Fury Bound

Book 2: The Wolves of Ruin

by Sable Sorensen

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

Revenge demands sacrifice. Don’t miss this action-packed, jaw-dropping, dark and romantic sequel to Dire Bound.
 
Death is in the air, and Meryn Cooper vows to be the one to sow it. But is she willing to sacrifice her soul—and heart—to seize her destiny?
 
Blood will spill. Bonds will break. Fate will be tested.

Release date: March 3, 2026

Publisher: Requited

Print pages: 608

Sample

Take a breath, Meryn.

Darkness writhes around me, moving in impossible ways. It parts in heartbeats, revealing images that tear me asunder.

Blood, in a viscous scarlet splatter.

Breathe.

Violent red streaks across the gray stone floor.

Breathe.

Across my little sister Saela’s snarling face—her lips and her… fangs.

Meryn, take a breath.

My chest aches painfully, and the shadows contract together again, bringing the room into pitch black once more. As they do, strong, comforting arms tighten around my middle.

But I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—

“Take a breath, Meryn!”

I gasp, breath stuttering. The growling voice in my head is not my own, I realize, but that of my bonded direwolf, Anassa. The towering silver-white wolf butts her nose into my side as air floods my lungs, and I come fully back into my body.

The shadows part again. It’s a strange new power, but I have some level of control over it. Clearly, it responds to my emotions.

To my shock. To my fury.

I’ve spent the past four months training to become one of the Bonded, all in hopes of getting to the front lines of the war to find Saela. She was kidnapped out of our home, stolen in the night to feed the Siphons in our neighboring country of Astreona.

Or so I thought.

Saela spasms on the floor before me, blood dripping from her chin. I flinch at the sight of her new fangs. After everything I went through to find her, to save her… my little sister has been turned into one of them. A Siphon herself.

With the uncontrollable bloodlust to prove it.

Helene, a member of the Daemos pack, stands to the side of Stark’s office. Her stunned eyes are wide, and she holds a hand over her bloodied neck—but she’s safe. Her bond with her direwolf has already healed the wound Saela inflicted.

Helene is fine, but my sister, my everything…

I lunge toward Saela, desperate to get to her, to help her, to stop her, to somehow change what’s happening.

But those arms around me hold me tight.

“Let me go, Stark!” I spit. The shadows surge toward us, responding to my aggravation.

Before I can free myself, Stark’s massive black direwolf, Cratos, lunges toward Saela with a violent growl.

My stomach drops, and I fight hopelessly against Stark’s strong hold. “No!”

Cratos is going to kill her. My sweet girl, my beautiful sister. He’s going to tear out her throat because she’s dangerous now.

Tears flood down my face in hot rivulets.

“Stop him,” I plead to both Stark and Anassa. “Cratos, stop!”

He pounces on her, and I scream. The room goes dark again.

Anassa nuzzles her nose into my side, harder this time. “Meryn, he is not killing her. He is restraining her for your protection, and for everyone else’s. Take another breath.”

I do as I’m told. The shadows part again.

Cratos holds Saela down, two huge paws pressing against her back, pushing her into the floor. Even so, she bucks back, nearly knocking him off her.

Nearly knocking a gigantic direwolf at least three times her size off with the flex of her spine.

My mouth falls open, and I can feel the color leave my face. All that strength in the body of an eleven-year-old girl.

Saela’s never been physically strong. She was the book-smart child. I was the strong one. She took to self-defense training well, but even still—she’s always fought with words, not muscles.

Her hazel eyes sharpen, and she moves her body again, and again, bouncing Cratos up and down. Anassa meets my gaze with her golden one, and I can tell what she’s thinking without her even communicating it.

Cratos alone won’t keep her down. Anassa bounds over to her mate, adding her paws to Saela’s back.

My blood runs hot with fear. Not just for my sister… but of her.

We spent classes here learning about Siphons, studying them, but there’s still so much I don’t know. Do Siphons maintain any ounce of who they were before they changed? How human are they still, after the fangs?

I want to run to her, to hold her in my arms as I did just moments ago. She was smiling and safe.

She was safe.

Is she even in there anymore? Or is she going to be like… this? Forever?

Saela screams, a bloodcurdling shriek that echoes through the room. This is hurting her.

My elbow slams into Stark’s side, and I slip free. But only for a moment. His hand closes around my wrist and yanks me back so hard that my shoulder nearly wrenches from its socket.

“Newly turned Siphons are at their most dangerous,” Stark hisses in my ear.

He secures me against his chest, his arms like iron restraints. His touch burns through me, and I hate it. I hate it and I cling to it, too.

“I’ve seen this at the front. Many times. It’s a game the Astreonans like to play. Please, listen.”

I still, momentarily shocked out of my panic by the urgency in his voice. Please, he said.

