LYRA'S POV
I woke up gasping.
The nightmare had been so real—Seraphine's face, Theron's cruel smile, my mother's voice calling my name from somewhere I couldn't reach.
I sat up, heart racing, and froze.
My pillow was slightly crooked. Wrong. I always positioned it perfectly before sleeping—an old habit from sharing a tiny room back in Ashveil.
Someone had been in my room.
My hand shot under the pillow, searching for the knife Kairan had given me. It was gone.
Fear crawled up my spine like ice. I checked the door. Still locked from the inside. The window. Closed and bolted.
So how had someone gotten in?
I couldn't stay here. Not tonight. Not with the walls feeling like they were closing in and my mind spinning with questions I couldn't answer.
I needed air. Space. Answers.
I needed to move.
I grabbed a cloak and slipped into the hallway. The fortress was dark and quiet. Only the soft footsteps of distant guards broke the silence. I'd learned their patrol patterns by now—Cadeon's security was tight, but predictable.
I moved through the shadows like a ghost, heading nowhere in particular. Just away.
That's when I saw the staircase.
I'd passed it a dozen times before but never really looked at it. Stone steps spiraling downward into darkness. No torches. No guards. Just a heavy iron door at the bottom with strange symbols carved into it.
*Don't,* the smart part of my brain said. *This is how people die in stories.*
But I was tired of being scared. Tired of not knowing anything. Tired of feeling like a puppet in someone else's game.
I went down.
---
The stairs seemed to go on forever. Down, down, down into the heart of the fortress. The air grew colder with each step. Damper. Like I was descending into a tomb.
Maybe I was.
The iron door at the bottom wasn't locked. It swung open with barely a touch, silent on well-oiled hinges.
Beyond was a chamber carved from black stone. No windows. No other exits I could see. Just walls lined with memorial stones—names and dates carved into the rock. Hundreds of them.
This was a crypt. A place for the dead.
And kneeling in the center of it, head bowed before one particular stone, was Cadeon.
I froze in the doorway, my breath catching.
He didn't wear his usual armor or formal clothes. Just simple dark pants and a loose shirt. His black hair fell forward, hiding his face. His shoulders were tense. Shaking slightly.
Was he... crying?
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice rough and broken. "Elira, I'm so sorry. Every day I wake up and remember what I did. What they made me do. What I *chose* to do."
My mother's name.
I pressed myself against the doorframe, barely breathing. I should leave. Should run. But my feet wouldn't move.
"She looks just like you," Cadeon continued, talking to the stone like it could hear him. "Same eyes. Same fire. Same stubborn refusal to bow." A bitter laugh. "She hates me. As she should. As you would want her to."
My chest tightened.
"I'm trying to keep her safe. Trying to honor the promise I made you." His voice cracked. "But I'm failing. Someone left a threat in her room tonight. Someone wants her dead, and I can't figure out who. Can't protect her from an enemy I can't see."
Wait. A threat in my room? Tonight?
"The worst part?" Cadeon's shoulders shook harder. "The mate bond. It's real, Elira. Impossible, illegal, completely insane—but real. My panther has chosen your daughter. And I can't—I don't know how to—"
He stopped, his whole body going rigid.
"Who's there?" His voice changed instantly—cold, dangerous, commanding.
I ran.
I practically flew up those stairs, my heart hammering so hard I thought it would burst. Behind me, I heard Cadeon's footsteps—fast, predatory, gaining.
"Lyra!"
I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. My mind was spinning too fast, processing too much.
*Mate bond. He said mate bond. With me.*
I burst through the door at the top of the stairs and ran straight into someone.
Strong hands caught my shoulders. "Whoa! Easy there."
Kairan.
He took one look at my face, then at Cadeon emerging from the stairwell behind me, and his expression turned knowing.
"I'll just... be somewhere else," he said, releasing me and disappearing down the hall with suspicious speed.
Traitor.
I tried to follow him, but Cadeon's hand caught my wrist—gently but firmly.
"Don't run from me," he said quietly.
"Let go." I pulled against his grip, but he didn't budge.
"How much did you hear?"
"Enough." I finally stopped struggling and looked at him. Really looked at him. His golden eyes were rimmed with red. His face was drawn and tired. He looked... broken. "You visit my mother's memorial. You apologize to her."
"Every week for twenty years," he admitted.
"And the mate bond thing—"
"Forget that." He released my wrist like it burned him. "It doesn't matter. It's probably not even real. Just my panther confused because you look like her."
"That's not what you said down there."
"I was talking to a stone, Lyra. I wasn't exactly thinking clearly." He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "Just... forget you heard any of it."
"How can I forget—"
"Because it's impossible!" The words exploded out of him. "Mate bonds don't form between species. Every scholar, every healer, every piece of evidence says it can't happen. So whatever I'm feeling is just guilt and duty and—"
"What if it's real?" The question came out before I could stop it.
