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Ezra reaches the second lilies. His steps slow. The old bond tightens between him and Theo until I can see a taut rope between them made of shadow. It stretches from Theo’s bite scar to Ezra’s shoulder. Theo grabs the front of his shirt. Ezra bends forward. The witness stone glows pale in his hand.

“Keep walking,” Theo says. His voice shakes.

Tears run down my face at the agony in Theo’s voice as he lets Ezra go.

Ezra takes another step. The shadowy line untethers.

Theo cries out. The sound tears through my omega, and I whimper. I grip the edge of the witness stone beneath me and force myself not to move or call out. I can’t become the voice that pulls him backward.

Ezra turns his head. Enough that I see his profile. He looks toward me.

Blood runs into my eye. My ankle throbs. Everything in me wants to tell Ezra I need him. I slap my hand over my mouth.

His shoulders straighten. Ezra walks into the fog. Theo drops both hands to the earth and howls a broken sound. The land around him fractures in thin lines. Water beads along the cracks.

Ezra reaches the open circle. It’s not a ring of stones at all. It’s a place where the fog stops. Sunlight falls through the canopy in one clean column, touching dry ground beside the channel. Ezra steps into it, and the witness stone flashes bright blue.

The dark bond line pulls once and snaps.

Theo screams.

Ezra disappears.

The stone falls onto empty ground. My heart stops.

Theo surges forward. His boot strikes the first marker. The limestone glows beneath him. He freezes.

“Ezra.” The name leaves Theo as a whisper.

I can’t breathe.

The open circle is empty.

The fog folds inward. All the white around us rushes toward the patch of sunlight. The channel rises. Water sloshes above the bank. Images flash inside it. Susannah turning. Her alpha crossing. Her beta calling. Theo and Ezra as boys, bloodied and terrified. Me at a cemetery gate, asking to be let in.

Then the water drops. The fog collapses. Sunlight floods the route.

The old bite scar on Theo’s throat splits open. A thin line of blood runs down his neck.

Ezra appears inside the circle on his hands and knees. Solid. Completely, unmistakably solid. He gasps like someone breaking the surface of deep water.

“The bond,” he says. “It’s gone.”

Theo touches the bleeding scar at his throat.

I can feel the absence of their old pack frequency from where I sit.

Ezra looks at his hands and turns them over. He presses his solid palms to the ground. “I’m here.”

My sob becomes a laugh.

Ezra’s head snaps toward me. “Pepper.”

He grabs the fallen release stone and is on his feet before I can warn him. The route doesn’t stop him. He reaches me as I try to stand and my ankle gives out again.

Ezra catches me beneath the arms and drops to his knees in front of the witness stone. “I’ve got you.”

He cups my face with warm hands. His thumbs hover near the blood running into my eyebrow.