My eyes weren't just amethyst anymore. Gold flecks swirled through them like autumn leaves in a whirlpool, and when the light hit right, the pupils seemed to elongate, just slightly. Just enough to be unmistakably inhuman.
"Every Keeper before you maintained distance," Flynn continued, circling again, each step deliberate and measured. "Kept themselves separate, pure, untouched by what they guarded. But you? You opened yourself to us. Let us in. Welcomed us into your blood, your bones, your very essence without even realizing you were doing it. And now you're becoming something new. Something the world has never seen."
"I'm still human—" I insisted, but the words rang hollow even to my own ears.
"Part human." He stopped in front of me again, closer this time, close enough that I could feel the rise and fall of his chest. "Part us. Part bridge between worlds. Exactly what Pandora was supposed to be before they twisted her purpose, before they turned gift into curse and guardian into jailer."
His proximity was overwhelming. Not threatening, despite the predatory energy that rolled off him in waves that made the Threshold shudder and flex. It was something else. Recognition. Like every cell in my body knew him, had been waiting for him through centuries of bloodline memory, had been calling to him through the blood I'd fed the Gate. Like coming home to a place I'd never been.
"The reinforcement ritual won't work," he said, voice dropping to barely above a growl, the sound vibrating through my chest. "Because you don't want to reinforce our chains. Deep down, in the part of yourself you're too afraid to acknowledge, you want to break them."
"I have a duty—" I started, but the protest was weak, automatic.
"To who?" The question cracked like a whip, sharp and merciless. "To the Council that murdered your mother? Worked her to death and called it service? That bred her like a dog? Or to the Order that's lied to you since birth, that's built their entire existence on a foundation of convenient falsehoods? Or to a world that would burn you as a monster the moment they knew what you're becoming?"
Each question hit true, finding every doubt I'd been trying to suppress, every question I'd forbidden myself to ask. They landed like physical blows, stripping away the carefully constructed armor of duty and obedience I'd built around my heart.
"Or do you have a duty to us?" His hand finally made contact, fingers brushing my jaw with shocking gentleness, the touch reverent and claiming at once. "To the princes who've tasted your blood for five years? Who know every secret fear, every hidden dream, every suppressed desire you've ever had? Who know you better than you know yourself?"
The touch burned, but not with heat. With recognition. With belonging. With the terrible realization that he was right. They knew me better than anyone living. Every drop of blood had carried my memories, my emotions, my very self directly into their consciousness. I was an open book to them, every page read and memorized.
"We're already bound," he said, thumb tracing the line of my throat where my pulse hammered visibly beneath the skin. "Not by chains, but by choice. By blood willingly given and power willingly shared. By five years of intimate connection that goes deeper than any mortal understanding of the word. The question is whether you'll acknowledge it. Whether you'll accept what you are, what we are, what we could be together."
For one dangerous moment, I forgot to be afraid.
Forgot the guards waiting in the Sanctorum, hands on weapons designed to end me. Forgot Natalia's cold eyes and colder judgment. Forgot twenty-five years of training and doctrine and duty drilled into my bones until it became indistinguishable from identity.
In that moment, I just was. A woman standing before a wolf prince who looked at me like I was something precious and terrible and absolutely his. Like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking for a thousand years.
The Threshold shuddered, reality reasserting itself with violent force. The connection fraying, the metaphysical space beginning to collapse around us. But before it could expel me completely, Flynn leaned close enough that his lips brushed the shell of my ear, the contact sending electricity racing down my spine.
"Next time you come here, little keeper, don't come as their tool. Come as yourself. Come as ours."
I slammed back into my body with enough force to send me stumbling backward, my knees buckling. The guards caught me before I could fall, their hands cold and impersonal through my robes, steadying me with the efficiency of long practice. The Gate's crack had widened significantly, golden light pouring through in sheets rather than drops, flooding the Sanctorum with wild, untamed power that made the air itself taste of ozone and possibility.
But more concerning were my hands. The golden veins had spread past my elbows now, creating intricate patterns beneath my skin that looked like fur rendered in light, like claws extending, like the memory of teeth against throat. They pulsed with each beat of my heart, glowing brighter with each breath.
"Report," one guard demanded, his voice sharp with barely concealed alarm. His eyes fixed on my hands, on the obvious changes written across my skin.
I looked at the Gate, at the failing seal, at the golden light that called to something wild in my blood. Something that wanted to answer. That wanted to run, to hunt, to be free.
"The reinforcement failed," I said, truth wrapped in careful omission. "The seal is rejecting traditional methods. The Wolf's Heart is too degraded."
They exchanged glances above my head, a silent conversation conducted in micro-expressions and subtle gestures. One left immediately, boots echoing against stone as he raced toward the Council chambers, presumably to report to Natalia. The others gripped their weapons tighter, the hum of suppression magic intensifying until my teeth ached with it.
But in my mind, Flynn's voice echoed with promise and threat in equal measure, a whisper that drowned out everything else.
Come as yourself. Come as ours.
And the terrifying truth was, I wanted to.
NINE
Aria
The basket handle cut into my palm, its rough weave a welcome distraction from the golden veins that now reached my shoulders. Each strand of wicker pressed into my skin like a small penance, a tiny anchor to the physical world. Natalia had thrust it at me that morning with the same expression she might wear handing someone a viper, disgust carefully masked by duty, her fingers releasing the handle the instant mine closed around it.
"Go and get supplies from the village. The usual order." Her grey eyes dissected me with surgical precision, searching for cracks in my composure, for any sign that the transformation was accelerating beyond my control. "Consider it a test of your control. The corruption spreading through you must not affect civilians."
