Chapter 30 #3
The bond sang between them. No longer frayed or strained but whole.
Steady. Something that had been broken by the chemical dampening now burned bright and clear, and through it he felt everything she felt—the lingering ache of her healed bruises, the exhaustion pulling at her limbs, and underneath it all, the fierce, stubborn warmth that refused to let him go.
“It’s done,” he said into her hair. “They’re gone. All of them.”
Her arms wrapped around him—fragile, human, stronger than they had any right to be. “Good.”
Not judgment. Not horror at what he’d done. Just acceptance. Understanding.
He held her tighter and let the bond settle between them—steady, warm, unbroken.
But the rage wasn’t gone. It coiled beneath his skin like a living thing, hungry and restless, demanding more.
Fourteen dead, and still his claws itched to keep hunting.
To find everyone who had ever looked at Elsa with calculation in their eyes.
Everyone who had whispered about his weakness, his obsession, his unfitness to rule.
Every citizen who had doubted his reign and thought themselves clever enough to exploit it.
The fortress wasn’t clean. Not yet. There would be more—sympathizers, opportunists, cowards who had known about Vask’s plot and said nothing.
He could smell them in his walls like rot in old wood, and something feral in his chest demanded he tear the whole structure apart until nothing remained but loyalty and bone.
Elsa shifted against him, and the bond pulsed with her exhaustion, her pain, her stubborn refusal to let go of him even now.
“Elsa.” His voice came out wrecked. “There are things I need to tell you. Choices I’ve been keeping from you.
Things you deserve to know before—” He stopped.
Before what? Before this went further? Before he lost himself entirely in the scent of Frosted Tears and the impossible warmth of her body against his?
She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. Her hand rose to his muzzle, tracing the blood-matted fur without flinching.
“Then tell me.”
“The Blood Moon rises soon.” The words scraped out of him, rough and raw.
“It’s… it calls to something in us. In me.
The instincts that make us what we are—they sharpen under that light.
Hunting. Claiming. The need to prove ourselves worthy of what we hold.
” His claws flexed against her back, and he felt her shiver through the bond.
“As king, I’m expected to run the Mating Hunt.
It’s tradition. Sacred. And right now, with the court watching for weakness, with Vask’s blood still fresh—”
He broke off, jaw tight. The feral thing inside him snarled at the thought of appearing weak. Of giving his enemies any reason to challenge what he’d claimed tonight.
“You need to run it,” Elsa said. Not a question.
“It’s in my blood. My instincts. Everything I am demands it.” He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing her in. “But there’s more. Things I need to explain properly, when we’re not both covered in blood and barely standing. Tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”
Yarx cleared his throat from somewhere behind them—a careful, deferential sound that nonetheless cut through the moment like a blade.
“My king.” The healer’s voice was steady, but Sylas could smell his unease. “The female… she’s in no condition to be moved. Not without using the Tear Dome to—”
“No.”
Elsa’s voice was sharp enough to make both males freeze. She pulled back from Sylas, her jaw set despite the exhaustion dragging at her features.
“I’m not going back in one of those things.
” Her breath came faster, and through the bond Sylas felt a spike of something that wasn’t quite fear—deeper than that, more visceral.
“I woke up in one of those glowing bubbles not knowing where I was, not knowing if I was dead or dreaming or—” She shook her head, hard. “I’m claustrophobic. I can’t. I won’t.”
Yarx’s ears flattened. “The Tear Dome is the most efficient method of—”
“Give me a medgun.” Sylas didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t need to. The command cut through the healer’s protest like a swipe of his talons. “I’ll tend to her myself. In my den.”
“My king, the medgun requires training to—”
“I’ve used one before.” Sylas bared his teeth—not quite a threat, but close. “She’s not going in a dome. She’s not staying in the infirmary where anyone could reach her. She’s coming with me.”
Yarx tilted his head, exposing the vulnerable line of his throat. The ancient gesture of submission, of trust, of acknowledging the Alpha’s authority without question.
“It will be done, my king.”
Sylas crossed to the medical station and took a medgun from the rack—a sleek silver device that hummed with Lux Tear energy when he activated it. Yarx watched but didn’t protest, his earlier objections swallowed by the weight of his king’s command.
Then Sylas returned to Elsa and gathered her against his chest once more. She went willingly, her arms wrapping around his neck, her face pressing into the blood-matted fur of his shoulder like she didn’t care about the violence still clinging to him.
“Hold on,” he murmured against her hair.
His wristband flared blue—the Lux Tear at its center blazing with power—and the world folded around them.
When it unfolded again, they were in his den.
Home. Safety. The one place in all his fortress where he could finally, finally let the feral thing inside him rest.
With her.