Chapter 17 #2
We walked the corridor together, a small army of wolves and their allies, ready to face whatever monsters the Council put in our path.
But nothing they had was scarier than what I’d do if they kept me from my mate.
We followed the guard down a corridor so long and narrow it felt like being funneled into the barrel of a rifle.
The walls were bare, no windows, no distractions—just the silence and the echo of our boots.
At the end, a steel door slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and a witch waited on the other side.
She was ancient, but only in the way that mattered: not in the sags of flesh, but in the patient, predatory calm of her eyes.
Her hair was black streaked with silver, slicked back in a wave that accentuated her sharp cheekbones.
She wore a tailored coat, dark purple, with black gloves and boots to match.
Her gaze pinned us to the threshold like specimens, and when she spoke, her accent was clipped and transnational—European, but diluted by centuries of careful affect.
“I am Madame Verna,” she said, eyes lingering on me a second too long. “You are the wolf known as Menace.”
It wasn’t a question. “Bridger Hardin,” I replied. My voice came out rawer than I meant.
She nodded, lips twitching into something that might have been a smile. “Come in.”
The room was an interrogation suite, dressed up as a conference chamber.
Table in the center, two chairs on either side, mirror glass on the wall behind her.
Another guard—witch, this one, with runes inked along her collarbone—stood in the corner, eyes down but ears open.
Bronc and Juliet took seats, but I couldn’t sit.
I paced the perimeter, trying to look at everything at once, trying to sniff out a trap.
Verna didn’t bother with pleasantries. “The Council wishes to confirm the legitimacy of your fated bond,” she said. “For the record, please state how long you have known Savannah Calloway.”
I snorted. “Six weeks, give or take.”
She wrote this down with a fountain pen. “And when did you first suspect she was your mate?”
“First moment I saw her,” I said. “She was chained up in a cell, starved, bleeding. My wolf recognized hers before she even looked at me.”
Verna looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “And you, as a soldier, believe you can trust the instincts of a beast?”
“It’s not instinct,” I said. “It’s chemical. It’s fucking gravity. I walked into the room, and my bones started rearranging themselves just to get closer to her. You think I wanted this?”
She smiled, not unkind. “You would be surprised how many do.” She set her pen down and folded her hands. “Describe what happened next.”
I shrugged. “I broke the locks, got her out. Carried her through the tunnels. She was hallucinating, almost feral, scared shitless. I had to talk her down, let her smell me. I think she hated me at first, or at least the idea of me. But my wolf wouldn’t let go.
She had so much she was dealing with. PTSD.
She’d already been on the run, but that’s her story to tell.
I took care of her after I saved her. She was so lost. Scared.
I went slow as I could. Had to see if she realized. She did.”
Juliet made a small, involuntary noise—a sound of recognition or empathy. Verna ignored it.
“And you marked her?” Verna prompted.
I nodded. “After I made sure she was sure. She said yes. She wanted it. Told me she wanted it more than anything in her life.”
Verna raised an eyebrow. “And you believe this is a genuine bond, not the result of trauma or coercion?”
I stopped pacing and leaned over the table. “You ever see a wolf try to mark an unwilling mate? You’d have a corpse, not a couple.”
She accepted this without a blink. “I must ask these things. Council requires it.”
I sat finally, but only because the urge to throttle someone was fading into exhaustion. “Ask what you need,” I said. “But I’m not leaving here without her.”
Verna considered me for a long moment, then looked to Bronc and Rafe. “Will you support the claim as witnesses?”
Bronc’s voice was calm, but I could see the line of tension at his jaw. “He’s telling the truth. I saw it with my own eyes. If you want, you can interview my Luna. She was there for most of it.”
Verna glanced at Juliet, who nodded once, sharp as a blade.
“Very well.” She reached into a drawer and withdrew a velvet-lined tray.
On it sat two glass vials, one empty, one filled with a viscous blue liquid that shimmered in the overhead lights.
