Kade~
I headed toward Mariah's chambers in the east wing, my mood darkening with each step. The last thing I needed was a lecture about rejecting Nessa. I'd made my choice and I stood by it. The fact that she'd turned out to be some kind of supernatural creature only proved I'd been right,she was trouble from the start.
Mariah's door was already open when I arrived. The room beyond was thick with incense smoke and candlelight, casting dancing shadows across walls covered in celestial charts and ancient texts. Rowan and Maddox stood near the window, their expressions grim.
And there, seated in the center of the room on a cushioned chair, was Mariah herself.
The seer was ancient,no one knew exactly how old,with silver hair that fell to her waist and eyes that seemed to look through you rather than at you. Those eyes fixed on me now as I entered, and I felt the weight of her disapproval like a physical thing.
"Sit," she commanded.
"I prefer to stand."
"I don't care what you prefer. Sit."
I glanced at my brothers. Rowan gave me a look that said just do it, so I grabbed a chair and sat, crossing my arms. "What's this about?"
"The Moon Goddess is angry with you and I warned you about this."
I barked out a laugh. "Is that all? I'm sure I'll survive Her displeasure."
"Will you?" Mariah's voice dropped, going cold and hard. "Will your pack? Will your territory? Because right now, Kade Blackwood, you're bringing Her wrath down on all of us, and you're too arrogant to see it, did you think I lied on the day of the mating solstice when I told you the consequences of rejection ".
"Explain again," I said tersely.
She stood, moving to a small altar in the corner where offerings had been laid,flowers, crystals, silver coins. But the offerings looked... wrong. Withered. The flowers were black and rotting, the crystals clouded, the coins tarnished to an ugly green.
"Two days ago, I made offerings to the Moon Goddess, as I do every week," Mariah said, her gnarled fingers hovering over the decayed items. "They were fresh, pure, proper. Within hours, they looked like this. The Goddess rejected them."
"Offerings can spoil—" Maddox started.
"Not like this." Mariah turned, her eyes flashing. "Not all at once. Not with this kind of concentrated corruption. This is a message."
"What kind of message?" Rowan asked quietly.
"That She is displeased with the state of the mate bond between you three and the Silvercrest girl."
My jaw clenched. "I rejected her. The bond is severed. There's nothing to be displeased about."
"The bond is not severed," Mariah snapped. "It's wounded. Mangled. Incomplete. You performed a partial rejection, Kade—one Alpha rejecting while the other two remained silent. That's not how it works. The bond doesn't break cleanly; it festers."
"Then I'll complete the rejection," I said flatly. "I'll get Rowan and Maddox to reject her too. Problem solved."
"It's too late for that."
The room went very still.
"What do you mean, too late?" Maddox asked.
Mariah moved to her scrying bowl, gesturing for us to look. The water inside was dark, almost black, with strange patterns swirling beneath the surface like oil slicks.
"The rejection was performed on the mating solstice," she said. "The most sacred night of our calendar.
The night when the Moon Goddess's power is at its peak. By rejecting your mate on that night, in front of the entire pack, you committed a grave insult to Her."
"I have the right to reject anyone," I said, though unease was starting to creep into my chest. "It's an Alpha's right."
"Not a mate like this one." Mariah's eyes fixed on me. "Not a Silvercrest. Do you have any idea what that bloodline represents? They were the Moon Goddess's chosen, Her direct descendants. They were meant to lead packs, to bridge the gap between wolf and divine. And you rejected one on Her holiest night."
"I didn't know what she was," I said, but the excuse sounded weak even to my own ears.
"Ignorance doesn't absolve you." Mariah turned back to the bowl. "The Goddess is angry, and She's making Her anger known. The signs have already begun."
"What signs?" Rowan asked, moving closer.
Rowan~
I didn't like where this was going. Mariah was many things,cryptic, difficult, occasionally infuriating,but she was never wrong about matters of divine displeasure.
"Two nights ago," Mariah said, her voice taking on the distant quality it got when she was recounting visions, "three pregnant she-wolves in the pack went into early labor. All three lost their pups. Stillborn, every one."
My stomach dropped. "That's not—"
"A coincidence? No, it's not." She moved away from the bowl, pacing now. "Yesterday, the eastern border patrol reported the forest going silent No birds, no prey animals, nothing and the fish in the water bodies all dead.
