The fever finally broke in the dead of night.
Soren opened his eyes to complete darkness, except for the faint, deep orange glow of dying coals in the stone fireplace.
The heavy, suffocating weight on his chest wasn’t a blanket; it was Kaelen’s arm and the Alpha was fast asleep beside him, while his massive frame curled slightly around Soren’s smaller body, pinning him to the mattress.
Kaelen’s steady, deep breathing vibrated straight through Soren’s back, sending a strange, quiet rhythm into Soren’s own pulse.
Soren lay frozen in the dark, staring at the heavy velvet curtains across the room.
*I should move,* Soren thought.
*I should shove his arm off me and sit on the edge of the bed*.
Yet, he didn’t.
The freezing chill that usually settled deep within his bones every winter was completely gone.
In its place was a thick, comforting warmth that made his exhausted muscles feel soft and heavy.
Soren looked down at his left hand and saw the clean white linen bandage Kaelen had wrapped around his palm was still neat and secure.
Soren’s throat felt dry as bone when he swallowed hard, carefully grabbing Kaelen’s heavy wrist with his free hand to lift it off his waist.
The moment Soren touched him, Kaelen’s golden eyes snapped open in the dark.
There was no sluggishness in the Alpha’s movement, no lingering haze of sleep instead, In a fraction of a second, Kaelen’s grip tightened on Soren’s waist, his golden eyes glowing like low coals through the shadows as he shifted his head closer.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Kaelen’s voice was a deep, gravelly rasp right beside Soren’s ear.
“I need water,” Soren whispered, his voice raspy.
“Unless you intend to let me die of dehydration after going through all that trouble to bandage my hand.”
Kaelen stared at him for two long seconds, assessing his temperature in the dark.
Satisfied that the burning fever had receded, Kaelen slowly unclasped his arm, letting Soren sit up.
“Stay put,” Kaelen muttered, throwing the heavy wolf furs back and swinging his long legs over the side of the bed.
Soren on the other hand watched as the bare-chested Alpha walked across the room in the dim firelight, his broad back and shoulders showing a few faint, old battle scars and taut flexed muscles, making his face flushed instantly.
Kaelen poured a cup of cold water from the pitcher on the side table and walked back, handing it directly to Soren while he took the silver cup, keeping his head down as he drank every drop.
“Thank you.”
“And there goes the first appreciation…” he looked amused at Soren’s glaring face “You’re welcome,” Kaelen said softly, sitting down on the edge of the mattress beside him.
He reached out, his warm knuckles lightly tapping the bottom of Soren’s jaw, forcing Soren to look up.
“Your skin feels cool.
The lotus nectar is fully stabilizing your core now.”
“It’s buying us time,” Soren corrected, setting the empty cup on the small bedside table.
“Which reminds me…
we need to finish translating the rest of the High Priestess’s scroll while Lucian’s guards are sitting outside.”
Kaelen let out a quiet, dark laugh.
“You just woke up from a magic-induced coma, little spell-cutter.
Can you go five minutes without thinking about work?”
“We have thirty days before the next lunar phase, Kaelen,” Soren said, his bright blue eyes fixing on Kaelen’s face with absolute seriousness.
“If we don’t figure out the second stage of the counter-ritual, this temporary relief won’t matter.
The curse will swallow both our souls.”
Kaelen’s playful smirk faded.
He looked at Soren for a quiet moment, his golden eyes filled with an unreadable, intense heat.
He reached out, his long fingers casually brushing a stray lock of dark hair away from Soren’s forehead.
“Fine,” Kaelen murmured softly.
“I’ll fetch the scroll from my desk.”
For the next two hours, the quiet bedroom became their sanctuary.
Kaelen dragged a heavy table to the side of the bed, placing a lit oil lamp on its surface while Soren sat propped up against the pillows with the old, dark-yellowed parchment spread out across his lap, while Kaelen sat on the edge of the mattress right beside him.
Because the three-foot rose-colored chain between their wrists was short, their shoulders kept brushing every time Soren shifted or turned a page.
The electric warmth of the mate-bond hummed quietly between them, no longer violent, but steady and deep.
“Look here,” Soren said, pointing a pale finger at a complex diagram drawn in dark, faded ink near the bottom of the scroll.
“The High Priestess didn’t just design the curse to kill the Alpha.
