18. Caius
EIGHTEEN
CAIUS
Cordelia’s hands shouldn’t be moving.
The guards haven’t reached the door yet.
I notice the problem a heartbeat before anyone else—the subtle twitch of her fingers, the gathering of power beneath the magical restraints.
She’s bound by Grandmother Peach’s ancient magic, suppressed and contained, but she’s still reaching for power that shouldn’t be accessible.
“Peach—”
“I see it.” The old witch’s voice is sharp, urgent in a way I’ve never heard. “She’s drawing from reserves. Hidden ones. This was planned.”
Cordelia’s eyes snap open. Not the warm brown of her grandmotherly facade—dark, almost black, pulsing with power that makes my wolf snarl.
“You think you’ve won.” Her voice is different too. Layered. Echoing with decades of accumulated magic. “You think exposing me ends this?”
“It certainly complicates your plans.” Anouk steps forward, and I have to fight every instinct not to pull her behind me. She wouldn’t appreciate the gesture.
I didn’t agree with that decision.
“The pairings are abominations.” Cordelia’s bound hands twist in patterns. “But if I can’t stop all of them—”
Dark light spirals from her fingers, ancient words spilling from her lips in a language that predates modern magic. The energy isn’t aimed at the room, the council, the witnesses—
It’s aimed at us. At me. At Anouk.
At the claiming between us.
“Get down!” I throw myself toward Anouk, but the magic is faster. It hits us both like a wall of ice and fire and wrongness, drilling into the place where my awareness of her lives.
The place that’s been steady and warm since we claimed each other.
The place that suddenly feels like it’s being torn apart.
Pain.
Not physical—I’ve been hurt before, badly, and I know what that feels like. This is different. This is the sensation of a fundamental part of myself being ripped away.
The sense of her stutters and fades like a candle in a hurricane.
No.
This isn’t supposed to be possible. The claiming is permanent. Unbreakable. The magic chose us, bound us, made us—
The awareness of her vanishes.
I can’t feel her. I can’t feel where she is, if she’s hurt, if she’s—
Panic claws at my throat. I’ve faced rogue shifters, territorial disputes, magical creatures that could tear a wolf apart. None of it scared me like this. None of it made my heart pound with pure, animal terror.
Because none of it threatened to take her from me.
I try to reach for her through instinct alone, the way wolves find their pack across miles of wilderness. But there’s nothing. Just absence. A void where she should be.
“Caius!”
Her voice. Real. Present. Close.
I force my eyes open. Anouk is three feet away, on her knees, one hand pressed to her shoulder where my claiming mark rests. Her face is pale, jaw clenched, but her eyes are focused. On me.
“I won’t allow it.” Her voice is steady, analytical even through obvious pain. “The ritual—it’s trying, but it’s not working.”
“Impossible.” Cordelia’s snarl cuts through the chaos. “The severing ritual is ancient. Perfect. It should be tearing you apart!”
“Should be.” Grandmother Peach’s voice carries an edge of satisfaction that seems slightly inappropriate given the circumstances. “But the magic you’re invoking is older than your ritual. And considerably more stubborn.”
The dark light around us flickers. Pulses. Strains against a force invisible and immovable.
I reach for Anouk’s hand. Our fingers interlock, and I feel it—the claiming mark on my shoulder flaring with heat, matching the one I left on hers. The compass in my chest spins wildly, searching, desperate—
And locks back into place.
She’s here. She’s alive. She’s mine.
The ritual shatters.
Cordelia screams.
It’s not a sound of pain—it’s fury. Pure, concentrated rage at decades of planning crumbling around her. The dark magic rebounds, backlashing through her own power reserves, leaving her crumpled on the floor with smoke rising from her bound hands.
“No.” She’s struggling to rise, voice cracking. “No, that’s not—the ritual was perfect. I tested it. I prepared for years—”
“You prepared for ordinary claimings.” Grandmother Peach moves with a grace that belies her apparent age, circling Cordelia like a predator assessing wounded prey.
“Recent pairings. Shallow roots. You weren’t prepared for what happens when stubborn people wait entirely too long before admitting what they feel. ”
“What does that mean?” Rhodes has his documentation out. The man would take notes at his own funeral.
“It means their claiming had years to build before it ignited.” Peach’s smile is sharp. “Years of wanting. Years of denial. All that pressure, all that accumulated potential—when it released, it sank roots deeper than any ritual could cut.”
