The mate bond is still alive
1228 Words
Julian’s POV
The water was a roaring beast below the cliff, but the silence she left behind was louder in my head than anything I know.
I stood at the edge, my claws digging into the soft earth until it crumbled beneath my weight. My wolf was screaming, a high, jagged sound that tore through my skull.
Mate.
Gone.
Broken.
The bond, that thin silver thread I had tried so hard to ignore, was now a wire of agony, vibrating with the shock of her impact against the water.
And before I could stop myself, I shifted.
The transition was violent, bones snapping and skin stretching back into human form as I crashed to my knees on the mossy verge. As if I were too impatient to wait, I didn't care about the cold. I didn't care that I was naked and exposed in the moonlight. I only cared about the spot where her pale-dusted skin had vanished into the black froth of the River.
"Elara!" I roared, but the sound was swallowed by the wind.
I stared down into the abyss. She had chosen the rocks and the freezing current over my touch. She had looked at me with those haunted, defiant eyes and decided that death was a kinder master than the Alpha of the Eclipse.
A sharp scent hit me from behind. Silas. He emerged from the tree line, his chest heaving, his eyes wide as he looked at the empty ledge where the Princess had just stood.
"Julian," he panted, stopping a few feet back. "The guards are combing the lower bank. They haven't found. . . "
"She’s not dead," I hissed, my voice sounding like I'm being crushed inside. I stood up, my muscles corded with a tension strong enough to snap my spine. "She can't be."
"It’s a fifty-foot drop into a rock-bed, Julian," Silas said, his voice dropping into that cautious, Beta tone. "Even a healthy wolf wouldn't survive that with those ribs. And she was a girl. A human-born wolf who hasn't shifted in years."
I turned on him, my eyes flashing white. I grabbed the front of his tunic and slammed him against a pine tree. "She is my mate! Do you think the Goddess would reveal her to me only to let her drown in a puddle of rainwater? She is alive. And she is mine."
I let him go, my breath coming in ragged, white plumes. The bond was still there. It was faint, but I could feel the flickering, dying pulse at the back of my mind, but it hadn't snapped. If she were dead, the world would have gone grey. I would have felt my soul ripped into pieces.
Instead, I felt cold. A deep, bone-chilling cold that wasn't my own.
"She’s in the water," I whispered, looking back at the river. "She’s drifting toward the Iron Woods."
"Julian, if the Red River scouts find her first..." Silas trailed off, but I knew what he meant. Salsa would be looking for blood. She would find Elara washed up on a bank and finish what the guards started.
"They won't," I growled. "Gather the elite trackers. Don't take torches and don't make noise. If anyone touches her, if anyone so much as looks at her before I arrive, I want their heads."
"And the wagons?" Silas asked. "The Silvermoon survivors are waiting for the dawn ceremony. The pack elders are already in the hall."
I looked at the fortress in the distance, the torches flickering like angry orange eyes. My people. My law. My vengeance. For months, I had dreamt of the moment I would finally extinguish the Silvermoon line. I had planned to make them watch as their Princess knelt before me.
But as I stood on that cliff, the blood feud felt like ash in my mouth.
"Postpone it," I commanded.
"Julian, you can't. The elders. . ."
"Tell the elders that the hunt is not over!" I screamed, the sound echoing off the canyon walls. “Tell them the Alpha is claiming his prize. If they have a problem with it, they can meet me at the dueling circle when I return."
I didn't wait for his response. I shifted again, the black fur erupting from my skin as I leaped from the cliffside.
I didn't fall like she did. I caught the jagged outcrops, my claws tearing through stone and root as I descended the face of the mountain. I hit the lower bank with a thud that vibrated through my paws.
The scent was faint here, lavender, drowning in the smell of wet silt and pine. I ran. I ran with a speed that blurred the trees into a dark tunnel in my eyes. My heart was hammering so loud in my chest, beating out her name with every strike against the earth.
Elara.
Elara.
Elara.
Oh, goddess! Keep her safe.
I reached a bend where the river slowed, spilling out into a marshy delta. There, snagged against a fallen willow tree, was a flash of white.
I slowed to a crawl, my hackles rising. My wolf was whining, a low, pathetic sound. I shifted back to human form as I waded into the waist-deep water. It was so cold it felt like needles piercing my skin, but it didn't move me.
I reached the tree and pulled back the branches.
She is there. Her face is as pale as the moon, her lips tinged with blue. The white bandages the healer had wrapped around her chest were soaked in pink, the blood from her re-broken ribs seeping through. She looked so small. So fragile. Like a bird that had been crushed in a fist.
I reached out, my hand trembling, and touched the side of her neck.
Good! There is a pulse.
It's thin, and faltering, but it was there.
"You stubborn, foolish girl," I whispered, my voice breaking.
I lifted her out of the water, pulling her dripping, broken body against my chest. She was so cold she felt like a block of ice. I wrapped my arms around her, trying to pour my own heat into her skin, trying to force my strength into her lungs.
She let out a tiny, wet gasp, her head falling back against my shoulder. Her eyes didn't open, but she let out a moan of pain that made my wolf howl in agony.
I looked back toward the keep. I could see the torches of my men coming down the trail. I could hear the baying of the hounds. I thought I told them no torches.
I had her back. But as I looked at her shattered form, I realized the truth. I hadn't saved her. I had just caught her before she could escape the hell I had built for her.
I pressed my forehead against hers, my eyes stinging with a heat I didn't understand.
"I have you," I whispered into the dark. "And I'm never letting you go, not even to the grave."
I stood up, carrying my dying mate back toward the fortress, knowing that when she woke up, she would hate me more than she ever had before.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't know if I could survive the look in her eyes. And Iwish I could change all of that.
- Writer