“They turn our soldiers into Siphons and set them on our forces. When the turning first takes place, new Siphons are consumed by bloodlust and will kill anything in sight. She doesn’t know you right now, and she could kill you,” Stark says quietly.

She could kill you. Saela, the little girl who would weep if I tied her plaits too tightly. Who would lock our door and lay her head in my lap on the nights our mother got violent. Who once caught a mouse in our home and instead of killing it or moving it outside, created a little bed for it inside a matchbox and named it Felix.

How is this real? But he’s right. Shockingly, terrifyingly right. My sweet baby sister is… gone.

My mind spins as I try to think of what to do next and ignore the churning, vengeful thoughts about why we’re in this situation. Of the man—no, the monster—who did this to my sister.

My betrothed.

Wrath slices through me, making my veins burn—and with it, the shadows streak toward the ceiling in a merciless wave.

Another breath, and the shadows slide down the walls.

This is what he would want: me, too distracted and weak to even deal with the crisis at hand.

He’s not allowed to manipulate my actions any longer. Saela needs me to be calm and levelheaded.

She comes first.

“Cratos and I cannot continue to hold her like this forever,” Anassa says, sensing my train of thought.

“Okay,” I say, mind clearing. “We need to restrain her.”

I straighten up against Stark, and he must be able to tell that I’m not going to bolt toward Saela again, because he loosens his grip on me.

“And then we have to take her somewhere secure,” I tell Stark. “Somewhere she can’t hurt herself or others while we figure out what to do.”

Blinking to clear my vision, I wipe my cheek with a shaky hand. The solution has come to me, and I hate it.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we’ll need to move her back to the dungeons.”

The suggestion tastes wrong and foul on my tongue. Putting my sister back in that dark, nightmarish place. But what other choice do we have?

Turning, I look at Helene and Grigore. The color has returned to Helene’s cheeks, but Grigore still hovers over her worriedly, a hand on her shoulder.

“You two will keep this a secret. You are to tell absolutely no one what you witnessed here.”

Finally, hearing the icy tone of my voice, Stark releases me fully, and the loss of his touch is momentarily jarring. His long legs carry him across the room in only a few strides, and I watch numbly as he yanks a chest open and riffles through it for something. He’s back at my side quickly but passes me by to reach Saela.

Stark drags his hand along Cratos’s side before he kneels and seizes my sister’s legs, pulling them together to bind them tightly. Silver chains, I realize, strong enough to contain her. And a cloth to use as a gag.

He takes hold of her dark hair so that he can fasten the gag between her fangs. The sight enrages me, my fingers twitching with the need to hit him. Anassa bristles, too, a low growl rumbling through her. But Cratos leans forward and nudges his nose to hers to help her through the emotion.

Even as I’m pissed, I’m grateful, too, because it needs to be done and goddess knows I could never have done it myself.

I still can’t entirely admit to myself that this is really happening. That I’m about to lock my sister behind bars like she’s the enemy.

That, in fact, she’s become an enemy.

She would kill me. Saela would kill me if those chains weren’t around her limbs.

Stark nods Grigore over, and the two of them lift her together. She writhes in their arms, blood-streaked and struggling, but the chains have her bound tightly. I glance away, my throat tight.

I can’t watch her like this, so I do the only thing I can do: put one foot in front of the other and lead everyone to the dungeons. I take them to the primary ones, not the hidden place where Saela and the other children were kept.

It seems like only hours ago that Venna took me into the belly of the castle to discover my sister in captivity. Only hours ago we were plotting to get her out. I never dreamed I’d be imprisoning her again.

We move quietly, quickly, avoiding all notice. My surroundings are a cruel mimicry of my mental state as we spiral down deeper and deeper into darkness and disrepair.

The passageways that lead to the dungeons are damp and bleak, cracks running through the stones, meltwater seeping in here and there. The sconces on the walls are less and less frequent. Finally, we arrive at a row of relatively dry, well-lit cells.

The first has barbaric spikes and wall-mounted racks, and we quickly hustle past it. Stark and Grigore stop two doors down, peering into the space. I hover behind them, my eyes adjusting slowly to the ever-increasing darkness.

Stark looks to me for the decision, and I nod, almost imperceptibly. Approving my sister’s imprisonment. Reimprisonment.

“Helene,” I say hoarsely. She looks up at me, eyes wide. “Go find Leader Aldrich and send him to us.”

Leader Aldrich is the oldest Bonded at the castle and the most seasoned leader. He was in charge of our Bonding Trials.

He’ll have some idea of how to help us. How to fix this. He must.

Belatedly, I realize I could reach Aldrich in my mind if I wanted to. Anassa said we could reach all the Bonded now—and he’s Strategos pack anyway; I’m his Alpha. I don’t trust myself to communicate precisely at this moment, though.

