Chapter 3
THREE
RAIDEN
The world drips in shadows and static.
For a moment, I’m nowhere. Nothing. Just flickers of sound and light and pain—pain that crawls along my spine like fire laced with gasoline, burning into my skin. My ears twitch, catching the soft hum of rune wards and distant footsteps. My claws curl against thin fabric beneath me.
Not a dream. But close.
My tails shift first, all six of them, sluggish and too heavy, twitching as though trying to shake the excess magic off. The tips still spark with latent electricity, crackling faintly in the silence.
My limbs ache. My bones feel like they’ve been snapped and poorly reassembled. The shift back to human form is already pulling at me, dragging me toward the surface whether I’m ready or not.
I groan as the transformation hits.
Everything burns. The bones in my fingers shatter and reform, fur drawing back into skin, tails flickering out with jolts of electric recoil. My chest heaves with the effort, breath scraping up through my raw throat. It feels like I’m dying. It hasn’t felt this bad since my first shift.
When I open my eyes, the world is dim—washed in the blue glow of ward light. Night clings to the infirmary like fog, thick and unmoving. Beds line the walls, curtains drawn, shadows stretching long across the stone floor. Pain, fear, and trauma settles in the quiet.
But it’s the figure at my bedside that pulls me fully awake.
Tall. Severe. Dressed in ceremonial black with kitsune crests stitched in silver along the collar. His presence presses down like a blade at my throat.
Father.
“You’ve made a mess,” he says, voice low and precise.
I blink slowly, my vision still warping at the edges. My throat is dry. My body won’t stop shaking from the shift. “What—?”
“You put yourself into the middle of this one. The tether, the Veilbind.” He says it like a curse. “You will sever it. You will stay away from that girl. Like you should have done already.”
It takes a second for the words to absorb through the pain still running through my body.
Lindsay.
My pulse stumbles.
He wants me to sever our bond. If he demanded it in the beginning, I would have in a heartbeat. It was forced on me. The school said it had chosen me. That she needed someone strong enough to handle her magic, and I was it. I didn’t get a vote. No one asked what I wanted.
Our training bond was what the school wanted. And I follow the rules.
Sanctioned. Justified. A formal arrangement so I could “train” her, keep her from spiraling out of control. It was supposed to be about safety. Containment.
But it isn’t that anymore. It’s grown into something else. And somehow, he knows it. My stomach drops.
“You will sever it,” Father says again. “Before it roots itself deeper.”
“I didn’t ask for the bond,” I say, voice raw. “The school made the call. The council approved it. Her magic chose me.”
“They approved a training bond,” he snaps. “What you’ve formed is something else.”
I push myself up, ignoring the burn in my shoulders, the way my limbs shake from the shift. “I’ve done what they asked. I’ve trained with her, kept her stable. She needs me.”
He steps closer, and the air thins around him. “You’ve kept her close. That is not the same thing.”
“She needed someone.”
“You need to stop lying to yourself,” he says coldly. “This isn’t about training anymore. That girl has gotten under your skin, and you let her. Now, you need to cut her out. Or I’ll do it for you. Do you understand?”
The bond pulses, not liking the threat.
Not just a training tether anymore. Not some sanctioned arcane leash the school wrapped around us for safety and structure. It’s grown roots—deeper, wilder, more hers than it ever should have been.
It lives in me now. Wrapped around the pieces I don’t show anyone. Soothing me even when I'm alone.
For a moment, I imagine what it would feel like to sever it. To rip her magic from mine, to purge the warmth I still feel low in my chest. To be empty.
My throat tightens. My breath stutters. It wouldn't be pleasant.
I could do it. I’ve done harder things for my clan. For my father. For honor.
But this…this would break something I don’t think I could fix.
“I can feel her,” I say quietly. “Still. Like she’s just on the other side of my skin. Almost like we are one person. I don’t think I can sever it without harming myself.”
My father doesn’t move. The silence hangs between us, his disappointment in all the words he isn’t saying.
“She trusts me,” I whisper, almost pleading with him.
Father’s voice turns to ice. “Then she is a fool. And so are you.”
The bond pulses again, and this time, I see it.
A thread of gold flickering in the air between us, humming softly as it stretches across the infirmary—disappearing past the drawn curtain that separates our beds. I can’t see her, but I don’t need to.
She’s close.
I can feel the heat of her magic brushing against mine. A subtle thrum in the silence, a whisper in my chest: I’m still here. I reach out without thinking, fingers brushing through the space where the bond glows. It doesn’t burn. It calms. It anchors me in a way that nothing ever has before.
My father presses his lips together as he watches me. As if he can read my mind and he knows what I’m considering. “You will do this,” he says, quiet and final. “For the clan. It is not a discussion.”
My jaw tightens.
For most of my life, that would have been enough. One command. One expectation. I would’ve obeyed, no matter what it cost me. But not this time.
Not with her.
I shake my head, slow but steady. “No.”
His expression doesn’t change. Not right away. It stays carved in stone, unreadable, but the temperature in the room shifts. Magic coils tight in the air. Heavy. Suffocating.
“I won’t sever it,” I say, firmer now. “She’s not a threat. Not to me.”
“You don’t know that,” he snaps.
“I do.” My voice cracks with it. “I feel it—she's inside my magic, my blood, and it doesn’t hurt. It grounds me.”
“Then it has already taken hold,” he mutters, eyes narrowing like I’ve proven his worst fears. “And it will only get worse.”
He turns away for a moment, running a hand over the front of his cloak like brushing off ash. Then he faces me again, cold fury sitting just beneath the surface.
“You shame your bloodline.”
“I’m not ashamed,” I say, quiet and certain. “For the first time in my life, that's the one thing I don't feel.”
He stares at me for one long breath, disappointment radiating off him like smoke from a fire. Then he straightens.
“Then I’ll do it for you.”
Before I can move or speak, he turns and vanishes into the dark. The moment the words leave his mouth—Then I’ll do it for you—the bond flares so sharply I nearly bend in half. Magic rips across my chest. Not just pain, but protest. The Veilbind knows. It feels the threat.
“No,” I gasp, struggling to sit fully upright. My body screams in resistance, muscles locking as leftover shift-magic scrapes raw through my nerves.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
The infirmary spins, the floor lurching beneath me before I even touch it, but I don’t stop.
I reach for the robe tossed over the chair near my bed and drag it around my shoulders, fingers fumbling with the clasp.
My skin is still too hot, raw with electricity, but I don’t care.
The bond pulls at me—gold and alive and panicked. It stretches like a thread being wound tighter and tighter, leading me straight across the room.
To her.
My feet hit the cold stone, bare and trembling, but I move. One step. Then another.
I follow the tether past the row of beds and the faintly glowing orb-lamps, toward the drawn curtain near the far wall. She’s there. I know she’s there.
Her magic pulses like a heartbeat. But as I cross the threshold—it reacts. A rush of power blasts outward from her bed, smacking into my chest like a wall. Not violent. But firm.
Protective.
She’s not fully in her body. And whatever magic is guarding her now, it’s keeping everything away. Even me. I brace a hand on the foot of her bed, my other hand clutched at my chest as the bond burns in quiet warning.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I whisper. “I’m here to keep you safe.”
The air hums. The wards don’t drop, but the flare settles. And beneath all of it, her magic answers me.
Faint. Fragile.
But there.
I grip the edge of her bed harder, jaw tight, heart pounding. I don’t know what this bond is becoming. I don’t know what it will cost me. But I know one thing with absolute certainty:
If my father comes for her—if he tries to sever this—he’ll have to go through me.