Three days into her research, Aria discovered her first major problem.
"The neural scans don't make sense," she muttered, comparing readouts on dual monitors. Lyric looked up from her own workstation where she'd been cataloging historical bond cases.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean the biochemical markers don't match the behavioral reports." Aria pulled up two side-by-side brain scans—one from a happily bonded pair, another from a documented abuse case. "Look at this. The neurological changes are identical. Same pathway alterations, same hormone levels, same structural modifications. If the bond were purely parasitic, we'd see different patterns in healthy versus unhealthy bonds."
"Maybe it affects everyone the same way," Lyric suggested. "And individual temperament determines the outcome?"
"No, that's my point. It shouldn't work like that." Aria stood, pacing the length of the laboratory. "If the bond is manipulating brain chemistry to create artificial attachment, there should be variance. Intensity differences. Something to explain why some pairs are happy and others are nightmares."
"Unless..." Lyric hesitated, biting her lip. "Unless the bond itself isn't inherently good or bad? What if it amplifies existing compatibility?"
Aria stopped pacing. "Explain."
"Well, my mate and I were friends before the bond hit. We already liked each other, shared values, had similar goals. The bond just... intensified what was already there." Lyric pulled up her own bond markers on screen. "But if the bond hits between incompatible wolves—say, a gentle omega and a violent alpha—it would intensify that incompatibility too. Make the violence worse."
It was a horrifyingly logical theory. And it made Aria's research infinitely more complicated.
"That would mean the problem isn't the bond itself," Aria said slowly, thinking through implications. "It's the forced pairing. The lack of choice in who you bond with."
"Right. The bond can't create love from nothing—it can only amplify what's there. Love, hate, indifference, violence. Whatever exists between two wolves, the bond makes it consuming."
Aria returned to her computer, pulling up case files with new perspective. If Lyric was right—and the data was starting to suggest she might be—then Aria's entire approach was wrong. She couldn't just prove the bond was parasitic and call for its destruction.
She had to prove the forced pairing was the problem.
Which meant going after the matching mechanism itself.
"The Tether," Aria breathed.
"What?"
"That's what my mother called it in her notes. The force that determines who bonds with whom." Aria's fingers flew across the keyboard, searching for her mother's encrypted files—the ones she'd hidden in her apartment, not the lab. "She theorized there was an external mechanism controlling mate selection. Not the Moon Goddess, but something else. Something older."
"That's heresy."
"So is everything else I'm doing." Aria finally found the files, entering the decryption key—her mother's birthday. The documents opened, revealing decades of research. "Mom spent twenty years studying bond mechanics before she met my father. Look at this."
She pulled up a molecular diagram that looked like nothing found in nature. Complex, crystalline, almost alien in structure.
"What am I looking at?" Lyric moved closer, studying the image.
"This is what I found in Kael's blood sample. The secondary structure I couldn't identify." Aria overlaid her recent findings with her mother's diagram. They matched perfectly. "My mother found this in every bonded wolf she studied. She called it the Tether Signature."
"Could it be a natural hormone we haven't cataloged yet?"
"That's what the scientific community told her. But she kept digging." Aria opened another file—a series of experiments conducted on rejected wolves. "She found that when bonds are severed, this structure doesn't disappear. It persists, trying to rebuild the connection. Like a parasite that won't let go of its host."
Lyric had gone very still. "Aria... if what you're suggesting is true—"
The laboratory door crashed open.
Dane—or whatever his real name was—stumbled in, bleeding from a gash across his forehead. His grey eyes were wild, focused on Aria with desperate intensity.
"You need to run," he gasped. "Now. They're coming."
"Who?" Aria was already moving toward him, medical training kicking in. "What happened?"
"The Council. They know about your real research." Dane grabbed her shoulders, smearing blood on her sleeve. "Thaddeus isn't human anymore—he's been possessed by the Tether for decades. He's been watching you, and now he knows you're getting close to the truth."
Aria's mind raced. Dane knew about the Tether. Knew things he shouldn't. Which meant—
"You're with the Unchained," she said.
"I'm Daemon Ashford." He released her, stepping back. "We were friends, once. Before I rejected my bond and lost my wolf. Before everyone thought I was dead."
Memory crashed back—a younger Daemon, before the scars, laughing with her and Kael in the palace gardens before class segregation separated them. Her childhood friend.
"Oh gods," Lyric whispered. "If Thaddeus is possessed—if he's been controlling the Council—"
Alarms began blaring throughout the palace.
"Too late," Daemon said grimly. "They're here."
The door burst open again, but this time it was Kael, flanked by guards. His eyes swept the room, cataloging the scene—Daemon bleeding, Aria's pale face, the research still open on the computers.
"Lockdown has been initiated," he said, voice sharp with command. "There's been an attack on the Council chambers. Thaddeus is dead."
Aria's blood ran cold. "What?"
"Murdered. They're saying it was the Unchained." Kael's gaze locked on Daemon, recognition flickering across his face. "Daemon? You're alive?"
"Long story." Daemon wiped blood from his eyes. "And Thaddeus isn't dead—he's molting. The Tether is preparing to jump to a new host."
"The Tether?" Kael looked between them, confused and increasingly alarmed. "What are you talking about?"
Before anyone could answer, the lights went out.
Emergency lighting kicked in, bathing everything in red. And through the window, Aria saw something that made her blood freeze.
Shadows. Moving independently of any light source. Writhing, reaching, spreading across the palace grounds like living darkness.
"That's impossible," Lyric breathed.
"That's the Tether," Aria corrected, watching the shadows flow toward their building. "And it's coming for us."
Kael moved instantly to her side, instincts overriding questions. "We need to evacuate this wing."
"No," Daemon said. "We need to complete her research. Now. While it's distracted with the chaos."
"Are you insane?" Kael demanded. "Whatever that thing is—"
"It's what creates the bonds," Aria said, understanding crystalizing with horrifying clarity. "It's not just some abstract force. It's sentient. Parasitic. And it's been controlling our species for millennia."
The shadows reached their window. Up close, Aria could see them—not darkness, but something worse. Tendrils of matter that existed between dimensions, reaching through the veil to touch their reality.
One tendril pressed against the glass. The window cracked.