“The process is simple. Blood from both parties is mixed with a reagent. If the bond is true, it turns gold. If not, it goes black.” She said it with a small shrug, as if centuries of heartbreak were none of her business.
I held out my arm before she even asked. She swabbed the crook of my elbow, drew a syringe of blood with clinical speed, and sealed it in a vial. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Now, Savannah,” I said, voice gone hoarse.
“Not yet. There are two more tests,” she said. “First, the resonance artifact.” She set a crystal sphere the size of a billiard ball on the table. “Your mate will hold a matching sphere. If your bond is genuine, they will react.”
“What if she’s too weak?” I asked. “She was in silver for days. You know what that does.”
Verna smiled, but it was sad. “If the bond is real, she could be dead and it would still work.”
I believed her. I gripped the sphere. It was cool and rough, but nothing happened.
“We must wait until Savannah is holding the other,” Verna said, and wrote something else on her pad.
I barely heard her. My focus was down the corridor, through the walls, hunting for any hint of my mate. Nothing yet.
“What’s the third test?” Bronc asked.
Verna looked at him, then at me. “You are both shifters. When together, your auras should synchronize—your heartbeats, your pheromones, even your biochemistry. We have tools to measure this. If the readings do not match, the Council will know.”
I bristled, feeling the wolf surge. “I’m ready. Just get her in here.”
She made a small note, then stood. “It will take thirty minutes to process your blood. I will fetch your mate then. Please wait.”
I couldn’t stand it. “Wait? I’ve waited days. I want to see her now.”
She shrugged. “You are welcome to try the door, but the guards are not as polite as I am.”
For a second, I weighed the odds. But Bronc’s hand closed around my shoulder, an anchor that kept me from doing something stupid.
“It’ll be all right,” he murmured, low and meant only for me. “You’ll see her soon.”
I nodded, but it was all I could do not to rip the table in half.
Verna left. The guard with the runes never moved, but I could feel her watching, her power crawling along the baseboards like frost.
Juliet leaned in, her tone urgent. “You have to keep it together, Menace. They want to see if you’ll lose control. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
“Why do they care?” I snarled. “It’s not like I’m going to turn this into a bloodbath.”
“They need to know you can control yourself around her,” she said. “Otherwise, they’ll say the bond is a liability.”
I shook my head, furious. “Every bond is a liability. That’s the whole point.”
Bronc gave a dry laugh. “Council logic, Menace. Just play along for now.”
I did, but it nearly broke me.
When Verna returned, she was carrying a new tray—this one with two spheres. She set them on the table, then nodded to the guard in the corner.
“Bring her,” she said.
My heart stuttered in my chest. My wolf reared up, ears forward, hackles high.
Juliet reached for my hand. I didn’t let her touch me, but she understood.
It took ten more minutes. Each one was a year. When the door finally opened, the scent hit me before anything else—roses and honey, but also fear and sweat and the metallic note of dried blood. I stood unable to help myself, fists clenched so tight the knuckles went bone white.
They brought Savannah in.
But she was still a room away.
I could see her through the glass, hear her voice through the intercom, but the wall might as well have been a thousand miles thick.
Verna gestured to the spheres. “Now,” she said, and Savannah reached for hers.
The world went white.
The sphere in my hand lit up, a blinding gold that swallowed the entire room.
I heard Bronc swear, heard Juliet gasp, but all I saw was Savannah—her eyes wide and wet, a bruise blooming on her jaw, a smile trying to push through the pain.
The spheres pulsed together, faster and faster, until it hurt to look.
Verna nodded, satisfied. “You may put it down.”
I did, and in that instant the light vanished. I was cold and empty without it.
Savannah’s voice came through the intercom. “Menace?”
I tried to answer, but my throat locked up.
Verna spoke into the mic. “He is here. The bond is strong.”
Savannah smiled, small but real. “I know.”
The glass wall stayed up. No one moved.
“Can I see her?” I asked, my voice shattering on the last word.
“Not yet,” Verna said, soft. “There is still the final test.”
And then she left, and I was alone again, pacing the edges of the room while my mate’s shadow waited just out of reach.