Fury Bound (The Wolves of Ruin #2)

Chapter 1

MERYN

Take a breath, Meryn.

Darkness writhes around me, moving in impossible ways. It parts in heartbeats, revealing images that tear me asunder.

Blood, in a viscous scarlet splatter.

Breathe.

Violent red streaks across the gray stone floor.

Breathe.

Across my little sister Saela’s snarling face—her lips and her… fangs.

Meryn, take a breath.

My chest aches painfully, and the shadows contract together again, bringing the room into pitch black once more. As they do, strong, comforting arms tighten around my middle.

But I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—

“Take a breath, Meryn!”

I gasp, breath stuttering. The growling voice in my head is not my own, I realize, but that of my bonded direwolf, Anassa. The towering silver-white wolf butts her nose into my side as air floods my lungs, and I come fully back into my body.

The shadows part again. It’s a strange new power, but I have some level of control over it. Clearly, it responds to my emotions.

To my shock. To my fury.

I’ve spent the past four months training to become one of the Bonded, all in hopes of getting to the front lines of the war to find Saela. She was kidnapped out of our home, stolen in the night to feed the Siphons in our neighboring country of Astreona.

Or so I thought.

Saela spasms on the floor before me, blood dripping from her chin. I flinch at the sight of her new fangs. After everything I went through to find her, to save her… my little sister has been turned into one of them. A Siphon herself.

With the uncontrollable bloodlust to prove it.

Helene, a member of the Daemos pack, stands to the side of Stark’s office. Her stunned eyes are wide, and she holds a hand over her bloodied neck—but she’s safe. Her bond with her direwolf has already healed the wound Saela inflicted.

Helene is fine, but my sister, my everything…

I lunge toward Saela, desperate to get to her, to help her, to stop her, to somehow change what’s happening.

But those arms around me hold me tight.

“Let me go, Stark!” I spit. The shadows surge toward us, responding to my aggravation.

Before I can free myself, Stark’s massive black direwolf, Cratos, lunges toward Saela with a violent growl.

My stomach drops, and I fight hopelessly against Stark’s strong hold. “No!”

Cratos is going to kill her. My sweet girl, my beautiful sister. He’s going to tear out her throat because she’s dangerous now.

Tears flood down my face in hot rivulets.

“Stop him,” I plead to both Stark and Anassa. “Cratos, stop!”

He pounces on her, and I scream. The room goes dark again.

Anassa nuzzles her nose into my side, harder this time. “Meryn, he is not killing her. He is restraining her for your protection, and for everyone else’s. Take another breath.”

I do as I’m told. The shadows part again.

Cratos holds Saela down, two huge paws pressing against her back, pushing her into the floor. Even so, she bucks back, nearly knocking him off her.

Nearly knocking a gigantic direwolf at least three times her size off with the flex of her spine.

My mouth falls open, and I can feel the color leave my face. All that strength in the body of an eleven-year-old girl.

Saela’s never been physically strong. She was the book-smart child. I was the strong one. She took to self-defense training well, but even still—she’s always fought with words, not muscles.

Her hazel eyes sharpen, and she moves her body again, and again, bouncing Cratos up and down. Anassa meets my gaze with her golden one, and I can tell what she’s thinking without her even communicating it.

Cratos alone won’t keep her down. Anassa bounds over to her mate, adding her paws to Saela’s back.

My blood runs hot with fear. Not just for my sister… but of her.

We spent classes here learning about Siphons, studying them, but there’s still so much I don’t know. Do Siphons maintain any ounce of who they were before they changed? How human are they still, after the fangs?

I want to run to her, to hold her in my arms as I did just moments ago. She was smiling and safe.

She was safe.

Is she even in there anymore? Or is she going to be like… this? Forever?

Saela screams, a bloodcurdling shriek that echoes through the room. This is hurting her.

My elbow slams into Stark’s side, and I slip free. But only for a moment. His hand closes around my wrist and yanks me back so hard that my shoulder nearly wrenches from its socket.

“Newly turned Siphons are at their most dangerous,” Stark hisses in my ear.

He secures me against his chest, his arms like iron restraints. His touch burns through me, and I hate it. I hate it and I cling to it, too.

“I’ve seen this at the front. Many times. It’s a game the Astreonans like to play. Please, listen.”

I still, momentarily shocked out of my panic by the urgency in his voice. Please, he said.

