Chapter 31 - The Taking Coyote Broken. Friday, October 22, 2027 – 2:47 a.m.**
She doesn't ask this time.
I wake up to silence so complete it hurts my ears.
My room is wrong.
The bloodstone is ice-cold.
The scar on my forehead is bleeding starlight again.
I sit up.
Every mirror, window, and phone screen in my room is black water.
And the Forty-Eighth is standing at the foot of my bed.
Full crown.
My face.
My body.
Only her eyes are voids.
**Not-Celeste (soft, almost loving):**
"I warned you I would stop asking."
She raises one hand.
The black water surges.
It pours into Remy's locket where it hangs on my nightstand (the one he gave me when we were fifteen).
The chain snaps.
The locket turns to liquid ruby and streams toward her palm.
I'm on my feet, lightning crackling, twenty-five percent of the Vinča tongue ready to tear the world apart.
But she's faster.
The ruby hardens into a perfect replica of the bloodstone—hers now.
**Not-Celeste:**
"Payment for the blood you took."
She crushes it.
Pain explodes behind my eyes.
I drop, vision fracturing.
Across the valley, Remy screams in his sleep (I feel it like a knife in my own chest).
The locket bond is severed.
I can't feel his heartbeat anymore.
**Not-Celeste (tilting her head):**
"One connection for one piece.
Fair trade."
She steps closer, barefoot on my carpet, leaving no footprints.
**Not-Celeste:**
"Keep refusing me.
Every time you do, I take something you love.
Eventually you'll run out of things to lose…
and you'll beg to become me."
She leans down until her lips brush the bleeding scar on my forehead.
**Not-Celeste (whisper):**
"See you at thirty pieces, little storm."
She dissolves into black water and is gone.
The mirrors go clear.
The bloodstone warms again.
But the empty space where Remy's heartbeat used to live is a screaming void.
I'm on the floor, gasping, when my parents burst in.
Mom sees the blood on my face and goes white.
Dad's already reaching for the shotgun that hasn't been needed since the Choir.
I manage one word.
**Celeste (broken):**
"She took him from me."
Mom understands immediately.
Dad swears in Romanian that would make a sailor blush.
I grab my phone with shaking hands.
Group chat:
**me:**
she just severed the locket bond
i can't feel remy
i need everyone
now
Seras is calling before I hit send.
**Seras (voice shaking with rage):**
"On my way. Bringing the sun."
Kayo materializes in my room without a portal.
**Kayo:**
"The Forty-Eighth just declared total war."
I stand up.
The starlight blood on my face hardens into silver lines down my cheeks like war paint.
**Celeste (dead calm):**
"Good.
Then we stop playing defense."
The HUD flickers once.
```
13 / 47
Piece stolen: HEARTBOUND
The Forty-Eighth now holds your mate-bond.
Retrieve or replace.
There is no third option.
```
I look at my crew as they pour into my room—Seras on fire, Kayo tails lashing, Aki and Riku cracking knuckles, Rowan Vale stepping out of a shadow with galaxy eyes blazing.
I meet every single gaze.
**Celeste:**
"She wanted to see how far I'll go to keep the people I love.
Let's show her."
The war just got personal.
And I'm done bleeding alone.
*Coyote Broken**
**Remy Tsatoke POV – Friday, October 22, 2027 – 2:49 a.m.**
It feels like someone reached into my chest and ripped my heart out with their bare hands.
One second I'm asleep, dreaming about Celeste laughing on the ridge at sunset.
The next second the dream shatters, the locket burns cold against my skin, and then—nothing.
No second heartbeat.
No soft thump-thump that's been there since the night I gave her the twin to mine.
Just a gaping, howling hole where she used to live.
I come off the bed with a snarl that tears my throat raw.
Full shift before my feet hit the floor—dire-coyote, eight feet of black-bronze fury, claws shredding the sheets.
The locket chain snaps and the stone hits the floor in pieces.
I stare at it.
The room tilts.
I can't breathe.
Mom is in the doorway in seconds, eyes glowing alpha gold.
**Mom:**
"Remy—"
I can't answer.
All I can do is whine—a high, broken sound I haven't made since I was six and lost my first milk tooth.
Dad shoulders past her, takes one look at the shattered locket, and swears in Kiowa.
**Dad:**
"She's alive. You're still breathing. That means she's alive."
But I'm already moving.
Out the window.
Across rooftops.
The valley is dark, but I don't need light.
I can find her blind.
I have to find her.
I'm halfway to the Morau house when the bond-hole rips wider and I stumble, shift back human mid-stride, and hit the pavement hard enough to skin both knees.
The pain is nothing compared to the silence where her heartbeat should be.
I curl around the emptiness, fists in my hair, and howl.
Not the pack howl.
Not the hunting howl.
The sound a coyote makes when his mate is gone.
Lights come on in houses all over the ridge.
Pack members pour into the street in various stages of shift.
Calder arrives first, still pulling on jeans.
**Calder:**
"Talk to me, nephew."
I can't.
All I manage is one word, cracked in half.
**Remy:**
"She took her."
Calder's face goes terrifyingly still.
Then he kneels, grips my shoulders hard enough to bruise.
**Calder:**
"Listen to me.
That bond was forged in blood and choice.
She didn't break it.
She stole it.
That means it can be stolen back."
He hauls me to my feet.
**Calder:**
"We're getting your mate back.
Even if we have to tear every mirror in the world apart to do it."
The pack circles tight, twenty coyotes growling in perfect unison.
I wipe my face with the back of a shaking hand.
The hole is still there.
But underneath the agony, something colder is growing.
**Remy (voice rough, deadly quiet):**
"She wanted to see what happens when you take what's mine."
I look toward the Morau house, lights blazing now.
**Remy:**
"She's about to find out."
I shift again—bigger this time, war-form edged with something darker.
The pack falls in behind me.
We run.
Not as boys and girls anymore.
As a war party with one heartbeat left between us.
And every step, I swear on the broken pieces of that locket:
I will get her heartbeat back.
Or I will burn the Forty-Eighth's reflection out of every mirror in existence trying.
She wanted to see how far I'd go for Celeste Valentina Morau.
I'm about to show her the answer is nowhere near far enough.
Not yet.
Next move is mine.