6. Tovian
TOVIAN
The mountain forest is never truly silent—wind moves through pine needles, small things scatter through frost-hardened undergrowth, the cold itself makes noise. But the trees have gone still.
I sense three of them. Moving in a loose spread pattern through the dark below the ridge, trying to use the tree line for cover.
Amateur. Their stone-scent is wrong, too pale, too mineral-dry.
Not Ashwing. Their wings are folded tight against their backs, a practiced posture that shows they were trained to move through human settlements without being spotted.
I drop from the canopy without a sound.
The first one I take by the throat before his feet leave the ground.
The second spins, jaw dropping to call out—my wing clips him across the skull hard enough to buckle his knees.
The third bolts. I let him reach almost twenty strides before I land on him from above, pinning him face-down into the frozen earth with one knee between his wings.
I need them breathing.
I drag all three back to the caves by the scruff of their necks like broken hounds. Vorgrym is waiting in the lower chamber when I arrive, arms folded, one ruined eye tracking the bodies I drop onto the stone floor with zero ceremony.
"Scouts," he says flatly. He crouches in front of the one still most conscious, the first, whose throat is already bruising black from my grip.
"What territory?" Vorgrym asks him.
The scout spits blood onto the stone.
I close my fist in his collar and drag his face an inch from mine.
"He asked you a question."
"Cragborn holds four peaks now." His voice is cracked but the arrogance underneath it is still intact. Idiots always hold onto their arrogance longest.
"Tharros sends his regards, Ashwing. He says the Blackstone peaks were abandoned. He says unclaimed territory belongs to the first Alpha willing to bleed for it."
Tharros. That single name carries centuries of bad history between us and he knows it as well as I do.
"These peaks were never abandoned."
"You were stone for three centuries." He bares his teeth—chipped, stained, the teeth of something that has been in too many fights. "The world didn't wait for you to wake up."
Vorgrym's expression doesn't change. Mine doesn't either.
"How many warriors?" I ask.
He laughs. "You'll find out when—"
I break two of his fingers against the stone floor. The laugh stops.
We continue.
By the time I have what I need—numbers, approach routes, the timeline of Tharros's advance through the eastern passes—the arrogance has finally drained out of all three of them
I straighten up.
"Wait—" the second one starts.
I don't wait.
The first goes down under my elbow, one strike, temple to floor. The second and third get their warning cut short when I close my hand around their throats and drive him into the wall hard enough to spider the stone.
It is over in the space of three breaths. Not clean—I am not in the mood for clean—but instantaneous. The chamber goes quiet. Vorgrym doesn't flinch. He has watched me work before.
What I am not expecting is the heartbeat behind me.
I smell her before I turn. Her heart is hammering so hard I can feel it from six feet away, a small frantic percussion against her ribcage.
I turn slowly.
Sabine stands at the opening of the tunnel leading back into the main chamber, one hand braced against the rock wall. The torchlight catches her face—pale, wide-eyed, the color completely drained from her olive skin. She is staring at the floor of the chamber. Then at me.
I am covered in their blood.
She has clearly been standing there long enough to have seen everything.
For a moment neither of us speaks. Slowly, Vorgrym removes himself from the room.
"Those were—" Sabine stops. Swallows. Starts again, and I watch her force her voice steady through sheer stubbornness. "They weren't hunting the valley, were they? They were hunting me."
My silence is answer enough.
She stares at the bodies on the floor. I watch her process it—the horror, the revulsion, and then underneath both, the sharp cold intelligence that is never very far behind her eyes. She is piecing it together in real time. I can almost see it happen.
"Because of the bond," she says quietly. "Because I woke you up, and now every rival clan in the territory knows your attention is split."
"They believe it is split." I move to the basin against the far wall and begin washing my hands. The water runs dark. "To another Alpha, a bonded male is a compromised male. They will always go for the mate first. It is faster than a direct challenge."
"Faster." She repeats the word like it’s foul. "So I am a tactical liability."
"You are a structural weakness."
"That makes me feel so much better, thank you."
I glance at her over my shoulder. The sarcasm is back, I think.
"Let me go."
She says it without preamble, stepping fully into the chamber now, arms crossed like she is trying to hold herself together by force of will alone.
"Release me. Whatever you did, whatever this bond is—undo it. Send me back to the village. If I'm not here, they have no reason to come for me. You remove the weakness. Your war gets simpler."
I dry my hands.
"Tovian." Her voice cracks slightly on my name and she hates it—I see her hate it. "I am asking you to let me go. I have a brother in that village. I have a life that existed before I fell through your ceiling. Just—break it. Break whatever spell this is."
I turn to face her fully and watch her chin come up. She holds my gaze. She always holds my gaze, even when every piece of her survival instinct must be screaming at her not to.
It should not affect me but it does.
"It is not a spell," I say.
"Then what is it?"
I cross the chamber toward her. She doesn't back away, which is either the bravest thing I have ever witnessed or the most reckless. I stop close enough that my shadow swallows her whole. She has to tilt her head back to keep looking at me. I let her.
"The First Blood Bond is older than your cathedral," I say.
My voice comes out low, rougher than I meant for it to be.
The stone beneath our feet carries the vibration of it.
"Older than this mountain. When your blood touched my skin as I woke, the earth magic recognized it as an offering.
It does not ask permission or negotiate, it completed. "
She stares at me. "Completed?"
"The bond is permanent. Your life force and mine are tethered now at the root. I can’t sever it. No one can. There is no door back to the life you had before you fell into my stronghold, Sabine. That life is gone."
The silence that follows is absolute. She just stands there in the torchlight with her eyes moving through rage, then grief, then a third thing darker than both. Then she stares up at me like she is trying to find the edges of a truth too large to hold.
"Until one of us dies," she says slowly. Not a question this time either.
"Yes."