POV: Sera Wilde
Hands grabbed me and I almost screamed.
"Quiet," Ryker whispered. His voice cut through the darkness. "We have maybe five minutes before the guards change shift."
My eyes flew open. The cell was pitch black but I could feel him. Could feel all of them. Kael was somewhere close. Darius was closer. The bond wasn't just a pull anymore. It was a rope tied around my heart and they were all on the other end.
Ryker was working on the lock. I could hear the mechanism breaking under his fingers. The sound was too loud. Everything was too loud.
"How..." I started.
"No time," he said. The lock clicked open. "Can you walk?"
I tried to stand and my legs did not cooperate. Three days in isolation. Six failed rituals. My body had forgotten how to function. I collapsed against him.
Ryker caught me without complaining. He just hoisted me up and started moving.
The hallway was empty. That was the only miracle we got. He carried me through corridors I did not recognize, moving fast and quiet. I could feel Kael and Darius moving too. Through separate corridors. Following some plan I was not part of.
We burst out of the compound into cold night air.
Darius was there with four horses. He was breathing hard like he had run instead of walked. When he saw me in Ryker's arms his entire face changed.
"She okay?" he asked.
"No," Ryker said. "But we do not have time to fix that now."
Kael appeared from the darkness like something the shadows had spit out. His shirt was hanging open. Blood was still seeping through the bandages underneath. His side looked like it had been torn open and badly stitched back together.
He looked at me and I felt something break in his chest through the bond.
"Get her on a horse," he said. His voice was rough. Raw. Nothing like the controlled ice from before.
"She cannot ride," Darius said.
"She will have to."
Ryker helped me onto one of the horses. My hands grabbed at the mane because I could not think of anything else to hold. Behind us, the compound was starting to wake up.
A guard shouted from somewhere near the gates.
Kael moved.
He did not run toward the guard. He ran toward the gate itself. There were five guards there. Armed. Ready.
Kael was not armed.
He did not need to be.
He was an Alpha and his wolf was not interested in negotiation. I watched him move through them like water. Brutal. Fast. Efficient. One guard went down. Then another. Then all of them.
The gate swung open.
Kael was bleeding more now. I could feel it happening through the bond. The effort of fighting while barely standing was reopening the wound.
But he was smiling.
"Go," he said.
We went.
The horses bolted into the darkness and I held on because letting go meant falling and falling meant dying and dying meant leaving all of them tied to a severed bond.
Behind us, alarm bells started ringing.
Not just one bell. Every bell in the compound seemed to be going off at once. The sound was like the world was ending.
Because for us, it was.
Ryker was ahead of me, leading the way. Darius was beside me. Kael was behind us, riding one handed because his other hand was pressed against his side. Blood was dripping from his fingers.
The forbidden territory was ahead. I could feel it. The border where pack lands ended and nothing belonged to anyone. Where the alliance's laws did not reach.
It felt like riding toward a cliff.
"How far?" I gasped.
"Three hours," Ryker called back. "If we can keep this pace."
Three hours. Kael could not bleed for three hours. I could feel how much blood he was losing. Could feel it like it was happening to me too.
The bond was screaming.
All four of us were screaming but none of us were making sound.
We rode hard. The horses were going as fast as they could push. The night air was ice cold and it burned my lungs. My hands were numb from gripping the mane. Everything hurt in ways that did not make physical sense but made perfect sense through the bond.
Kael was falling behind.
I could feel it happening. Could feel him trying to stay with us but his body was giving up. The blood loss was too much. The pain was too much.
"Kael," I said his name without meaning to.
"I am here," he said. But he was not. He was fading.
"Keep moving," Ryker said. His voice was different now. Harder. Colder. "Do not stop. If we do not make it to forbidden territory, they will have legal authority to recapture us."
"We cannot leave him," Darius said.
"We are not leaving him. We are saving him."
Ryker pulled his horse off the road and we followed. The terrain got rougher. Rocks. Trees. Things that could kill you if you fell the wrong way.
And then we crossed something invisible.
The moment we did, the bond relaxed. Not completely. But enough that I could breathe.
Ryker slowed the horses to a walk. Darius was already pulling Kael from his horse before it had fully stopped moving.
"Healers," Kael said. His voice was slurring. "Need healers."
"No healers here," Ryker said. He was already ripping Kael's shirt open. The wound was worse than bad. It was catastrophic. "Darius, water. The stream is northeast, fifty yards."
Darius ran.
I tried to get off my horse and my legs gave out. I hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from me.
Ryker caught me before I could fall completely. His hands were shaking.
"Can you sit up?" he asked.
I tried. It took everything I had but I got myself into a sitting position.
He looked at me and there was something in his eyes that terrified me more than the execution order had.
Kael was dying. His blood was all over Ryker's hands and the wound was still open and there was nothing we could do because we were in the wilderness with no supplies and no help and the entire alliance was hunting us.
Darius came back with water in a hat he had filled at the stream. Ryker used it to clean the wound. Kael was barely conscious. Through the bond, I could feel him slipping away like water through my fingers.
"Do not you dare," I said to him. I did not know I was going to say it until the words were out. "Do not you dare leave me with him."
Kael's ice blue eyes found mine for a second.
"Would not dream of it," he whispered. Then he was gone.
Not dead. I could still feel him. But unconscious. Bleeding out in the darkness somewhere between safety and annihilation.
Ryker looked at me and Darius looked at me and I understood something with horrible clarity.
I had run. All of us had run. We had escaped the compound and the execution order and the council's authority.
But we were not safe.
We were four broken people in the wilderness with no supplies, no plan, and no way back. The bond was keeping us tied together but it was also killing Kael. It was pulling at all of us. The connection was so strong it felt like we were bleeding out together.
These three males.
I was tied to them whether I wanted to be or not.
And they would either pull me up into something bigger and stronger than I had ever been.
Or they would drag me down into destruction with them.
And there was nothing I could do to escape it.