POV: Caspian
I almost broke the glass in my hand.
I caught myself just in time — felt the thin crack running up the side of it, felt the pressure in my fingers, and forced myself to loosen my grip before it shattered and drew every eye in the room to me. The last thing I needed right now was attention. The last thing I needed was anyone looking at me, because if they did, they would see exactly what was happening on my face, and I was not sure I could hide it anymore.
Garrick had his hand on her back again.
Not gently. Never gently. His palm was pressed flat and firm against her spine, fingers spread wide, like he was holding something in place. Like he was showing the room: this is mine. Do not touch it.
Every single time his hand moved — even an inch — my wolf lunged so hard inside my chest that my vision blurred at the edges. A growl built in my throat, low and hot, and I had to clench my jaw so tight my teeth ached just to keep it from coming out.
I had been standing against this wall for forty minutes. Forty minutes of watching my father parade her around the room like a trophy, forty minutes of watching her try to disappear into herself, forty minutes of wanting to cross the room and rip his hand off her body.
I did not move. I did not breathe too loud. I just watched, and I waited, and I hated myself more with every passing second.
"You okay?"
Dimitri's voice cut through the noise in my head like a knife. He was standing next to me, a glass of dark beer in his hand, looking at me with the kind of careful expression that meant he already knew the answer was no.
"I am fine," I said. My voice came out flat. Controlled. Years of practice.
Dimitri did not believe me. He never did — he had known me since we were five years old, back when we used to wrestle in the mud behind the pack hall and Dimitri always lost but never stopped trying. He knew every version of my face. Every tone of my voice. He could read me the way I could read a map.
He followed my gaze across the room. To Sable. To Garrick's hand on her back.
Then he looked back at me.
His eyes went wide.
Not surprised wide. Understanding wide. The kind of wide that meant a puzzle he had been turning over in his head for days had just clicked into place, and the answer was worse than he hoped.
"No," Dimitri whispered. His voice was barely a sound — low enough that only I could hear it over the noise of the dinner. "Tell me that is not what I think it is."
"It is not," I said.
"Caspian—"
"It is not, Dimitri."
He stared at me for a long moment. I kept my eyes forward, on Sable, on my father's hand, on the way she held herself so still and so small, like if she moved too much she might break something — or be broken.
Dimitri had seen mate bonds before. He had watched them happen to other wolves in the pack — the sudden pull, the way the eyes changed, the way the body stopped listening to the mind and started listening to something older and deeper. He had seen wolves fight it. He had seen wolves surrender to it. He had seen one wolf die from it, years ago, when his mate was killed and the bond tore him apart from the inside.
Dimitri knew exactly what it looked like.
And right now, he was looking at it happening to me in real time.
"How long?" he asked quietly.
I did not answer. I did not need to. The answer was written all over my body — in my clenched jaw, in my white knuckles, in the way my eyes kept snapping to Sable every time she moved, every time Garrick leaned close to her, every time she flinched.
Dimitri shook his head slowly. He took a long drink from his glass and stared at the floor for a while. When he looked up again, his face was serious in a way I had not seen in a long time.
"You know what this means," he said. It was not a question.
I did know. I knew exactly what it meant. A mate bond to the Alpha's chosen bride was not just forbidden. It was the kind of thing that ended in blood. Garrick did not share. He did not negotiate. He did not care that the Moon Goddess herself had chosen Sable for me instead of him. Pack law was pack law, and pack law said the Alpha owned what the Alpha claimed.
"I know," I said.
"And you know there is no way out of this. Once a bond starts—"
"I know, Dimitri."
He went quiet after that. We stood side by side against the wall, watching the dinner unfold, and neither of us said another word for a long time. Dimitri finished his beer. I finished mine without tasting it.
Across the room, Garrick leaned down and whispered something in Sable's ear. I could not hear what he said — even with my sharp hearing, the noise of the room swallowed it. But I saw her reaction. The way her shoulders pulled inward. The way her hands, hidden under the table, curled into fists against her thighs. The way her jaw tightened — just for a second — before she smoothed her face back into that blank, careful mask she wore like armor.
My wolf howled.
I set my glass down on the nearest surface before I crushed it.
"I am leaving," I said to Dimitri. "I need to get out of this room before I do something stupid."
Dimitri grabbed my arm. His grip was firm — not stopping me, but holding me in place for one extra second. His eyes were serious and scared in a way that Dimitri almost never was.
"Be careful," he said. "Your father is not stupid, Caspian. He sees more than you think he does."
I looked at him. Then I looked back at Sable one last time. She was staring at her empty plate, completely still, completely quiet, completely alone in a room full of people.
I left the note on the edge of the table where I had been standing. Three words. I wrote them fast, on a scrap of paper I pulled from my pocket, my hand shaking so badly the letters barely looked like words.
They know. Run.
I did not know if Garrick knew about the bond. I did not know if Thalia had told him. I did not know how much time we had.
But I had seen the way my father looked at Sable when he brought her into the room tonight. Not the way a man looks at a wife.
The way a hunter looks at something he has already decided to cage.
I disappeared through the side exit and did not look back.
But halfway down the corridor, I stopped.
Because Dimitri had just sent me a message. Not out loud — through the pack bond, the way wolves communicate when words are too slow or too dangerous. It was a feeling, sharp and urgent, like being doused in ice water.
Elder Moran. Garrick's study. Right now. They are writing something down.
Elder Moran was the oldest wolf in the pack. The one who knew every ancient ritual. Every binding ceremony. Every dark law that had been buried and forgotten by everyone except those who still used them.
And he was in Garrick's study. Tonight. Right now. Writing something down.
I already knew what it was.
The binding ritual.
Garrick was not waiting. He was moving fast — faster than I expected. Which meant he knew something was coming. Which meant he knew Sable's wolf was waking up.
Which meant we had days.
Maybe less.