Calder's voice carries across the clearing. "Jonah Hayes. Maren Rivers. You stand before your clan to forge a mate bond." His eyes are ancient, holding weight I'm only beginning to understand. "This is not a human marriage. This is blood and magic and permanence. Once done, it cannot be undone. Do you both enter this freely?"
"I do," Jonah says.
My throat is dry. "I do."
"Then speak your vows."
Jonah turns to face me fully, and the torchlight catches in his grey eyes. "I promise to stay," he says, his voice rough with emotion. "To fight for you, for us, for this place we're building. I promise to love you in this form and the next, for as long as breath remains."
My turn. The words I've been rehearsing in my head since he first asked me to do this.
"I promise to stay," I echo, and my voice is stronger than I expected. "To stand beside you, no matter what comes. I promise to love you—bear and man, researcher and warrior, every piece of who you are. For as long as I exist."
Calder extends the blade toward Jonah. The handle is carved with symbols that seem to writhe in the flickering light, older than the town, older than anyone here can probably remember.
Jonah takes it. Without hesitation, he draws it across his palm. Blood wells dark against his skin, and he doesn't flinch.
Then the blade comes to me.
My hand shakes as I take it. The handle is warm from Jonah's grip, and the edge is sharper than I expected. I press it to my palm and pull.
The sting is immediate, bright and clean. Blood runs hot down my wrist, and I watch it drip onto the stone beneath my feet. The ley lines respond, pulsing brighter.
"Join hands," Calder says.
Jonah's palm meets mine. His blood mingles with mine, slick and warm, and his fingers close around my hand.
The mate bond snaps into place.
It's nothing like I imagined. Not gentle or soft or gradual. It's a rope of fire that tears from my chest to his, binding us together with a force that drives the air from my lungs. My knees buckle, and Jonah's free arm locks around my waist, holding me upright.
Through the bond, I feel everything. His love, fierce and overwhelming. His relief that I'm here, that I chose this. His fear that it might hurt too much, that I might regret it.
And beneath it all, the steady certainty that we're meant for this.
The ley lines surge.
Energy explodes upward through the standing stones, raw and ancient and powerful. It pours into us through our joined hands, through our feet on the sacred ground, through the air we breathe. My blood burns where it touches his, and something deep inside me wakes.
The bear.
She's huge and primal and completely foreign, and she's woven through every cell in my body. Not separate from me. Part of me. She wants out, wants to run and claim and fight, and the force of her presence nearly drives me to my knees again.
Jonah holds me tighter. "I've got you," he murmurs against my hair. "I'm right here."
The pain starts low in my spine, a deep ache that spreads. My cells are restructuring, DNA rewriting itself, and it's happening faster than it should. The ley line amplification, the ceremony, the power of the stones—it's accelerating everything.
"It's starting," Calder says sharply. "Get them to his cabin. Now."
Hands reach for us. Jonah's brothers, moving with practiced efficiency. Someone tries to help me walk, but my legs won't cooperate properly. Everything feels wrong, like my body doesn't quite fit anymore.
Jonah sweeps me up, cradling me against his chest. "Hold on," he says.
The forest blurs past. I'm dimly aware of movement, of voices calling instructions, of the clan parting to let us through. But mostly I'm aware of the pain intensifying, spreading from my spine outward. My bones ache. My skin feels too tight.
His cabin appears through the trees. The door opens—Eli, I think, or maybe Beau—and then we're inside, and the door closes behind us, shutting out the world.
Jonah lowers me onto his bed—the same bed and cabin someone had to have fixed after the uncontrolled bear incident. The mattress dips beneath my weight, and I curl instinctively around the pain in my center.
