The duskburst wouldn’t take hold because the magical structure it was meant to bind didn’t have the correct points. It needed multiple woven together, creating a pattern that could support the ritual.
Bastian had been trying to make up for the missing anchors by pushing in more of himself. That was why it kept pulling from his wolves, and why the sensation in Feral’s pack may have felt muffled rather than blocked.
This wasn’t a curse or sabotage, just one wolf trying to do the work of five and slowly destroying himself and his pack in the process.
“Thank you,” I said, rising to my feet.
The bear shifter nodded, returning his attention to the plants, already moving to the next pot that needed watering.
I walked back to the main hall with Acorn on my shoulder.
Pack members I passed gave me curious looks but didn’t speak. Word had spread that we were here, that something important was being discussed.
Feral and Bastian were still talking when I entered the hall, though less hostile now. Both of them looked up when I opened the door and stepped inside.
I joined them, sitting, and pulled out my notebook, placing it on the table in front of them.
“The ritual requires more than one alpha,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FERAL
Victoria didn’t waste time with diplomacy. She turned to Bastian.
“Your attempts to solve this problem are a failure,” she said. “Not because you lack skill or dedication, but because you’re trying to complete a ritual that requires multiple participants with only one set of hands.”
Bastian’s face tightened.
She kept going, flipping her notebook open to a page covered in diagrams. “The bear shifter in the greenhouse told me he saw Feral’s father perform the ritual once. Other alphas were present, positioned at different points around the seal site. I don’t believe they were there to witness the ceremony, though he does. I believe they were participating.”
She traced the pattern on the page, her finger moving between points she’d marked.
“If my theory is right, the seal structure requires simultaneous anchoring from multiple locations,” she said. “I’m confident one alpha alone can’t complete it, which means the duskburst can’t bind to a partial seal because the magicalframework isn’t there to support it. You’ve been pouring your magic and that of your poor pack members into gaps that shouldn’t exist, trying to be four or five anchors with only one body.”
I slid my hand along the small of her back.
In a few moments, she dismantled thirteen years of Bastian’s work with the same careful attention she gave everything else.
Bastian noted the gesture, and his expression loosened. He’d been reading our marriage as a strategic alliance, useful for borders and politics but nothing else. He was updating that assessment right now.
“If I’m correct, the structure you’ve been trying to maintain is like a net,” Victoria said. “Except most of the binding points are missing. You’ve been filling a net with holes, and the effort has cost you. In fact, it’s cost both your pack and ours.”
She glanced at Acorn sitting on the table beside her and nodded, relaying his message. “Acorn says, when one hand cannot weave what five hands should hold, the net spills wide and the magic grows cold.”
Bastian’s gaze snapped to the squirrel. Irritation flashed across his face, the kind of reaction you got when something small and what you thought was insignificant made a point you couldn’t argue with.
He looked away.
I almost smiled.
Victoria tapped her notebook. “I believe that every time you’ve attempted the ritual alone, you’ve been creating magical pressure without proper distribution. That pressure has to go somewhere. It’s been killing the duskburst you plant, and it’s been bleeding into the pack bonds, destabilizing the connection between shifters and their wolves. Kirk described a hollow, muffled feeling. That’s your magic trying to compensate for the missing alphas during the ritual.”
She closed her notebook. “You’ve been making the shifting sickness worse, though by accident.”
The words hung in the air.
The defensive posture Bastian had held since we arrived dropped away. He suddenly looked older, tired in a way that went deeper than lack of sleep.