She designed it as a dual-core spell.”
“What does that mean?” Kaelen asked, leaning in closer.
The hot scent of cedarwood and rain off his body wrapped around Soren’s senses, making it dangerously hard for Soren to keep his mind focused on the ancient text.
“It means the Blood-Moon Lotus elixir was only the physical cleanser,” Soren explained, tracing the flowing script of the old wolf dialect.
“To sever the soul-knot completely, we have to perform a synchronization ritual at an ancient lunar node.
It requires pure, unrefined moon magic to crack the outer shell of the bond.”
“Is there an altar like that nearby?”
“At the peak of Frost-Pike Pass.
Right on the edge of the Northern border.”
Kaelen frowned, his dark eyebrows pulling together.
“Frost-Pike Pass is hostile territory.
It’s completely abandoned, surrounded by jagged cliffs and treacherous ice.”
“And the ritual can only be performed during a Lunar Eclipse,” Soren added, looking up into Kaelen’s golden eyes.
“Which happens in exactly twenty-eight days.”
Kaelen went quiet, staring down at the diagrams on the page.
“Twenty-eight days,” Kaelen repeated softly.
“And if we fail?”
“If we fail, the magic backfires,” Soren said flatly, though a quiet knot of anxiety tightened in his chest.
“The soul-knot will lock permanently, and our magical cores will implode from the strain.
Neither of us will survive the night.”
Kaelen didn’t look scared.
Instead, his gaze shifted off the parchment and landed squarely on Soren’s face.
He reached out, his calloused thumb resting gently against the side of Soren’s throat, feeling the fast, steady pulse under his skin.
“Then we won’t fail,” Kaelen said, his deep voice full of an absolute, unyielding confidence that made Soren’s breath hitch.
“I don’t die easily, Soren.
And I certainly won’t let some dead High Priestess dictate how my story ends.”
Soren stared at him, feeling his heart give a quiet, traitorous thud against his ribs.
* *How can he be so calm?* Soren thought, his mind spinning.
*He’s facing a treason charge outside his door, a deadly curse in his blood, and he looks at me like we’ve already won.*
“You’re arrogant, Alpha,” Soren rasped out, trying to pull his neck away from Kaelen’s thumb.
“I’m realistic,” Kaelen replied smoothly, his hand sliding down from Soren’s throat to rest heavily on Soren’s shoulder.
His thumb rubbed slow, soothing circles into the fabric of Soren’s tunic.
“And I know that as long as I have my spell-cutter beside me, there isn’t a curse or a Council in this territory that can touch us.”
Soren bit his lower lip hard, looking away from Kaelen’s intense golden gaze before he lost his composure entirely.
The atmosphere in the room felt suffocatingly sweet, thick with an unspoken pull that went far beyond the rose-colored chain connecting their wrists.
Suddenly, a faint, almost imperceptible sound broke the quiet.
CLICK.
It was the distinct, microscopic sound of an iron tumbler lifting inside the heavy wooden deadbolt of the main door.
Kaelen’s entire demeanor changed in a split second.
The soft, warm Alpha vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, deadly predator.
Kaelen didn’t make a sound.
He blew out the oil lamp on the table with a quick breath, plunging the room back into near-total darkness, and pushed Soren gently but firmly back against the headboard of the bed.
“Stay down,” Kaelen breathed right into Soren’s ear, his hand pressing against Soren’s chest to keep him still.
Soren held his breath, his eyes adjusting quickly to the dark.
Someone was picking the lock from the outside.
Not with magic—which would have set off Kaelen’s suppression runes—but with a physical master key.
Only three people in the entire Blackthorn Citadel possessed a master key to the Alpha’s private quarters.
The heavy oak door slowly creaked open an inch.
A tall, broad shadow slipped quietly into the room.
The intruder moved with practiced, silent steps, heading straight toward the bed with a long, dark blade drawn in his right hand.
The metal gave off a faint, sweet, metallic smell—the distinct, sickening scent of wolfsbane poison.
An assassin, Soren thought, his pulse hammering against his throat.
The shadow reached the side of the bed, raising the poisoned blade high above his head, and aiming straight for Soren’s chest.
Before the blade could drop, Kaelen struck.
With the speed of a striking viper, Kaelen reached out from the dark and grabbed the assassin’s wrist, his grip so powerful that the bone let out a sickening CRACK.
