Elara POV
Elara experiences excruciating pain as her body attempts a premature transformation. Her bones shatter and reform while her skin tears from within. Silver light floods her veins as her fingers elongate into claws and fur struggles to emerge from her arms. She's trapped between human and wolf forms, unable to complete either transformation, and the conflict is tearing her apart from the inside.
Through her agony, Elara hears Cassius laughing, declaring that her human body cannot handle the accelerated shifting and she'll destroy herself. Ronan roars in desperation, releasing a powerful wave of ice that extinguishes the fires consuming the shop and covers everything in frost. The temperature plummets dramatically.
Ronan grabs Elara with his freezing hands, begging her to look at him. His silver eyes reveal terror and desperation as he explains that her body isn't ready to shift yet. The Moon blessed blood in her veins is fighting against the werewolf magic, and she'll die unless she can slow the transformation down.
Unable to control it herself, Ronan tells Elara to use their bond. He presses his forehead against hers and explains that she needs to feel his ice and let it cool her fire. They balance each other, which is the true meaning of their binding. Though she doesn't understand, Elara tries because death is the alternative.
She focuses on the burning mark on her chest and the silver thread of their bond. When she reaches for Ronan's connection, ice floods through her. The cold rushes through her burning veins like diving into frozen water, battling the fire that's destroying her. The transformation slows, her bones stop breaking, and the fur recedes. However, she's no longer entirely human either.
When Elara opens her eyes, everything is sharper. She can hear Cassius's heartbeat from across the room, smell the oil on his gun, and see clearly in the darkness. Ronan explains that he's shared his curse and his ice with her, but this has created complete dependence between them. They're bound together beyond just the mate bond—if one dies, the other dies too. The frost magic that has been killing Ronan for thirty years now lives inside Elara as well.
Rather than feeling afraid, Elara feels anger. She confronts Cassius, accusing him of cursing Ronan, murdering women, and destroying her mother. Cassius retreats, now sensing something dangerous has changed in her. Elara defends her mother as a hero who tried to save Ronan's father and passed her power to her daughter.
Suddenly, Elara shifts—not transforming, but moving with impossible speed. In an instant, she's across the room with her hand around Cassius's throat, having moved faster than humanly possible, faster even than Ronan expected. Cassius is shocked, insisting humans and even Moon Blessed cannot move that quickly.
Elara realizes she's neither human nor fully wolf anymore. She's something new. Where she touches Cassius, frost spreads from her fingers like Ronan's power, but mixed with silver fire—her mother's magic and Ronan's curse working together instead of fighting.
Ronan stops Elara from killing Cassius, explaining they need him alive to break the curse. He knows who created it and how it works. Reluctantly, Elara throws Cassius across the room, and Ronan traps him against the wall with ice.
Under threat of being frozen solid, Cassius reveals crucial information. The witch's name is Morgana Frost, and she lives in the Howling Peaks three hours north. However, the curse wasn't created to kill Ronan—it was made to save him. Cassius explains that Ronan's father was cursed first by a dark mage intending to destroy their pack. Morgana, who loved Ronan's father, twisted and altered the original curse. The frost magic wasn't meant to kill mates but to find the one mate capable of absorbing and transforming the curse—a Moon blessed mate like Elara's mother, like Elara herself.
Cassius reveals that Grace was supposed to save Ronan's father through their bond, but she was too young and weak. The curse backlash killed her slowly. Morgana realized they needed to wait for Grace's daughter to mature and for the bloodline to strengthen. Everything—the curse, the bond, this night—was building toward Elara for thirty years. She wasn't born naturally; she was bred for this purpose. She's not human; she's a cure.
Elara feels devastated by this revelation. She realizes Ronan knew who she was when he saw her blood and when their bond formed. He reaches for her, but she recoils, realizing Marcus and Victoria were right. The bond isn't even real—it's just magic using her to save Ronan.
Before Ronan can explain, the shop's front wall explodes inward. Through the smoke and debris walks Morgana Frost—a woman with floating white hair and glowing purple eyes who moves with unnatural grace despite her age. She greets Elara, saying she's been waiting thirty years to meet her.
Morgana's smile is chilling as she explains the cost of breaking the curse: one of them must die to save the Alpha. And she already knows which one it will be.