The Tether Tightens
Kieran POV
The Council papers on my desk might as well have been written in ancient Draconian for all the sense they made to me right now.
“Grain yields in the Western valleys remain steady...”
I stared at the words, but all I saw was a pair of mismatched eyes staring back at me from a face smeared with ash and dirt. All I felt was the phantom sensation of movement, of a body turning in perfect synchronization with mine, of a bite snapping shut exactly when I needed an opening.
My wolf wasn’t just pacing today; he was howling. A low, constant thrum of want that vibrated against my ribs. It wasn’t just curiosity anymore. It was a pull. A tether. I had felt it snap into place the moment we took down that aberration together.
I shoved the papers aside and stood up, the heavy oak chair scraping loudly against the stone floor.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the carpet, boss.”
I looked up. Jax was leaning against the doorframe of my study, spinning a dagger idly between his fingers. He looked... fine. Better than fine.
Yesterday, he had been a crumpled mess of broken ribs and bruised organs, batted aside by a monster’s tail like a ragdoll. Today, the only sign of the trauma was a yellowish bruise fading on his jawline and a stiffness in the way he held his left shoulder.
“You should be resting,” I growled, though the relief in my chest was palpable. Werewolf regeneration was a miracle, but taking a hit from a siege-beast wasn’t something you just slept off lightly.
“I’m healed, Kieran,” Jax shrugged, walking into the room and dropping onto the sofa. “Ribs are knitted. Lungs are fine. It just itches like crazy, which means it’s done.”
He looked at me, his dark eyes sharp. “Besides, I couldn’t sleep. The noise coming from your head was too loud.”
“I am not projecting,” I muttered, walking to the window that overlooked the misty expanse of the border.
“You are,” Jax corrected. “You’re projecting loudly. You’re thinking about her.”
I didn’t deny it. There was no point. The subpack shared a bond that went deeper than words. They knew.
“We were in sync, Jax,” I said quietly, gripping the stone sill. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Not with Silas. Not with my father. It was... absolute.”
“I saw,” Jax said. “We all saw. You two took down that aberration like you were dancing a waltz. It was terrifying. And impressive.”
“I need to find her,” I said, the words tasting like iron and necessity. “I need to know who she is. I need to know why a rogue with that kind of skill is living in a graveyard covered in dirt.”
“We know,” a new voice chimed in.
I turned. The rest of the subpack was filing into the room. Silas, Elara, Mara, Kael, Juno, and Torin.
Mara dropped a heavy canvas map onto my desk. It was a detailed topographical chart of the Forbidden Lands, or at least, the parts we had mapped before the war.
“We leave at dawn,” Silas stated simply, crossing his arms.
I blinked. “I didn’t order a mission.”
“No,” Elara said, stepping forward and tapping a finger on the map. “But you were going to go alone. You were going to wait until tonight, shift, and run off into the woods like a love-sick puppy to chase a ghost.”
“I was not,” I lied.
“You absolutely were,” Juno grinned, leaning on Torin’s shoulder. “You have that look. The ‘I am the King and I do what I want’ look. It usually precedes you doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous.”
“The Forbidden Lands are massive, Kai,” Torin rumbled. “Mountains, swamps, ravines. Monsters that eat nightmares for breakfast. You can’t track her alone.”
“She knows the terrain,” Jax added, standing up and joining the circle. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows every rock and tree out there. If you go alone, she’ll just lead you into another bog and laugh at you.”
I looked at them. My family. My pack. They weren’t trying to stop me. They were enabling me, but ensuring I didn’t get myself killed in the process.
“We don’t even know where to start,” I admitted, looking down at the map. “She vanished into Sector 5. She could be anywhere.”
“We start with the water sources,” Elara said, her finger tracing the river lines. “She’s a wolf, rogue or not. She needs water.”
“It’s a needle in a haystack,” I warned. “A needle that can seemingly manipulate wind and drop from sixty-foot trees without breaking a bone.”
“Then we bring a magnet,” Mara grinned, tapping the hilt of her blade. “Or at least, enough of us to corner her properly this time. And let’s avoid the mud pits.”
“We go in prepared,” Silas said, his voice serious. “Full gear. Shift-kits. Supplies for three days. If we don’t find her by then, we regroup. We can’t leave the Kingdom vulnerable for too long.”
