Page 24

His voice filled the hall the way it filled briefings, precise, authoritative, leaving no room for negotiation. Sloane kept her eyes on the candle flame closest to her left hand. The wax had pooled unevenly, a thick white lip forming at the rim.

“Chris,” Kahn said.

Chris turned to face her. She felt the movement before she saw it, the bond pulling her attention sideways whether she wanted it there or not. He waited until she met his eyes.

“I accept the bond drawn between us,” he said. “I offer my name beside yours. My protection is yours.”

His voice was steady. His hands were not. She saw the slight tremor in his fingers where they hung at his sides. He held her gaze without flinching, without softening, without making it easier for either of them.

“Sloane,” Kahn said.

The hall pressed in. Two hundred wolves, silent, watching. She could feel them on her skin, their attention like heat, the weight of a pack that had forgotten her name until the magic forced them to remember it.

She opened her mouth and instantly closed it again. Her tongue had gone dry against her teeth.

Chris didn’t move. He stood in the candlelight with that tremor in his hands, giving her time she hadn’t asked for; time she didn’t deserve from a man whose sister she’d tried to destroy.

“I accept the bond drawn between us.” Her voice was softer than it had ever been, barely carrying past the circle. She saw Gideon lean forward in the front row. “I offer my name beside yours. My protection is yours.”

The candle flames flared. All of them, simultaneously, the ward candles surging with a brightness that threw shadows against the vaulted ceiling. Her wolf lunged forward so hard her vision sharpened, every color in the hall snapping into focus, the amber light, the grey stone, the blue of Chris’s eyes locked on hers. Beneath her ribs, the bond caught hold of itself and pulled tight, a physical sensation, deep, rooted, the kind of anchor she’d spent her whole life refusing to build.

Chris exhaled. She heard it through the settling murmur of the pack, through the creak of the benches, through Elianna’s babbling from Olivia’s lap in the front row. A single breath, released.

Kahn nodded. “It is done.”

The formality broke. Voices rose across the hall. Bodies shifted, people standing, turning to each other with the low, social hum that followed every ceremony. Sloane stepped back from the circle before the crowd could close around her, put distance between herself and the dais, and aimed for the eastern exit.

She made it to the corridor before the voice reached her.

“Sloane.”

She stopped and turned.

Caitlynn stood ten feet behind her, alone. No Elianna, no Kahn, no entourage. Instead of the hatred that she expected to boil within her, she felt nothing other than guilt when she looked at the Luna. Guilt that had been festering within her for the past years, guilt that she couldn’t get rid of even though she craved anger instead.

“Can we talk?” Caitlynn said.

Sloane’s back found the corridor wall. She pressed her shoulder blades against the stone. “About what?”

“He’s my brother.”

Sloane crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “And you’re the one who performed the ceremony. You’re the one who bonded us.”

Caitlynn stopped five feet away. Close enough to speak quietly. Far enough that Sloane could leave if she chose to.

“I didn’t choose you,” Caitlynn retorted gently. “The magic did, and I… I had no choice.”

The words landed in the corridor’s silence. Sloane pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She could still taste the binding vows, metallic, faintly sweet.

“What is it that you want to say?”

Caitlynn thrust her hands into her pockets and looked at Sloane silently for a long moment.

“I built the ritual,” Caitlynn said at last. “I channeled it. When your name came through, I felt it. The strength of the bond.” She paused. “I have no choice but to trust the magic.”

“But?”

Caitlynn’s mouth pressed flat. “But the magic doesn’t know what you did to me.”