Just silence. And last night, the sentries on the western ridge saw lights in the sky,not stars, not aurora. Lights that moved with purpose and malice."
"Those could all be natural phenomena," Maddox said, but his tone was uncertain.
"Could they?" Mariah whirled on him. "All at once? All within days of the rejection? And this morning, I received this."
She pulled a cloth from her altar, revealing what lay beneath. It was a dead raven, its feathers pristine black except for a mark burned into its chest,a crescent moon, inverted.
"It appeared on my windowsill at dawn," Mariah said quietly. "No wounds, no signs of how it died. Just this mark. The inverted moon is the Goddess's symbol of rejection. She's telling us She's withdrawn Her favor from this pack."
The room fell into heavy silence. I found myself thinking of Nessa, strapped to a bed in my medical room, confused and frightened and dealing with the emergence of powers she didn't understand. And we were here discussing how her rejected mate bond was bringing divine wrath down on us.
"What do we need to do?" I asked. "How do we fix this?"
Mariah looked at me, then at Maddox, then finally at Kade. "You need to complete the bond. Properly. All three of you need to accept her as your mate and cement the connection through the mating ceremony."
"Absolutely not," Kade said immediately, standing. "I'm not binding myself to that girl for eternity because of some superstitious"
"Sit. Down."
The command came with power behind it,not Alpha power, but something older. Divine authority. Kade's legs buckled, and he sat back down hard, his eyes wide with shock.
"You will listen," Mariah said, her voice echoing strangely in the confined space. "The Moon Goddess has given me Her words, and you will hear them.
You have three choices, Kade Blackwood. One: complete the bond through the mating ceremony within the next lunar cycle. Two: have all three of you formally reject her together, severing the bond entirely and accepting the Goddess's punishment for the insult. Three: do nothing, and watch as your pack slowly dies,crops failing, wolves falling ill, pups stillborn, until nothing remains but ruins and regret."
"That's not a choice," Kade growled. "That's a threat."
"It's reality," Mariah corrected. "The Goddess doesn't make threats. She makes consequences."
Maddox~
I was already running calculations in my head, weighing outcomes and probabilities.
If what Mariah said was true, and I had no reason to doubt her gift,then we were looking at a potential extinction event for our pack. But binding ourselves to Nessa permanently was a massive decision with its own complications.
"The mating ceremony requires consent from all parties," I said carefully. "Nessa would have to agree. Given that Kade publicly rejected her, humiliated her in front of the entire pack, and she's currently dealing with a massive identity crisis... what makes you think she'd agree?"
"That's your problem to solve," Mariah said. "Court her, convince her, grovel if you must. But the bond must be completed."
"What about the partial rejection?" Rowan asked. "Can that be undone?"
"Partially. The damage is done, but accepting her now, cementing the bond through the ceremony, will begin the healing process.
It won't be easy,the bond will be weaker than it should be, more fragile. But it can survive if you're willing to work at it."
I looked at my brothers. Rowan's expression was thoughtful, already considering possibilities. Kade looked like he'd swallowed poison.
"There's something else you should know," I said to Mariah. "Nessa is being hunted. Whoever orchestrated her kidnapping knows what she is, and they want her badly enough to risk war with us. If we perform a mating ceremony, publicly claiming her as ours, we're painting an even bigger target on her back."
"And on ours," Kade added darkly.
"The target is already there," Mariah said.
"The moment she manifested her Silvercrest abilities, every power player in the supernatural world took notice. At least as your bonded mate, she has the full protection of the Blackwood pack and the Moon Goddess's blessing. Right now, she has neither."
She had a point. A terrifying, complicated point.
"How long do we have?" I asked. "You said within the next lunar cycle. That's fourteen days."
"Less than that now. Twelve days until the new moon. If the bond isn't completed by then, the damage becomes irreversible."
Fourteen days to convince a traumatized, rejected girl to permanently bind herself to three Alphas, one of whom had made it clear he despises her.
"This is insane," Kade muttered.
"This is survival," Mariah corrected. "Your survival. Her survival. The pack's survival." She fixed each of us with her penetrating stare. "The Moon Goddess chose her as your mate for a reason. Perhaps it's time you found out what that reason is.