“That’s not how magic works.” Cordelia’s voice is hoarse, bewildered. “That’s not—”
“That’s exactly how love works, you foolish woman.
” Peach’s voice softens with pity. “You spent so long trying to prevent claimings that you forgot what they actually look like. Real ones don’t form on tidy timelines.
They grow in the spaces between stubbornness and fear, and by the time people act on them, the roots have already grown too deep to sever. ”
I’m still holding Anouk’s hand. Still feeling the pulse of her magic through our interlinked fingers, the steady beat of my awareness of her location restored and stronger than before.
“The ritual didn’t just fail,” I realize. “It reinforced what was already there.”
“Preserver magic has never encountered claimed pairs who waited this long.” Peach nods approvingly. “You’ve accidentally discovered the one protection they can’t undo—sheer stubborn refusal to admit your feelings on a reasonable timeline.”
“That’s the most romantic insult I’ve ever heard,” Aslan observes from behind us.
“Seconded,” Torin agrees mildly. “Though I’m choosing to take it as a compliment regarding my own timeline with Sakura.”
“Your timeline was three weeks,” Aslan points out.
“Three very stubborn weeks.”
The Elder Council Chamber looks like a battlefield.
Cordelia is restrained—properly this time, with binding magic from Grandmother Peach layered over standard council containment spells.
The backlash from her failed ritual has left her weakened, her hidden power reserves drained.
She’s still talking, still insisting we don’t understand, but her words are losing coherence.
“You’re making a mistake.” Her voice is ragged but still threaded with conviction. “The pairings will destroy everything. When the Severing breaks completely—”
“When the Severing breaks completely,” Anouk answers, rising to her feet with the composed grace that drives me slightly crazy, “we’ll be ready.”
“You can’t be ready. You can’t understand what you’re unleashing—”
“I understand that you murdered Mathilda Thornwood.” Anouk’s voice is ice.
“I understand that your organization has spent centuries killing anyone who remembered the truth. I understand that your ‘protection’ has been nothing but control.” She pauses.
“And I understand that you failed. The claiming holds. The Severing cracks. Your ritual is broken, and so is your cover.”
Cordelia’s mouth opens, closes. For the first time, genuine fear flickers in her dark eyes. Not fear of us—fear of what her failure means for her organization.
“Take her to the containment cells.” Vera steps forward, her voice carrying authority. “Document everything. We have questions, and she has the rest of her life to answer them.”
Two witch guards step forward. Cordelia is hauled upright, her power suppressed so thoroughly that she stumbles like an ordinary woman her age.
The facade is truly gone now—no more warm smiles, no more maternal concern.
Just cold fury and the hollow certainty of a true believer whose faith has been shaken.
“This isn’t over,” she manages as they lead her away. “There are others. Cells throughout the world. You can’t stop all of us.”
“Maybe not.” Anouk’s voice follows her. “But we stopped you. And we’ll stop the rest.”
The doors close behind them. The chamber falls into the particular silence of people processing trauma.
The alphas were already bickering. That, at least, was normal.
I tune it out, focusing instead on Anouk. She’s still standing straight, still projecting perfect control, but I can see the micro-tremors in her hands. The way her magic is sparking at her fingertips. The exhaustion she’s refusing to acknowledge.
My wolf rumbles a demand I’m inclined to agree with.
Take care of her. Get her somewhere safe. Make sure she rests.
For once, I don’t argue with my instincts.
The gathering disperses in pieces.
Vera takes charge of the council cleanup, directing witches with quiet efficiency. Grandmother Peach vanishes as mysteriously as she arrived—one moment standing by the damaged windows, the next gone entirely, leaving only a faint scent of peach cobbler in her wake.
Berry Thornwick is interviewing everyone who will stand still long enough, her quill moving so fast it’s tearing holes in the paper. “For the historical record,” she keeps saying. “Posterity will want details.”
“Posterity can wait until I’ve had a drink,” Aslan tells her.
“Posterity doesn’t care about your drinking schedule.”
“Posterity doesn’t know what I’ve been through today.”
Sunny Clearwater has somehow materialized with another basket of calming pastries.
“Emergency stress relief,” she announces, pressing a scone into Jasper Moonwell’s trembling hands.
“Biscuit and I sensed distress from the bakery. Also, the thunderstorm in the enchanted windows was visible from three streets away.”
The alphas cluster near the doors, exchanging looks that communicate volumes. Elio catches my eye, tilts his head in Anouk’s direction with a meaningful expression.
Go. We’ve got this covered.