POV: Sera Wilde
The chamber was so cold it hurt to breathe.
I was on my knees in the center of the room. The floor was marble and it pressed into my skin through my thin dress. I could feel the guards standing behind me. I could feel the council members sitting in a circle around me like judges deciding whether I deserved to live.
But most of all, I could feel them.
Kael stood to my left. I did not have to look at him to know he was there. The bond was a constant pull, like a rope tied around my heart. It told me exactly where he was. How angry he was. How much he wanted to move toward me.
Darius was to my right. The pull toward him felt different. Warmer. More desperate. His wolf was fighting against whatever was keeping him still.
Ryker was directly behind me. The coldest of the three but his control was slipping. I could feel it through the bond like cracks forming in ice.
All three of them were being held in place by guards and magic I did not understand. The bond screamed at the separation even though we were in the same room.
High Elder Theron stepped forward.
He was ancient. His face looked like it had been carved from stone and left in the sun too long. His eyes were empty of anything that might have been kind. He did not look at me like I was a person. He looked at me like I was a problem to be solved.
"Sera Wilde," he said. His voice filled the entire chamber even though he was not speaking loud. "You have committed an act of abomination against sacred law."
"I did not..." I started.
"Silence."
The word was not a shout. It was authority. My wolf pressed down instinctively and I stopped.
Theron continued like I had not tried to speak. "The sacred law that has held this alliance together for three hundred years states that one wolf bonds to one mate. No exceptions. No variations. One soul to one soul."
He gestured and a council member stepped forward with a thick book bound in leather. Ancient leather. The kind that looked like it had been old when my grandparents were born.
"The trinity bond," Theron continued, "is forbidden magic. It was abolished three centuries ago because it threatened the balance of power that keeps our packs safe. It created concentrations of force that destabilized the alliance."
He turned to face me directly and his eyes were colder than anything I had ever seen.
"You have violated this law."
"I did not violate anything." The words came out shaky but they came out. "I did not choose this. I did not cause this. The magic chose."
"The magic does not choose," another council member said. She was a woman with gray streaking her dark hair. "The magic responds to will. To power. To intention. You called this bond into being."
"That is not true." I was shaking now. Fear was making my voice smaller. Making me sound like exactly what they thought I was. Powerless. Weak. Guilty.
Theron raised his hand and silence fell again.
"Three days," he said. "You will undergo severance rituals. One bond per day. You will choose two of the three Alphas to reject. You will sever those bonds completely through sacred magic."
My heart stopped.
"If you refuse, all four of you will be executed at dawn on the fourth day. If you succeed, the surviving bond will be sanctioned and the rejected Alphas will be compensated for their loss."
Rejection. He was asking me to tear out pieces of my soul.
The bond screamed at the thought. All three of them screamed through the connection. The pain that shot through me was not physical but it felt like dying.
"You cannot ask me to do that," I whispered. "It will kill us. All of us."
"That is not my concern." Theron turned away from me like I was not worth looking at anymore. "The law is absolute. You have three days."
He began walking toward the exit. The other council members rose from their seats like the meeting was finished. Like they had not just sentenced four people to either death or mutilation.
Then I heard it.
A laugh. Cold and sharp and full of satisfaction.
I looked up toward the gallery where observers sat during trials. Lyanna Frost was standing. Beautiful ice blonde hair. Blue eyes that looked exactly like Kael's except hers were filled with venom instead of anything human.
She was smiling.
"I told you she was trouble," Lyanna said loud enough for everyone to hear. "An omega with dark magic. Of course she tried to trap all three Alphas instead of just taking what was given to her."
Kael made a sound like something being torn apart. The guards around him tightened their grip.
"It is not magic," I said. "It is not dark. It is not a trick."
Lyanna's smile widened. "You can claim innocence all you want, omega. By the fourth day, you will be dead anyway. At least I will not have to watch Kael waste his life on your kind."
She walked out of the chamber like she owned it.
The other council members filed out after her. The chamber emptied until only guards remained. Only the three Alphas tied to me by bonds that were screaming in agony.
I tried to stand. My legs would not hold me.
Darius lunged against the guards. "Do not touch her. Do not you dare touch her."
"Get back, boy," one of the guards said. He raised a magical restraint, something that glowed purple. Darius screamed as it locked around him.
The scream went through the bond and I felt it like he was screaming inside my own body.
Kael was ice. Completely still. Completely controlled. But his eyes were tracking everything. Calculating. Planning. Trying to figure out how to kill everyone and save me at the same time.
Ryker was struggling less. He was thinking. I could feel it through the bond. The strategic mind working even as the bond was tearing at all of us.
The guards moved toward me.
I stood on shaking legs and did not resist. What was the point of resisting? They had magic and numbers and the law on their side.
"Do not hurt them," I said to the nearest guard. "Please. Just take me. Do not hurt them."
One of the guards looked almost uncomfortable. Almost like he was not completely sure about what was happening.
But he did his job anyway.
They led me through hallways I had never seen before. Down stairs that went deeper and deeper into the earth. The stone changed from polished marble to rough rock. The air got colder and older and heavier.
The bond was pulling me backward the entire way. Kael. Darius. Ryker. All three of them trying to follow. All three of them being held back by guards and distance and magic.
The pain of being pulled in four directions at once was almost enough to make me not care what happened next.
We stopped in front of a wooden door. There was no window. No way to see outside. It looked like a tomb.
"Inside," the guard said.
I stepped through the doorway. The door swung shut behind me with a sound like finality. Like a coffin closing.
For one second there was nothing.
Then the bonds hit.
All three of them screamed.
Not metaphorically. Not through the connection. They were actually screaming somewhere in the building above me and I could hear them echoing through the stone.
The pain was catastrophic. Like my chest was being ripped open from four different directions. Like someone was tearing my soul into pieces.
I fell to the ground gasping for air that would not come.
The bonds screamed and screamed and screamed.
And I realized with horrible certainty that separation was going to kill us long before the severance rituals could.