The assassin let out a sharp gasp of pain, dropping the poisoned dagger onto the thick wolf furs.
Kaelen didn’t stop there.
He surged off the bed, his massive frame slamming into the intruder with terrifying, brute force.
They hit the hardwood floor together with a heavy thud.
Kaelen dragged the assassin up by his collar, pinning him violently against the stone wall beside the fireplace.
Kaelen reached out with his free hand and kicked the dying embers in the hearth, sending a sudden burst of bright orange firelight leaping into the room.
The firelight illuminated the intruder’s face.
Soren gasped, sitting up quickly on the bed.
It was Sentry Chief Boran—Kaelen’s most trusted security officer, the man who guarded the inner gates of the Citadel.
“Boran?” Kaelen’s voice was dangerously quiet, his golden wolf eyes burning like live coals as he stared at his second-in-command.
“You?”
Boran gritted his teeth through the pain of his broken wrist, his face pale and sweating under Kaelen’s crushing grip.
“I had to do it, Alpha!
I had to!”
“You snuck into my private room to execute my guest?” Kaelen’s fingers tightened around Boran’s throat, cutting off his air supply.
“Who paid you?
Was it Lucian?”
“Lucian is a fool!” Boran choked out, his eyes wide with desperate panic.
“The High Council knows nothing!
It was the Northern Pack!
They promised us peace, Kaelen!
They promised that if we handed over the spell-cutter and cleared the Alpha bloodline, Blackthorn would be spared!”
Inside Soren’s chest, a sudden wave of cold realization hit.
The Northern Pack.
The same rogue faction that had target-bonded Kaelen’s younger brother in the first place.
“You traded your Alpha’s life to a rival pack?” Kaelen whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, lethal rage.
Kaelen raised his fist, his knuckles turning white as he prepared to crush Boran’s skull against the stone wall.
“Kaelen, stop!” Soren called out sharply, swinging his legs off the bed and standing up, the rose-colored chain clinking softly between them.
“Don’t kill him yet!
If he dies now, Lucian will use the noise to storm the room!”
Kaelen froze, his arm locked in mid-air.
He breathed heavily, his chest heaving as he fought down the wild, violent Alpha urge screaming inside his blood.
He glared at Boran for three agonizing seconds before shoving him hard onto the floor.
Boran collapsed on his knees, coughing violently as he clutched his throat.
“You are a traitor to your own blood, Boran,” Kaelen said, his voice cold as ice as he stepped over him and picked up the poisoned dagger from the bed.
He tossed the blade onto the table, then turned to look at Soren.
Soren walked over, standing right beside Kaelen.
He looked down at the disgraced Sentry Chief, then up into Kaelen’s dark, furious face.
“The High Council isn’t our only enemy,” Soren said quietly, his mind putting the pieces together with razor-sharp precision.
“The Northern Pack staged this entire lockdown.
They used Lucian to trap us inside this Citadel so an insider could finish the job.”
Kaelen looked down at Soren, his golden eyes locking onto Soren’s pale face.
The anger in Kaelen’s expression slowly shifted into a dark, resolute resolve.
“They think they have us trapped,” Kaelen said softly, reaching out to wrap his fingers firmly around Soren’s hand.
Their fingers intertwined, the rose-colored chain between their wrists pulsing with a bright, fiery light.
“What are we going to do?” Soren asked, his voice steady despite the chaos around them.
Kaelen stepped closer, his broad frame shielding Soren from the cold air of the room.
A slow, dangerous smirk touched the corner of Kaelen’s lips.
“We leave,” Kaelen murmured into the quiet room.
“Tonight.
We break out of this fortress, slip past Lucian’s guards, and head straight for Frost-Pike Pass.”
NOT THE SENTRY CHIEF BEING THE TRAITOR?!
(•o•)!!
Untrustworthy behavior!
Kaelen snapped that wrist without skipping a beat, but learning that the Northern Pack orchestrated the entire lockdown changes everything.
Now Soren and Kaelen have 28 days to reach the Ancient Moon Altar at Frost-Pike Pass before the Eclipse…
and they have to break out of a besieged fortress in the middle of the night to do it!
Who’s ready for the midnight breakout?
Drop your theories in the comments, add the book to your library, and leave a vote if you’re loving the ride!
See you in Chapter 13!