voice vibrating with a dangerous, dark intensity.
“The new moon is in twelve days.
If we don’t find a way to bind your human blood to our line permanently before then, we are all dead.
You are going to play this part, and you are going to play it perfectly.” Lyra looked into his pitch-black eyes, seeing the raw, predatory desperation hiding behind his cold, calculating mask.
She realized then that these three men weren’t just her captors—they were drowning, and she was the only plank of wood keeping them afloat.
“Fine,” Lyra said, her voice dropping to a low, hard whisper as she wrenched her chin from his grip.
“I’ll play your seer.
But the second this new moon passes, if we are still breathing, you give me my freedom.
No more golden leashes.
No more palace walls.” Jaxon stared at her for a long moment, his jaw tight, before turning back to the table.
“Agreed.
Cassian, get her a clean set of robes from the upper wardrobe.
The coronation begins at dawn, and our new ‘seer’ needs to look like a queen before the vultures arrive.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Deejarh_6075 Twelve days until the new moon!
The countdown has officially begun, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Lyra is about to step out into the royal court as a fake “seer,” but with Elowen watching from the shadows, one wrong move could ruin everything.
What do you think will happen at the coronation?