“Stop,” I try to say, but it comes out as a whimper.
Kieran’s eyes meet mine. There’s no malice there. Just cold determination.
His chanting grows louder. His hand motions become more frantic. The red mist swirls around us, thick and suffocating, but his gestures seem to push against it, fighting something I can’t see.
My vision blurs. The world starts to spin, colors bleeding together until I can’t tell up from down. The mate bond flickers—weaker now,but still there, a thin thread connecting me to Seth, somewhere beyond this nightmare.
The last thing I see is Kieran’s grim expression as darkness rushes up to claim me.
Then, nothing.
Just endless, terrifying black.
Chapter Fifteen
Seth
One minute,the mate bond is humming bright and warm in my chest, content as I wait for the vendor to pour wine into two wooden cups.
The next, it goes cold.
Not distant. Not muted. Cold. Like someone has ripped the fire from my chest and left nothing but ash.
The cups slip from my hands. Wine splashes across the cobblestones, dark as blood, but I’m already moving. My wolf explodes inside my head, frantic, howling with desperate fury.
Selene!
I don’t shout her name. Can’t afford to cause a scene, can’t let my panic show. But my feet carry me faster, weaving through the crowd with barely controlled urgency. The mate bond weakens with every heartbeat. Flickering. Fading like a candle being swallowed by the ocean.
I reach the spot where I last saw her, leaning against a wall. Empty. My eyes scan frantically—the dancers spinning past, the vendorshawking food, the press of bodies everywhere. No flash of auburn hair. No soft blue eyes finding mine through the chaos.
Even as it continues dying, the bond pulls me toward the forest’s edge. My wolf howls inside my skull, desperate, terrified in a way I’ve never felt before.
I slip into the trees as inconspicuously as I can manage, leaving the festival noise behind. The moment the shadows swallow me, I let my wolf surge forward. Partial shift. Senses flooding through.
Her scent. It’s faint. Barely there. Leading deeper into the woods.
I run.
Branches claw at my face. Roots try to trip me. The mate bond is hardly even a whisper now, so weak I almost can’t even sense it. Terror crawls up my throat. What if I’m too late? What if she’s—
No. I reject the thought violently. She’s alive. She has to be.
The scent trail ends in a moonlit clearing. My wolf snarls, scanning for threats, for any sign of my mate.
Movement. A figure emerges from the trees.
Kieran.
Carrying Selene’s limp body.
Rage explodes through me. White-hot. All-consuming. I start toward him, claws extending, ready to tear him apart for whatever he’s done to her—
“Stop.” Kieran’s voice cuts through my fury, low and urgent. “You’ll hurt her.”
I freeze mid-stride, every muscle locked. He’s right. One wrong move, one moment of lost control, and I could hurt Selene while she’s defenseless in his arms.
“What did you do to her?” I snarl, barely human.