I looked at the map, then out the window toward the dark, menacing tree line of the Forbidden Lands. Somewhere out there, she was moving. Hunting. Surviving.
My wolf let out a satisfied huff in my mind. The hunt is on.
“Tomorrow,” I agreed, looking back at my pack, gratitude warring with the obsessive drive to move now. “First light. We find the Rogue.”
“And when we find her?” Kael asked, tilting his head. “Do we capture her? Recruit her? Invite her to tea?”
I paused. What was the plan? She had rejected me twice. She had run from me. She clearly wanted nothing to do with Valdora.
“We talk to her,” I said firmly. “I want answers. And...” I hesitated, feeling the pull again. “I want to see if that sync was a fluke. Or if it was something else.”
“Right,” Kael smirked. “Tea it is.”
“Get your rest,” I ordered, dismissing them. “Tomorrow, we enter the Forbidden Lands.”
----
Aurora POV
The water of the Starfall Falls by the Mirror Lake is cold enough to numb bones, which is exactly why I stood under it for twenty minutes.
I needed to scrub the dirt off. I needed to scrub the mud off. But mostly, I needed to scrub the memory of him off.
Now, hours later, I was lying on the sun-warmed slate of the Wyvern nesting grounds, though the slate is cooling due to the setting sun. My fur is dry, back to its clean state of being snow white. I looked like a ghost against the dark, jagged rocks.
I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t be alone tonight. The silence of the forest, usually my oldest friend, felt too heavy. It felt like it was judging me. For the first time in years, I felt lonely.
A heavy, scaled head nudged my ribs, letting out a low, chirping hiss.
I sighed, shifting slightly to accommodate the weight. The young female, Wyvern, was curled around me like a massive, scaly donut. She pressed her snout into my flank, her leathery wings draped over me like a blanket.
She was cooling down, as reptiles always do when the sun is away, but her weight was grounding. It stopped me from feeling like I was floating away.
I rested my chin on the base of her neck, staring out at the mist rising from the lake.
‘What the hell was that, Aurora?’ I asked myself for the hundredth time.
I’ve spent eight years ignoring the borders. I’ve watched patrols get chased by Thunder-Boars and didn’t lift a paw. I’ve seen Vampires skirmish with Draconians and just ate snacks in a tree. My rule is simple: Stay hidden. Stay alive.
But today... today was different.
It hadn’t been a conscious choice. Not really. I was hunting. I was happy. And then, snap. A physical yank from deep within me. A scream in my blood that wasn’t panic, but imperative.
Go. He needs you.
Not “they.” He.
I had moved before I even processed the thought.
And when I saw him, the obsidian wolf, the Storm Alpha, standing there, ready to take a death blow for his pack...
I couldn’t let that happen, and before I even had time to reconsider, I had already launched myself off the cliff and attacked the face of that abomination.
And the fight.
I shivered, and the Wyvern grumbled in her sleep, tightening her coil around me.
We had moved like water. No words. No signals. I’d zig, he’d zag. I’d bait, he’d attack. It was terrifying. I’ve never been in sync with anyone. Even with my own family, before the end, we had to communicate. With him? It was like sharing a nervous system.
I closed my eyes, but I could still see his gold eyes. I could still smell him, cedar, ozone, and the undeniable scent of him, of Alpha power.
‘It’s just the adrenaline,’ I tried to convince myself. ‘It’s just because he’s strong. Game recognizes game. That’s all.’
But I knew it was a lie.
I had run because if I stayed one second longer, if I let him ask “Who are you?“, I would have crumbled. I might have told him everything. I would have let him take me back to his castle, and I would have doomed us both.
The Wyvern let out a puff of smoke from her nostrils, a small grey ring drifting up into the night. She didn’t care about politics. She didn’t care about extinct bloodlines or ancient wars. She just knew I was warm, and I smelled like a friend.
I nuzzled into her scales, letting the rough texture scratch my cheek.
‘This is better,’ I told myself, the lie tasting bitter on my tongue. ‘Lizards are simple. Lizards don’t ask questions. Lizards don’t look at you like you’re the answer to a prayer you didn’t know you were praying.’
I closed my eyes, listening to the slow, rhythmic heartbeat of the monster I’d saved, trying desperately to forget the heartbeat of the wolf I’d left behind.