Madoxx~
I stalked out of Mariah's room, Kade and Rowan right in front of me, having another one of their pointless arguments. I knew it would come to this—another episode of Kade's arrogance nearly destroying everything.
The sound of a body hitting the wall tore through my thoughts like a whiplash.
" Don't fucking talk to your alpha like that!" Kade had slammed Rowan against the wall, his grip vicious around Rowan's throat. His breath came out in ragged pants as he fought off Rowan's attempts to wriggle free.
"What the fuck are you doing, Kade?" I yelled, lunging forward to wrench his monstrous grip away from Rowan's neck.
"Kade, please—let's just all calm down, okay?"
He released Rowan's neck in a sudden, violent movement. Rowan stumbled backward, struggling to regain his balance, his hand massaging his neck where angry bruise marks were already forming. His breath came in rough, uneven pants. He looked up, his face flushed crimson. Then his lips curled into a smile, and he burst into a fit of manic laughter.
"Fucking coward. You had to do that to make yourself feel like you've got your shit together, huh?"
"Yes, I am your alpha, and you will respect that." Kade's voice was deadly quiet as he stepped closer.
I knew I had to get between them before they continued where they left off.
"Enough! Both of you!" My voice cracked like thunder through the hallway. "You're acting like fucking children. Your fighting doesn't solve anything. You two better man up and stop this shit. Now."
"Fucking tell that to Kade, who's the reason we're all in this fucking mess," Rowan spat, still rubbing his throat. "If he didn't reject her and throw her in the dungeon, this shit with the Moon Goddess wouldn't be happening. So what's the plan now? You're gonna go back and tell her to accept us as her mates and go on with the ceremony? Because I sure as hell know Nessa is never gonna agree to that." His voice rose with bitter emphasis. "She tried to run away, for fuck's sake."
"She doesn't have a choice in this." Kade's tone was ice. "It's either she agrees, or she faces the consequences of defying her alpha."
"No fucking way, Kade." I fixed him with a hard glare, my jaw clenched. "You're not threatening anyone to do anything. We try our best to convince her, and that's it."
"What if she says no?" Rowan countered, his voice strained with exhaustion.
"I'm hoping she won't." I looked between them both, then let my glare settle on Kade. "Both of you, get your acts together. And please—don't mess this up."
Nessa~
The blinking light on the ceiling made me restless. I'd been tossing and turning for hours, unable to sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Wren—hear gurgling sounds, her bloody hand clutching at her neck, the light draining from her eyes. My body ached from the injuries and stitches, each throb a reminder of what I'd survived.
I needed to distract myself.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I hated Rowan's room—it was too sterile, too cold, too much like a hospital. I peeked out the door. The hallway was empty. Moving quickly, I hurried back to my own room.
The familiar stench of old clothes and dampness welcomed me . I sank onto my sunken bed and exhaled a loud breath, my hand smoothing over the stained sheets. For a moment, I just sat there, letting the silence wrap around me.
Then my phone buzzed.
The sound cut through my thoughts like a knife. I reached into the narrow drawer beside my bed, my knuckles scraping against the rough wooden edge as I fumbled for it. The screen lit up: Unknown Number.
My thumb hovered over the answer button. Something in my gut twisted. But I pressed it anyway.
"Hey, Nessa? It's Cole."
My breath caught. The phone nearly slipped from my trembling hand.
"Hey cole" I answered my voice shaky.
"it's nice to finally call you. I know it's been a while"
His voice kept going, but I couldn't hear the words anymore. Memories came swarming in like wasps Cole, my boyfriend who'd left suddenly, without warning, without explanation. One day he was there, and the next he just... wasn't. I'd found out when he stopped showing up to school. No goodbye.
No text. Nothing, only heartbreak.
And now this.
"Hey, Nessa? Are you there?"
His husky voice pulled me back to the present.
"Erm,yes. Yes, I'm here." My voice came out shaky, barely above a whisper. "Hey, Cole."
"Good, I thought I lost you for a second." He let out a soft laugh.
"Listen, I know this is out of the blue, but I heard you're in Blackwood now.
I'm actually coming there tomorrow for a treaty meeting with the alpha. I was really hoping we could catch up. It's been too long."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
The one person from my past I never thought I'd have to face again.
Coming to Blackwood.
Tomorrow.