Connall's mind was a maelstrom of hate and disbelief. He stared at the she-wolf, the impossible truth of the Mating Moon a fresh brand on his soul. The scent of her—Bloodfang—was a foul poison in the air, a scent he associated with burning pine and his mother's screams. It mocked the sacred, agonizing connection that pulsed between them. He looked at her silver fur, matted with blood and dirt, and saw the snarling wolf's head crest of the usurper. He looked at her wide, terrified eyes and saw only the faces of Guntram Volkov's pack reflected there.
He pushed himself to his feet, every muscle coiled with a decade of honed loathing. The agony in his chest had receded to a dull, angry throb, but the rage remained, pure and cold as a winter river. His voice was a low growl, stripped of everything but menace, the sound of grinding stones.
"Did Volkov send you?" he snarled, the words tearing from his throat. "Is this his final, sick joke? Send a she-wolf to finish the job his hunters couldn't?"
Althea flinched, her body still trembling from the hunt and the violent shock of the bond. "No," she whispered, her voice laced with the guttural accent of his enemies, each syllable a fresh stab of betrayal. "I swear it. I am a fugitive. They hunt me because I was framed."
*Liar.* The word was a venomous spit in his own mind. Her denial was nothing but the whining of a cornered snake. He took a menacing step forward, the movement fueled by buried grief and a fury that had festered for ten long years. "Framed for what? Breathing? You are all traitors. Murderers. Your entire pack is built on a throne of stolen bones."
With every word, the animosity he projected into the world seemed to coalesce in his chest. The dull throb sharpened, a strange, sickening energy thrumming like a plucked wire. It intensified with his rising hate, twisting from a hum into a sharp, searing pain. A phantom crackle filled his ears, like the air before a lightning strike. It felt as if a hot brand, forged in his own rage, was being pressed directly onto his soul.
He recoiled with a choked gasp, his hand flying to his chest. Across the clearing, the she-wolf cried out, a mirror image of his own agony. She clutched her own chest, her face contorting in pain, her back arching off the ground. The connection was undeniable. Their mutual hostility was a shared torment, a physical weapon turned against them both.
The realization did nothing to soothe his rage. It only focused it into a single, sharp point of blame. She was the cause. Her presence was the poison.
He turned his back on her, the decision absolute. "Stay away from me," he growled, the words a promise of violence if she disobeyed. The only solution was distance. He would sever this cursed tether if he had to walk to the end of the world.
He stalked into the forest, plunging into the shadows of the ancient oaks. Each step was a declaration of his will, a rejection of his fate. With every yard he put between them, the searing brand in his chest twisted deeper. The pain wasn't just a sensation; it felt like his very soul was being stretched on a rack, thinning and fraying with each foot of separation.
*A trick. Some dark Bloodfang magic.*
He gritted his teeth, his pride warring with a torment that grew exponentially with every step. The pain radiated from his core, a cold fire that licked along his veins. Ten yards. Twenty. The world began to blur at the edges, the ancient trees melting into a smear of green and black. His lungs burned, each breath a shallow, desperate gasp that brought no relief. He was a prince of the wild, an Alpha who had survived a decade of solitude and violence, and this invisible force was bringing him to his knees.
He stumbled, catching himself on the rough bark of a pine, a strangled cry escaping his lips. The pain was absolute, overriding thought, overriding hate. It was a physical law more powerful than his own will, an axiom of agony.
Through the white-hot haze, the horrifying logic slammed into him. The pain had flared when he threatened her. It was becoming unbearable now that he was moving away. It wasn't a curse she was casting on him. It was the bond itself. A physical tether. A poisoned leash that would not let him go.
Survival, a brutal instinct honed over years of exile, screamed at him. His willpower shattered against the unyielding wall of torment. His hatred was a luxury he could no longer afford. He could not go forward. The pain would kill him.
He had to go back.
With a roar of frustrated agony, Connall forced his legs to move. He staggered back the way he came, each step a new kind of torture. The tearing sensation in his soul didn't vanish, but with every foot he closed between them, the tension on the rack lessened by a single, terrifying degree. At thirty yards, the inferno became a blade. At twenty, the blade became a crushing fist. The relief was as horrifying as the pain had been. It was confirmation.
He broke through the tree line, his chest heaving. He saw her. She had collapsed, curled into a ball on the cold earth, her breathing shallow and ragged. Her silver eyes, wide with fear and a dawning, shared understanding, locked onto him as he approached. She watched him not as a monster, but as a cure she didn't understand.
He kept walking, drawn by the invisible chain. Ten feet away. The searing torment subsided into a grinding ache. Five feet. The ache lessened to a deep, insistent throb, a constant, humming reminder of the volatile connection that now defined his existence. He stopped, standing over her, the silence between them thick with the unspoken horror of their discovery. He could feel the thrum of the bond in the space between them, a low vibration of wrongness.
They were prisoners of proximity.
His mind raced, desperately seeking an escape that wasn't there. This curse wouldn't let him leave. It wouldn't let him fight her. It demanded he stay within arm's reach of the one person in the world he was sworn to destroy. The very air around her felt toxic, a miasma of his family's blood and his own lost future. Yet to move away from it was a fate worse than death.
He looked down at the she-wolf from the pack that had butchered his family, his fated mate, his sworn enemy. He was tethered to her, a bond of soul-deep agony that promised to kill him if he fled and destroy his sanity if he stayed. With sickening certainty, he understood. The only antidote for the poison was the poison itself.