The heat from the golden bond was a sun living inside my chest. It was the first time in twenty-one years I felt whole. The vacuum I had created slowed, the air returning to the lungs of the gasping warriors as my focus narrowed entirely on the man standing in the wreckage.
Vane.
He looked small from my new height, but his presence was still a jagged blade of ice. He stared at the golden thread pulsing between us. It was a bridge of light, beautiful and terrifying, singing a song of ancient belonging. His hand went to his heart, his fingers clutching at his tunic as if he could rip the feeling out of his ribs.
I waited. The beast I had become, this towering mass of bone-white fur and starlight lowered its head. I wanted his touch. I wanted the Alpha to claim what the moon had finally delivered.
"Vane," my father groaned from the floor, his voice a broken plea.
"Look at her. She is the land. She is the heart."
Vane didn't look at Silas. He didn't look at the warriors who were slowly pushing themselves up from the debris. He looked at me, and his eyes weren't full of love. They were full of a cold, calculating hate.
He saw his palace in ruins. He saw his power eclipsed. He saw a mate who would never be a submissive ornament like Isolde.
"I spent my life building this kingdom," Vane whispered. His voice was steady, a terrifying contrast to the chaos around him. "I didn't do it to be a servant to a myth."
He turned. He didn't run away. He walked toward the remains of the hearth.
The branding iron sat in the white-hot coals. It was a heavy, blackened rod of iron, tipped with the sigil of the Black Ridge, two wolves circling a dead tree. The tip was glowing a brilliant, lethal orange.
The golden bond shivered. A premonition of agony shot through the thread, making my massive limbs tremble. I let out a low, vibrating growl that shook the remaining rafters of the hall.
Vane gripped the handle. He didn't flinch at the heat. He turned back to me, the iron held at his side, his face a mask of absolute, frozen resolve.
"I, Alpha Vane of the Black Ridge, reject you," he snarled.
The words were a physical blow. The golden thread didn't just break; it shattered. It felt like a thousand shards of glass were being dragged through my internal organs. I roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated betrayal that leveled the last standing table in the hall.
The vacuum returned with a vengeance. The air was ripped from the room again, but Vane didn't care. He moved with the speed of a predator who had nothing left to lose.
Before I could strike, before I could sweep him into the stone, he lunged.
He didn't shift. He stayed human, using his smaller size to dive beneath my massive claws. He slammed his weight against my chest, pinning me for a split second against the central marble pillar that still held the roof.
He raised the iron.
"You think you're a Queen?" he hissed, his face inches from my fur. "You're a weapon. And weapons belong to the Alpha."
He drove the white-hot iron into the soft skin of my collarbone.
The world turned white.
The scent of my own burning flesh filled my nose, cloying and thick. The iron hissed as it bit through the white fur, searing deep into the muscle and bone beneath. I didn't just feel the heat; I felt the magic in the iron, the ancient, cruel spells of the Black Ridge designed to bind a slave to their master.
I screamed. It wasn't a roar anymore. It was a high, thin sound of agony that broke every glass bottle in the kitchens.
Vane didn't pull away. He leaned into the iron, his eyes locked on mine. He watched the white fire in my pupils begin to dim. He watched the strength leave my limbs as the brand's poison began to circulate.
"This is your throne, Kaelen," he whispered. "The dirt and the dark."
The brand clicked home. The magical lock settled into my soul, a heavy, crushing weight that forced the white fur to recede. My body shrank, the bones snapping back into human shapes with a sickening, wet sound.
I fell.
I hit the cold, shattered marble naked and trembling. The brand on my collarbone was a jagged, weeping ruin of black and red, the sigil of the wolves burned forever into my skin.
Vane stood over me. He tossed the cooling iron rod onto the floor. It clattered against the stone, the sound echoing in the dead silence of the hall.
"Take her," Vane commanded.
Isolde stepped out from behind a pillar. She looked at my broken, naked form on the floor and smiled. It wasn't a smile of triumph; it was a smile of pure, dark relief.
"The ancestral dungeons, Alpha?" she asked, her voice a purr.
"The lowest cell," Vane said. He didn't look at me again. He walked toward his throne, stepping over the debris of my father's life. "Chain her in silver. If she shifts, kill her. If she speaks, break her jaw. She is no longer a daughter of this pack. She is a prisoner of the state."
Two warriors grabbed my arms. They didn't use gentleness. They dragged me across the floor, my skin scraping over the shards of the velvet curtains I had scrubbed just hours before.
I looked at my father. Silas was being held back by three guards, his face a mask of tears and blood.
"Kaelen!" he wailed.
I couldn't answer. The brand was a cold fire that had stolen my voice.
As they dragged me toward the heavy iron doors of the basement, I looked back at Vane. He was sitting on his throne, his arm around Isolde. He looked like a king who had just won a war.
He didn't feel the land dying yet. He didn't hear the trees in the forest beginning to wither as my blood hit the floor.
He thought he had marked a slave.
He didn't realize he had just signed the death warrant for everything he loved.