“They turn our soldiers into Siphons and set them on our forces. When the turning first takes place, new Siphons are consumed by bloodlust and will kill anything in sight. She doesn’t know you right now, and she could kill you,” Stark says quietly.

She could kill you. Saela, the little girl who would weep if I tied her plaits too tightly.

Who would lock our door and lay her head in my lap on the nights our mother got violent.

Who once caught a mouse in our home and instead of killing it or moving it outside, created a little bed for it inside a matchbox and named it Felix.

How is this real? But he’s right. Shockingly, terrifyingly right. My sweet baby sister is… gone.

My mind spins as I try to think of what to do next and ignore the churning, vengeful thoughts about why we’re in this situation. Of the man—no, the monster—who did this to my sister.

My betrothed.

Wrath slices through me, making my veins burn—and with it, the shadows streak toward the ceiling in a merciless wave.

Another breath, and the shadows slide down the walls.

This is what he would want: me, too distracted and weak to even deal with the crisis at hand.

He’s not allowed to manipulate my actions any longer. Saela needs me to be calm and levelheaded.

She comes first.

“Cratos and I cannot continue to hold her like this forever,” Anassa says, sensing my train of thought.

“Okay,” I say, mind clearing. “We need to restrain her.”

I straighten up against Stark, and he must be able to tell that I’m not going to bolt toward Saela again, because he loosens his grip on me.

“And then we have to take her somewhere secure,” I tell Stark. “Somewhere she can’t hurt herself or others while we figure out what to do.”

Blinking to clear my vision, I wipe my cheek with a shaky hand. The solution has come to me, and I hate it.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we’ll need to move her back to the dungeons.”

The suggestion tastes wrong and foul on my tongue. Putting my sister back in that dark, nightmarish place. But what other choice do we have?

Turning, I look at Helene and Grigore. The color has returned to Helene’s cheeks, but Grigore still hovers over her worriedly, a hand on her shoulder.

“You two will keep this a secret. You are to tell absolutely no one what you witnessed here.”

Finally, hearing the icy tone of my voice, Stark releases me fully, and the loss of his touch is momentarily jarring.

His long legs carry him across the room in only a few strides, and I watch numbly as he yanks a chest open and riffles through it for something.

He’s back at my side quickly but passes me by to reach Saela.

Stark drags his hand along Cratos’s side before he kneels and seizes my sister’s legs, pulling them together to bind them tightly. Silver chains, I realize, strong enough to contain her. And a cloth to use as a gag.

He takes hold of her dark hair so that he can fasten the gag between her fangs. The sight enrages me, my fingers twitching with the need to hit him. Anassa bristles, too, a low growl rumbling through her. But Cratos leans forward and nudges his nose to hers to help her through the emotion.

Even as I’m pissed, I’m grateful, too, because it needs to be done and goddess knows I could never have done it myself.

I still can’t entirely admit to myself that this is really happening. That I’m about to lock my sister behind bars like she’s the enemy.

That, in fact, she’s become an enemy.

She would kill me. Saela would kill me if those chains weren’t around her limbs.

Stark nods Grigore over, and the two of them lift her together. She writhes in their arms, blood-streaked and struggling, but the chains have her bound tightly. I glance away, my throat tight.

I can’t watch her like this, so I do the only thing I can do: put one foot in front of the other and lead everyone to the dungeons. I take them to the primary ones, not the hidden place where Saela and the other children were kept.

It seems like only hours ago that Venna took me into the belly of the castle to discover my sister in captivity. Only hours ago we were plotting to get her out. I never dreamed I’d be imprisoning her again.

We move quietly, quickly, avoiding all notice. My surroundings are a cruel mimicry of my mental state as we spiral down deeper and deeper into darkness and disrepair.

The passageways that lead to the dungeons are damp and bleak, cracks running through the stones, meltwater seeping in here and there. The sconces on the walls are less and less frequent. Finally, we arrive at a row of relatively dry, well-lit cells.

The first has barbaric spikes and wall-mounted racks, and we quickly hustle past it. Stark and Grigore stop two doors down, peering into the space. I hover behind them, my eyes adjusting slowly to the ever-increasing darkness.

Stark looks to me for the decision, and I nod, almost imperceptibly. Approving my sister’s imprisonment. Reimprisonment.

“Helene,” I say hoarsely. She looks up at me, eyes wide. “Go find Leader Aldrich and send him to us.”

Leader Aldrich is the oldest Bonded at the castle and the most seasoned leader. He was in charge of our Bonding Trials.