POV: Aria
"I can't let her kill them," I said again, my voice breaking. "Lisa was kind to me. Thomas protected her. Even Marcus—he was harsh, but he didn't deserve to die because of me."
Theron knelt in front of me, his silver eyes locked on mine. "The goddess is bluffing. She wants you scared and powerless."
"You don't know that!" I pulled away from him. "She killed my parents. An entire kingdom. Why wouldn't she slaughter one pack?"
"Because," Lucian said coldly, "she needs you to make the first move. Divine law prevents her from massacring innocents without cause. But if you accept the bonds and become a threat? Then she has justification."
My head spun. "So either way, they die? If I accept the bonds, she kills them for justification. If I don't, the hunters breach these walls and kill me, and then she has no reason to keep them alive anyway?"
The three kings were silent.
Another explosion rocked the Sanctuary. Closer this time.
"We're running out of time," Damon said. "The barriers won't hold much longer."
I looked at the blood still drying on my hands from the hunter I'd killed. My first kill. It had been so easy, so instinctive.
What else would become easy? What else would I lose?
"I need air," I said suddenly. "I can't breathe in here."
Before anyone could stop me, I ran. Out of the inner sanctuary, through corridors filled with guards preparing for battle, up stairs until I burst onto one of the fortress's high balconies.
The night air hit my face, cold and sharp.
Below, the army of divine hunters circled the Sanctuary like wolves surrounding wounded prey. Their white eyes glowed in the darkness, thousands of them, all waiting for the walls to fall.
All waiting to kill me.
"You shouldn't be out here exposed." Theron's voice came from behind me. He'd followed, of course.
"I'm tired of hiding," I said without turning around. "Tired of being protected like I'm fragile. Like I'm still that weak Omega who couldn't defend herself."
"You're not her anymore." Theron stepped beside me at the balcony railing. "But that doesn't mean you have to face everything alone."
"I've always been alone." The words came out bitter. "Even in the pack, surrounded by people, I was alone. No friends except Lisa. No family. No one who saw me as anything but a servant."
"I see you."
Something in his voice made me finally look at him. His silver eyes reflected the moonlight, and in them I saw... pain. Old pain that matched my own.
"You've been alone too," I realized.
"For three hundred years," Theron admitted. "Watching my beast slowly consume my humanity. Watching everyone I cared about grow old and die while I stayed cursed and unchanging. Yes, Aria. I understand alone."
Before I could respond, he reached out and gently took my hand—the one still stained with the hunter's blood.
The moment his skin touched mine, electricity shot through my entire body.
I gasped as a golden thread materialized between us. It stretched from my chest to his, glowing bright and warm and right in a way that made my heart ache.
A mate bond.
"No," I whispered, trying to pull my hand back. "Not again. I can't—"
"Aria." Damon's voice came from the balcony entrance. He and Lucian had followed us up.
The moment I looked at Damon, a second golden thread flared into existence. This one connected my chest to his, pulsing with cold blue light that somehow felt warm.
"This is impossible," I breathed.
Lucian stepped forward, and before he even reached me, the third thread appeared. Blood-red and blazing, connecting me to him.
Three mate bonds. Three golden threads weaving between me and the three kings.
I stumbled backward until my back hit the stone wall. "This can't be happening. One person can't have three mates. It's against everything—"
"Against everything the goddess taught you," Lucian interrupted, his red eyes blazing. "Normal wolves can't have multiple mates because she won't allow it. She wants control, wants everyone in neat little pairs that she can manipulate."
"But you're not normal," Damon added, his ice-blue eyes fixed on me. "You're the Shadow Crown. Your bloodline operates outside her rules."
"The prophecy said you'd have three kings," Theron said softly. "We're not a mistake, Aria. We're meant to be yours."
"I don't want mates!" The words exploded out of me. "The last one rejected me in front of everyone. Looked at me like I was garbage. Made me feel like I was nothing!"
"We're not him," all three said simultaneously.
"Everyone says that!" I was shaking now, tears streaming down my face. "Everyone promises they're different. That they'll stay. That they—"
Theron moved so fast I didn't see him coming. One moment I was pressed against the wall, the next his hands were on either side of my head, caging me in.
"Look at me," he commanded.
I met his silver eyes.
"I have spent three hundred years fighting a beast that wants to tear everything apart," Theron said, his voice low and fierce. "I have killed, destroyed, lost everyone I ever loved to this curse. And in three hundred years, the beast has never calmed. Never yielded. Never stopped trying to consume me."
He leaned closer. "Until you. The moment your power awakened, my beast went quiet for the first time in centuries. You are the only thing standing between me and complete loss of humanity. So no, Aria. I will never reject you. Because rejecting you means becoming the monster I've fought so hard not to be."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't look away.
"My heart hasn't beaten in two hundred years," Damon said from behind Theron. "Every moment is cold, empty, nothing but ice and calculation. But when you're near, I feel warmth. Just a flicker, but it's there. You're bringing me back to life. Why would I ever reject that?"
"I murdered everyone I loved on the goddess's command," Lucian added, his voice dark. "I live in darkness, cut off from divine light, hated by every wolf who still worships her. You're the only one who can understand what it means to defy a goddess. The only one who doesn't look at me like I'm a monster."
The three threads pulsed between us, growing brighter.
"We need you," Theron said. "And you need us. Not because fate demands it. Because we're the only ones who understand what it costs to be powerful and alone."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to push them away. Wanted to protect my broken heart from more damage.
But my wolf surged forward, pressing against my consciousness with certainty I'd never felt from her before.
They're ours. Accept them.
"What if I can't?" I whispered. "What if I'm too broken? What if Kade was right and I'm just—"
"Don't." Lucian's voice cut through my spiral. "Don't let one fool's blindness define your worth."
"But how do I trust this?" My hand touched the golden thread connecting me to Theron. "How do I trust that you won't change your minds? That I won't wake up one day and—"
An explosion louder than all the others shook the entire fortress.
The four of us rushed to the balcony edge and looked down.
The Sanctuary's outer wall had a massive crack running through it. Hunters poured toward the breach like water through a dam.
"They're breaking through faster than expected," Damon said grimly. "We have hours, not days."
"We need to get you back inside," Theron said, reaching for me.
But I couldn't move. Couldn't stop staring at the army below.
Then I saw him.
Standing at the front of the hunter army, directing the assault, was a wolf I recognized even in the darkness.
Alpha Kade.
My rejected mate was leading the attack on the Sanctuary.
"No," I breathed. "He's here. Kade is here."
The three kings followed my gaze.
"He's commanding the hunters?" Lucian sounded shocked. "How?"
"The goddess blessed him," Damon said slowly. "She gave him power to lead her army. In exchange for what?"
I knew. Somehow, I knew exactly what Kade had promised the goddess.
"Me," I said. "He promised to deliver me to her."
As if hearing his name, Kade looked up. Even from this distance, I felt his eyes lock onto mine.
Then he smiled.
And through the remnants of our severed mate bond—the connection that should have been completely broken—I heard his voice in my mind:
"Hello, Aria. Miss me? I'm coming to take back what's mine."
The three golden threads connecting me to the kings flared bright, reacting to the threat.
My wolf snarled inside me, ready to fight.
But my human heart whispered the terrible truth:
My rejected mate hadn't let me go at all.
He'd been hunting me this whole time.
And now he was going to tear down the Sanctuary's walls to claim me—not as a mate, but as a prize.