I try to speak, but my tongue won't cooperate. The curse whispers in my head with a voice that sounds like my mother,like Thora, like every Llewelyn woman who ever told me that needing someone made me weak.This is what happens when you trust. This is what happens when you feel. You will destroy yourself, and for what? A man you barely know?
My heart stutters. Actually stutters, missing beats as the curse tries to stop it. If it can't keep me suppressed, it will kill me rather than let me break free.
I can't feel my legs. Can't feel anything except the cold spreading through my core and Reeyan's hands on my arms, the only warmth left in my body. The curse shows me visions—myself lying dead on the ritual ground, my mother weeping over my body, Caelan screaming my name. This is what your defiance costs. This is what breaking me will cost.
But underneath the fear, underneath the visions and the cold and the voice that sounds like everyone I've ever loved telling me to stop, I feel something else.
Reeyan. Through the mate bond. His terror for me, yes, but also his absolute refusal to let me go. His belief that I'm strong enough. His love, pouring through the connection like sunlight through cracked ice.
The curse can't touch that. Can't corrupt it. Can't use it against me the way it's used on everything else.
“Say it,” Evangeline commands from where she stands just outside the ritual circle. “The final words. They must come from you.”
I use every ounce of strength I have to force myself to stand straight. Every woman in my pack is watching. Waiting to see if I’m strong enough to break what’s held them prisoner for generations. My mother stands rigid in the crowd, not a trace of fear or concern on her face.
This is what I’m fighting for, I remind myself. A chance for the women in my family, in my pack, tofeel.
“I am not afraid,” I grind out between clenched teeth. “The curse ends here. With me. With us.”
The cold in my veins recedes. Just a fraction. Just enough for me to draw a full breath.
Reeyan speaks his vows next, tossing the words out as fast as he can. “I, Reeyan Hale, accept this bond willingly and completely. I choose partnership over solitude. I choose vulnerability over safety. I choose Sera Thornwick as my mate. Now and always.”
The mate bond ignites between us. Not the gentle warmth I’ve felt before, but something massive and overwhelming that makes my vision blur. Power builds in the space where our hands connect, golden and fierce and hungry for release.
Evangeline begins chanting in the old language. Magic swirls around us in visible currents, responding to her words and the ancient rituals she’s invoking. The Amanzite stones placed at cardinal points around the circle pulse with purple light, and I can feel them channeling our bond’s energy into something larger than just the two of us.
“Open yourself to him.” Evangeline’s voice cuts through the magical haze. “The curse can only be broken if you trust him completely. With every part of yourself you’ve been taught to hide.”
Terror claws at my throat. Opening myself means letting Reeyan see everything. The fear. The doubt. The part of me that still wonders if this bond is real or just supernatural coercion. The angry, wounded pieces I’ve kept locked away because showing them would prove the curse right—that feeling makes you weak.
“I can’t,” I sob.
The curse surges at my admission, seizing on the weakness. The cold rushes back, colder than before, and I feel my heartbeat slow. One beat. Two. A pause that stretches too long. My wolf's howl fades to silence.
“You can.” Reeyan pulls me closer until we’re nearly touching. “I already see all of it. The fear and the anger and the parts you think make you broken. And I’m choosing you anyway. Every single piece.”
Something in his words chips away at the last of my resistance. I let the walls fall. Let him feel through the bond exactly how terrified I am. How part of me wants to run from this ceremony and never look back. How wanting him feels like drowning and flying at the same time.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. Just holds me steady while I fall apart in front of everyone.
“Seal the bond,” Evangeline instructs. “Let the magic flow through you both and out to those who need it.”
Reeyan cups my face in his hands. “Ready?”
“No. But do it anyway.”
He kisses me, and the world explodes.
Golden magic erupts from where we’re touching, spreading outward in waves that crash over every Llewelyn woman in attendance. I feel the curse shatter like ice breaking under spring thaw. The bindings wrapped around my heart for twenty-four years dissolve into nothing, taking with them the dampening influence I’ve never known how to live without.
Everything floods in at once.
Love for Reeyan, so powerful it makes my knees weak all over again. Fear of what comes next. Joy that the curse is finally broken. Anger at Moira Ashwood for stealing three hundred years from my people. Grief for all the women who lived and died without ever feeling this all.
I sob against Reeyan’s chest, overwhelmed by the volume of emotion crashing through me at once. He holds me through it, with one hand in my hair and the other pressed flat against my spine. The mate bond sings between us, no longer fighting against magical suppression, but flowing freely like it’s supposed to.
But around us, chaos erupts.
