I whip around, looking for the source, but still nothing is there. The shadows trail upward like smoke. They drip downward like stalactites. I start to shiver.
Where am I, I open my mouth to ask, but no sound comes out.
“You’re here, but you’ve let open a door you cannot close… and so he’s here, too,” the voice tells me.
He’s angry with me, I can tell—whoever he is. A tremor of fear skitters through me.
The shadows start to swirl violently, spinning around me, closing in. The funnel of darkness tightens and tightens, until it starts to wrap around my throat and choke me.
I scream in my sleep and awake with a breathy gasp. My nails dig into the cot. I’m not sure how long I was out, but Anassa and Cratos must have returned and left again because there’s a dead elk in Saela’s cell.
And a gruesome sea of blood staining the stones.
My sister is asleep in a ball on the floor, her entire face and arms up to her elbows drenched in gore.
I swallow down the sobs as I sit up. Stark is still asleep, propped up against the wall, his head leaned against stone. It can’t be comfortable there.
Moving over, I kneel beside him. His thick, dark lashes twitch as he dreams. I reach out to touch him. Just to wake him, I tell myself.
But before I can, pain spikes through my head. I wince, my hand flying up to the spot of agony. It’s invasive, as if someone is slowly pressing a needle into my temple, deeper and deeper, inch by inch.
And once it’s lodged deep enough, I hear it.
Him.
“Good morning, Bonded,” Killian says.
I would recognize his voice anywhere. Once it whispered across the tender space of a pillow. It’s distorted now, but it’s still smooth and beautiful.
Somehow, even though he’s not Bonded, he’s accessing our silent river of communication. He’s communicating with me telepathically. What the actual fuck?
Stark’s eyes fly open immediately. The alarm on his face tells me he can hear it, too.
Killian’s voice speaks again in our heads.
“There is a usurper in your midst.”
2
MERYN
It’s almost impossible to reach out to all the Bonded at once.
Only two people have the power, as far as I know: the Sovereign Alpha, Siegrid Therion… and, apparently, me. But as Killian speaks, certainty forms in my bones: He’s reaching every Bonded throughout the entirety of Nocturna.
My eyes dart down to the engagement bracelet he clamped onto my wrist; the ruby still swirls with dark shadows. It’s been like that ever since he drew on my magic in his chambers. And there’s that lingering wrongness.
Part of my power is cut off from me, ensnared in whatever twisted spell is woven into this bracelet.
Whatever he’s doing—he’s doing this by usingmypowers, stealingmymagic.
“The Faceless Goddess has blessed me with the ability to communicate through the wolf bonds as a reward for my fealty to the Bonded and to the kingdom,” Killian says smoothly.
I can’t help it—I laugh.
What absolute bullshit. And so totally predictable. He’s going to lie to every one of the Bonded in the same way he lied to me.
My face flushes with angry heat, and I claw at the bracelet on my wrist. But it once again tightens against my skin, making me wince in pain. Just then, images pulse through my mind.