Cadeon stared at me like I'd slapped him. "Then we're both cursed. Because you'll never accept it. Never accept me. And I don't blame you."
Silence stretched between us, heavy and charged.
"Someone left a threat in my room?" I asked finally, changing the subject before my brain exploded.
His expression turned murderous. "A knife. And a note. I found it an hour ago while you were sleeping."
Ice flooded my veins. "Someone was in my room while I was asleep?"
"Yes. And I'm going to find out who and make them regret being born." His voice was pure predator now. "Until then, you're moving to the room next to mine. Where I can actually protect you."
"I'm not—"
"It's not a request." His golden eyes flashed. "Someone is targeting you, Lyra. Someone got past my guards, past my security, past everything. They could have killed you tonight. Easily."
The reality of that hit me like a punch. I'd been sleeping while an assassin stood over me.
"Why didn't they?" I whispered. "Kill me, I mean. They had the chance."
"I don't know. That's what scares me." Cadeon stepped closer, and I caught his scent—pine and night and something wild. "But I'm not giving them a second chance."
"The note," I said. "What did it say?"
His jaw tightened. "Nothing important."
"Cadeon—"
"It said 'False daughters bleed true. Real daughters bleed lies. Which one are you?'" He watched my face carefully. "Does that mean anything to you?"
My blood turned cold. False daughters. Real daughters.
Seraphine.
"My sister," I breathed. "They're talking about my sister."
"Or trying to make you doubt yourself." Cadeon's expression turned thoughtful. "Make you question your identity. Your right to exist. Classic intimidation tactic."
"Or maybe they know something I don't." I clutched my mother's pendant through my shirt. "What if Seraphine really is the real daughter? What if I'm—"
"Stop." Cadeon's hands gripped my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. "I knew your mother, Lyra. I looked into her eyes the day she died. And when I look at you, I see her. Not just the color—the *soul* behind them. You are Elira's daughter. Don't let anyone make you doubt that."
His words should have comforted me. Should have made me feel safe.
Instead, they terrified me.
Because Cadeon believed I was my mother's daughter. Believed it so completely he'd spent twenty years searching for me. Protecting me.
But what if he was wrong?
"I need to go to that meeting," I said suddenly. "The one Seris mentioned. Three days from now at the temple ruins."
"Absolutely not."
"I need answers, Cadeon. About my mother. About Seraphine. About who I really am."
"It's a trap." His grip tightened. "Can't you see that? The resistance contact, the convenient pendant, the invitation to a secret meeting? Someone is manipulating you."
"Then come with me." The words surprised us both. "You wanted to protect me, right? So protect me. Come to the meeting."
Cadeon stared at me, conflict warring in his golden eyes. "If I go with you, they won't talk. The resistance doesn't trust me."
"They don't trust anyone," I countered. "But I need to know the truth. Even if it hurts."
He was silent for a long moment. Then: "Fine. But we do this my way. With backup. With a plan. And if anything—*anything*—feels wrong, we leave immediately."
I nodded, relief flooding through me.
We stood there in the hallway, inches apart, the air between us charged with something I didn't want to name.
"The mate bond," I said quietly. "If it's real—"
"It's not." But his voice lacked conviction.
"But if it is—"
A scream cut through the fortress. High-pitched, terrified, human.
Cadeon's head snapped toward the sound. "That came from the servants' quarters."
We ran.
The hallways blurred as we raced toward the screaming. Other guards joined us, weapons drawn. Kairan appeared from somewhere, already shifted halfway to wolf form.
We burst into the servants' wing and stopped.
Blood. So much blood.
A young human girl lay on the floor, throat cut, eyes wide and empty. And standing over her body, holding a bloody knife and sobbing—
Was Seris.
The woman from the resistance. The one who'd given me my mother's pendant.
Her hands were covered in blood. The knife dripped red.
"I didn't—" she gasped, looking at me with wild, terrified eyes. "Lyra, I swear I didn't—they made me—they said they'd kill my brother if I didn't—"
Guards surrounded her, weapons raised.
"Don't hurt her!" I started forward, but Cadeon's arm blocked me.
"Look at her neck," he said quietly.
I looked. And my blood froze.
Around Seris's throat was a thin silver collar—so fine I'd missed it before. And carved into the metal were symbols. The same symbols I'd seen on the bloody note.
"She's being controlled," Cadeon breathed. "Someone put a compulsion collar on her."
Seris's eyes rolled back in her head. Her mouth opened, and a voice that wasn't hers came out—mechanical, cold, wrong.
"The false daughter will die," the voice said through Seris's lips. "The real daughter will rule. And the beast who protects the wrong one will fall with her."
Then Seris collapsed, the knife clattering from her hand.
Dead before she hit the ground.