The dungeon smelled of old stone and salt and the specific coldness of a place that had never been meant for living. Silas lay on the floor with his wrists pulled high by iron chains that bit into his skin every time he shifted. The Neutralizer had worn off completely now and without it the mate bond had come back the way fire comes back when nothing is left to hold it down.
Every breath pulled the ache deeper. Every exhale left him emptier than the one before.
He pressed his head against the cold wall.
"Alaric," he whispered.
He thought about the palace and for the first time since he had left it the word cage did not come with the thought. Compared to this damp dark hole the palace was something else entirely.
Alaric had been possessive and relentless and had never once pretended otherwise but he had also never treated Silas like something to be sold. Here in his own father's house chained to a dungeon floor that was exactly what he was. Inventory with a royal mark on its neck.
The door at the top of the stairs opened and expensive boots came down the stone steps without hurrying.
Jax had not changed. Well dressed. Composed. Carrying a small box with the casual ease of someone running an errand that did not trouble him.
He stopped a few feet from Silas and looked down with the expression of someone who had been waiting a long time for this particular view.
"Still awake," Jax said. "You always were the hardest one. The old man used to say it like it was a compliment."
He crouched slightly. "It will not help you here."
Silas lifted his head. "Why did Alaric release you. Tell me the truth."
Jax reached into the box.
"Because the Prince is smarter than you gave him credit for. He did not let me go out of mercy. He let me go because he knew exactly what I would do."
He pulled out a long thin needle and held it up without any urgency. "He knew I would bring you straight here. He wanted you to see what your family does when given the chance. He wanted you to have nowhere left to go except back to him."
He stepped closer and caught Silas's jaw in his free hand and held it.
"The Duke is already in talks with the Southern Faction. They want to understand how the royal mark works. They want the mechanism behind Alaric's bond so they can find the weakness in it and use it to destroy him.
You are the only marked mate they have access to. That makes you very useful and not in a way that ends well for you."
Silas saw the needle coming and could not stop it.
Jax pressed it into his neck directly beside the royal mark and the pain that followed was not a normal injection. It was engineered to force the bond wide open and hold it there and amplify every signal running through it until anyone with the right equipment could locate it from a distance.
The sound that left Silas hit the stone walls and came back at him from every direction and he could not pull it back or quiet it or do anything except feel it continue.
"Scream for him," Jax said, stepping back. "Let your Prince feel every second of it through the bond. He will come. We have built something very specific for him at the end of that road."
Miles away in the royal command center Alaric had not moved from the war table in three hours. His generals had stopped trying to brief him. They had learned that his silence had its own rules and interrupting it without cause was a decision that left marks.
He was not thinking when it hit him.
He went to one knee and his hand pressed flat against his chest and the air left him completely. What came through the bond was not vague or distant. It was specific and immediate.
Cold stone under a body that was not his. Iron on wrists. And then the needle, sharp and wrong, landing right beside the mark he had placed on Silas's neck himself.
A general crossed the room fast. "Your Highness, are you injured?"
Alaric stood.
His eyes had changed color. Every person in the room noticed at the same moment. Deep glowing midnight blue with nothing behind them that resembled patience or calculation.
The glass panel on the far wall cracked from corner to corner without anyone touching it.
"They are hurting him," Alaric said. His voice moved through the floor and into the walls and settled in the chest of everyone present.
"My Ghost is screaming and I can feel every second of it."
A technician turned from the console. "Your Highness. Active signal from the mate bond. Amplified and broadcasting. It is coming from the Vane Fortress in the North."
Alaric walked to the weapon rack and took the tactical blade. He did not reach for armor. He did not wait for a briefing.
"Prepare the Black Hawks," he said. "No approach warnings. No stealth. We move now."
A general stepped forward with the specific courage of someone who knows they are about to be ignored.
"Sir the Duke's territory is protected under active treaty. A direct military move is an act of war."
Alaric turned and looked at him.
The general did not say anything else.
"I gave them the chance to be a family to him," Alaric said quietly. "They chained him to a dungeon floor and stuck a needle in his neck."
He moved toward the door and the room cleared around him without anyone deciding to clear it.
"Prepare the Hawks. Anyone who is not ready in ten minutes stays behind."
He walked out.
The corridor outside was long and empty and his boots on the stone were the only sound in it.
He was not the careful Prince anymore. He was not the patient one. He was an Alpha whose marked mate was on a cold floor somewhere in the North screaming and the people responsible for that had not yet understood what they had started.
They would.
Very soon.
They would understand completely.