Casteel worked to rid himself of the rest of the ties. The priests had been thorough with Nero because they feared his strength. They'd been careless with Casteel because they saw only what he'd always been—a stable boy who'd stumbled into a prophecy.
They weren't entirely wrong. But they'd forgotten that stable boys learned to work with their hands, learned to slip knots and pick locks when horses needed tending and keys went missing. They'd forgotten that anyone who'd spent years around fractious animals learned to move very, very, carefully when their livelihood depended on it.
Stillness.
The leather binding his left wrist had stretched slightly when they'd dragged him here. Pain shot up his arm, but he worked it free.
Nero's breathing grew more labored. The silver light was almost gone now, reduced to mere flickers that pulsed weakly with his heartbeat. Doran stepped closer, his hands weavingpatterns in the air that seemed to catch and guide the remaining wisps of light to himself.
"Nearly finished," the High Priest murmured. "Soon you'll be free of this burden, and it will serve its true purpose at last."
Casteel's right hand came free with a muffled pop of leather giving way. The sound was lost beneath the rhythmic chanting of the priests, their attention fixed on the ritual's final moments. He kept his posture slumped, while his eyes tracked the slow death of the man he loved. The man he adored, and the man he never intended on letting go ever again.
The silver light had become so thin it barely existed—gossamer strands clinging to Nero's heart like the last defiant threads of a spiderweb in the wind. His mate's chest rose and fell in shallow, irregular bursts. Through their bond came only distant flickers, a candle guttering in a storm.
Doran raised the black glass blade again, this time positioning it directly over Nero's heart. "The final strand," he whispered, reverence and hunger mingling in his voice. "Come to me, wolf-soul. Your true vessel awaits."
The silver light trembled, resisting even as it was drawn inexorably toward the blade's edge. Nero's back arched one final time, his eyes flying open—no longer flecked with silver but hollow with pain and something worse: acceptance. This was the end. He had given everything for Casteel, and now nothing remained.
"Now," Doran snarled, and plunged the blade downward.
Casteel moved.
He barely felt the black glass blade pierce his own chest as he threw himself between Doran and Nero, his freed hands clutching at the High Priest's robes. Pain exploded through him—not just from the wound, but from the sudden, violent return of the wolf-soul as it abandoned Doran's failing ritual and poured into the only vessel it could reach.
Silver fire erupted along Casteel's bones. The transformation was instantaneous and brutal—human flesh dissolving into lupine power as the wolf reclaimed its chosen bearer with desperate fury. Where Casteel had knelt bleeding moments before, a massive silver wolf now stood, its eyes blazing with primal rage.
Doran's scream of rage was cut short as claws raked across his throat. The wolf's jaws clamped down on the High Priest's shoulder, fangs punching through robes and flesh with bone-crushing force. Blood sprayed across the ritual circle as Casteel shook his prey like a rag doll.
"The bindings!" Veda's voice rang out from above as the wards flickered, disrupted by the wolf-soul's violent return to its original vessel.
The Silver Guard finally reacted, crossbows swinging toward the chaos, but they were too late. Casteel's wolf form moved like liquid death, tearing through their ranks with supernatural speed. Claws opened throats, jaws crushed windpipes, and silver light blazed from his coat as the wolf-soul expressed its rage through violence.
A crossbow bolt hit him in the shoulder, spinning him around. Another grazed his flank. But pain only fed the wolf's fury. He pivoted and leaped, landing atop the shooter with enough force to drive the man's ribs into his lungs.
Above them, the disrupted wards finally collapsed entirely. Veda dropped from the gallery, her twin daggers finding hearts before her boots touched stone.
Doran, somehow still alive despite the massive wounds in his throat and shoulder, crawled toward Nero's trembling body. His pale eyes burned with fanatical determination even as blood bubbled from his lips. He didn't seem to realize there was no wolf-soul left in Nero to harvest.
"The ritual...is not...finished..." he gasped, raising the staff with shaking hands.
Dark energy crackled along its length—not the silver light of the wolf-soul, but something older and more terrible, and Casteel’s wolf smiled.
For you it is.
Casteel padded forward, silver light rippling beneath his fur like captured starlight. The wolf-soul had returned to him changed, tempered by its time in Nero's warrior heart. Where once it had been wild and uncertain, now it moved with deadly purpose.
An assassin's purpose.
Doran raised the staff higher, dark energy writhing around his bloodied fingers. "You cannot...stop what has already...begun," he wheezed, his pale eyes reflecting the unholy light. "The old gods...hunger..."
The wolf lunged.
Dark energy exploded outward, then collapsed back on itself with a sound like reality tearing. Doran's scream rose to an inhuman pitch as the backlash tore through him. His body convulsed, pale flesh blackening as the corrupted magic consumed him from within.
Casteel’s jaws closed around Doran's throat and tightened on a crunch.
"Casteel." Nero's voice was barely there. Casteel instantly dropped Doran, discarded to the floor and rushed forward. Nero was alive, and Casteel made short work of the bindings. Nero was a bloodied mess but Casteel very gently slid his arms under his mate's body and carefully lifted him into his arms, his weight nothing for his wolf. They needed to move. Nero needed care and he wouldn't get it down here.
