He glanced at me sideways. Then he laughed, the sound echoing through the hall.
"Lyra, what makes you think you have the right to ask me for a bond dissolution?"
He rose, looming over me to drink in my anguish. His thumb brushed across my cheek, wiping away a tear with mock tenderness. The contact sent unwanted sparks through the frayed edges of our bond.
"Did you forget what I told you? I'm going to make you suffer for the rest of your life. And this?" He gestured around us at the watching pack members. "This is just the beginning."
"As long as I don't sign the writ, you'll never be free of this mating bond."
To punish my disobedience, Alaric moved Seren into our den.
The common room. The cooking quarters. The bathing chambers. The storage alcove.
Anywhere I'd been, I'd find them the next morning—their mingled scents saturating every surface, marking every corner that had once been ours.
I stopped sleeping. Entire nights passed with my eyes fixed on the ceiling, their sounds filtering through the walls. I saw healers. I swallowed calming draughts, following their instructions to the letter. But nothing could block out the scent of their coupling that seeped under my door.
Then one day, Seren barged into my room, a spelled viewing crystal in hand.
"Lyra, after all these years, you're still this useless?"
"Watching you live like a kicked pup every day... even I'm starting to feel sorry for you."
"Fine. I'll be generous and let you die with some clarity." Her smile sharpened, her wolf gleaming behind her eyes. "That night—when you and Kael were drugged with heat-scent poison? That was me."
She turned the crystal toward me.
On its surface, recorded images played in crisp detail: Seren, tipping white powder into my goblet at the feast.
My first instinct was to snatch the tablet and rush to show Alaric the evidence.
But when he saw the surveillance footage, his eyes turned cold as ice—the amber of his wolf bleeding away until only frost remained.
"Seren was right. To cover up your filthy heat-breach, you really would frame her for it."
The glamour-detection seal at the end of the recording destroyed me completely. Someone had woven false magic through the images, marking them as fabricated.
Seren threw herself into Alaric's arms, sobbing. He stroked her hair, his wolf rumbling comfort to her, while his lips curled into a sneer aimed at me.