Chapter 6
Elder Maeve’s voice cut through the silence, brittle as glass. “The third trial: Choice. She must walk away from the Alpha without turning back.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Even the youngest pups knew what that meant—wolves lived for bonds. To turn your back on one was like clawing out your own lungs.
Damien stood across the grove, chest rising and falling in the hush, his shirt soaked in blood that wasn’t his. The golden light in his eyes dimmed to a dangerous, hungry burn.
“You won’t make it three steps,” he murmured, just for me.
My chin lifted despite the tremor in my legs. “Then watch me.”
The bell tolled, deep and final.
I turned. One step. The snow crunched under my boots, sharp and deliberate.
The bond screamed. My throat constricted, my wolf clawing to spin me back. Every instinct said to look, to meet his gaze, to breathe his scent, to crawl back into the heat of him.
Two steps.
The pain flared hotter. I tasted copper on my tongue, my vision flickering black around the edges. The mark on my neck pulsed, raw and inflamed, dragging me backward with invisible chains.
Behind me, Damien’s voice dropped into Alpha command.
“Clara.”
The weight of it nearly shattered my knees. My wolf whimpered, tail tucked, desperate to obey. My muscles shook with the effort of resisting. The law didn’t forbid him from calling me—it only forbade me from answering.
Three steps.
I gasped, air tearing through my lungs like knives. Every fiber of my being screamed to stop. To look. To surrender.
“Little wolf,” he said, softer this time, husky with something that sounded too much like need. “Don’t you feel it? This bond will never let you go.”
The world blurred. The birches tilted. My wolf howled in my skull, torn between freedom and destruction. My legs locked. I couldn’t take another step.
Serena’s voice cracked across the grove. “Clara, please! Don’t kill yourself!”
My nails dug crescents into my palms. I wanted to look back—Goddess help me, I wanted it more than air.
Then I saw her reflection in the ice. Serena. Standing in Damien’s shadow, her golden hair tangled with his mark on her throat glowing faint in the moonlight. She was trembling, but she still stood beside him.
The pain in my chest twisted into rage.
This bond was not love. It was a leash. And I would rather choke on it than crawl.
I forced my foot forward. Four steps.
The bond shrieked, ripping at me like barbed wire. I screamed, blood running from my nose, ears ringing with the sound of my wolf’s agony.
The Elders’ chants rose, ancient words of judgment.
And then—
Snap.
The mark seared once, a brand flaring white-hot—then went cold. The pull shattered. My knees buckled, and I collapsed in the snow, gasping like I’d been drowning for years.
The grove fell silent.
When I lifted my head, Damien was staring at me as if I’d ripped out his heart with my bare hands. For the first time, his eyes held no command, no triumph—only fury and something far worse: need denied.
“You think you’re free?” His voice was a low growl, dangerous enough to freeze marrow. “You severed the bond, Clara, but you will never sever me.”
Serena reached for him, her voice desperate. “Damien—”
But he didn’t look at her. His gaze locked on me, unblinking, a predator denied its prey.
The Elders declared, “The bond is broken. By law, the Alpha cannot claim her again.”
The crowd exhaled. Some bowed. Some whispered prayers.
But Damien only smiled—a sharp, wolfish curl of lips.
“Laws break,” he said softly. “And so do little wolves who think they can run.”
The words sank into me, colder than the snow beneath my palms.
Because I realized something far worse than being bound to him.
Damien Blackwood wasn’t just my ex-mate now.
He was my hunter.
