The sound tears through the air, raw and primal and deafening. The very ground trembles beneath my feet. Trees groan. The wind dies.
The sky splits in half. Windows shatter. Birds scatter away, knowing what’s to come. A woman screams somewhere behind the market stalls.
And then he shifts.
Bones break. Muscle tears. Magic rips through the air in waves that shake the cobblestones.
One second of silence follows, so heavy it feels like the town itself is bracing for death.
And then a lycan comes forward. Not a wolf!
Holy shit! My eyes are about to pop out of my skull.
He erupts out of Draven like wildfire out of stone. Ten feet tall. At least. Muscles rippling in fury under black fur. Clawsthat glint like obsidian. His wings unfurl behind him like a storm made of flesh. Each flap sends debris flying. Market tents collapse. Horses rear and bolt. People run, scream, dive behind anything that might keep them alive.
He unleashes a howl that doesn’t sound like pain.
It sounds like rage. Like loss. Like pure madness. It’s a sound that doesn’t belong in this world. It shouldn’t exist.
People don’t stop screaming.
He slams a clawed fist into the cobblestone, and the ground splinters. Shards of stone crack upward like jagged teeth. He reaches for a wagon and throws it into a building without hesitation. Wood explodes. Flames catch. Smoke starts to billow.
I feel every ounce of his rage like a phantom pressing into my chest. It wasn’t just pain. The bond didn’t just snap. It shattered him.
Guards rush in, but it’s a mistake. They don’t last.
He swipes one aside with a single claw and sends the man flying across the square. The next is crushed instantly. Another tries to shift mid-air, but the lycan grabs him by the throat and throws him through a bakery window.
Shit. That used to be my bakery.
I flinch, but I don’t look away. I can’t look away. Neris is entranced, too.
Because we feel him. Not just his rage. His grief.
The animal inside him is unraveling. Tearing through control and logic like it's paper. And the worst part?
He still doesn’t know why.
Amira screams Draven’s name, her hands glowing, magic forming in her palms. She tries to cast something — I don’t know what — but the second the lycan sees her, he snarls. Wings spread wide. He doesn’t attack, but she freezes.
She starts backing away with wide, terrified eyes. There’s nothing she can do. She is not the lycan’s mate. She cannot tame him. Some part of her knows she’s lost him. The king.
The lycan suddenly goes still in the center of the chaos. Amid fire and dust and blood.
His head lifts slowly. Nostrils flare. And then his eyes — burning molten silver, laced with black — turn.
Toward me. “Shit,” I whisper under my breath.
The forest’s shadow brushes the town’s edge. I stand just beyond it, my hand still lifted, heart still aching.
And in that one breathless moment, he sees me.
Really sees me.
The bond may be gone. But the echo of it? The memory of what we were meant to be?
It’s still there and I see the exact second it slams into him, powerful and undeniable.