Helene bows quickly and pivots, racing away from the dungeons. I watch her go, unsure if it’s the order from me or fear of my sister or the dismal surroundings that’s lending her such speed.

Grigore says something to Stark. He nods, braces, and lets go of Saela. My sister slams her bound fists against Stark’s chest, but he just winces and maneuvers her so that she can’t find any purchase.

Grigore yanks the cell door open with a screech, and Stark steps inside, lowering Saela onto a cot. He leaves her there still bound because removing her chains would risk lives.

Stark backs out of the cell, eyes warily trained on Saela as he moves. As soon as he’s out, Grigore slams the cell door shut again, grabbing the key to the door from a ring mounted on the wall opposite.

The sound of the key thudding the bolt into place echoes in my ears.

Saela fights to her feet and staggers over to the bars. Grigore jumps away as Saela throws her small body against them. Metal groans and clangs.

She slams herself against the bars again and again, and the sound yanks my heart from my chest. I wish I could hold her as I did when she was in the king’s prison.

But if I reached through, she’d rip into my arm and drain the blood from my veins.

“Stop,” I beg weakly, taking a half step forward. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Saela’s eyes are wild and frantic, darting to and fro. Never meeting mine, not even acknowledging that I’ve spoken to her.

The girl I love isn’t there at all.

Anassa’s warmth is at my back, and I let myself lean into her. Her heat settles over me. She keeps me upright when my legs grow weak.

By the time Aldrich finally appears, I feel separated from myself.

The older man surveys the scene in front of him, his bearded jaw momentarily dropping open in shock before he composes himself. What a sight we must be.

Especially me, still wearing a ridiculous fucking gown, a crown atop my head.

Aldrich opens his mouth to speak, but I step forward, reaching out a hand to stop him. Anassa helps me shore up the energy that I have left.

“How do I do this?” I ask her quickly. Somehow, she had been the one to share the memories with Helene and Grigore before, but I know I need to do this now.

“Find the river in your mind that connects you to the Bonded, and search for him among the Strategos pack. Form the connection with Aldrich alone, and ensure you focus on him, then push your memories toward him, as if placing them on a boat down current.”

I do as she says, and simultaneously reach my hand out again, laying it on his weathered forearm. His concerned eyes meet mine, and I have to look away to stop myself from breaking down. The skin contact helps solidify our mental connection. Then I focus and push my memories toward him.

My head instantly aches, and sweat starts to bead across my scalp from the strain.

But it works.

I grant him knowledge of my royalty, of the curse, of what’s been done to us. How Alistair Brightbane stole the throne from my ancestors, how he’s used his line to stay in control all these centuries. How a Siphon blood curse locked away the truth. How Stark helped me uncover it all, and how Killian fled.

Leader Aldrich falls to his knees. His hands shake as he reaches for me wordlessly, taking my hand, pressing it to his forehead.

I swallow roughly. “Please stand. Please.” The words pour from me, pleading and pathetic. “Aldrich… this is my sister in the cell. We have to help her.”

Understanding dawns on his face, and his mouth twists in a mixture of pity and disgust. I have to look away.

“Surely there must be something we can do.” Even I can hear how desperate I sound. “Some way to fix this, to reverse it.”

I became Bonded, I became a queen to rescue her from the Nabbers—or from Killian and his father, it turned out. I’ll do anything for her.

It can’t have all been for nothing.

Aldrich doesn’t immediately respond. Instead, his eyes move to Stark. They linger there, and I’m not too lost in my grief to understand what that look means.

I know what they’re both thinking: They don’t believe we can reverse this.

“Please,” I beg again. “Tell me what to do.”

Aldrich swallows. He clasps his hands together, sympathy in his eyes. “The main thing that would help Saela is human blood. As much of it as possible. She has an unquenchable thirst, and if it’s not fulfilled soon, it will kill her.”

“Fine,” I say, gritting my teeth. “Then she’ll drink from me.”

Stark clicks his tongue in irritation. “Absolutely not. Saela can’t be trusted in this state not to drain you.”

And once more, hatred and disorienting gratitude mix within me.

“Maybe,” Aldrich says tentatively, “a large animal would suffice.”

I nod, desperate for anything we can try.

“Cratos and I will hunt. We will bring an elk for Saela,” Anassa tells me, and I shiver with relief.

“Let’s try that,” I respond. The wolves turn and sprint back the way we came, disappearing around the corner.

What’s next? My mind spirals through strings of logic to weave together a plan. What steps do I need to take to find a way out of this?

As a Strategos, my mind should be able to weave strategy easily. It’s one of the powers of our pack, after all. But right now, I’m too disoriented to even reach that part of myself.

Still, I know that controlling the narrative will be important.

I meet Leader Aldrich’s gaze. “Does anyone know yet that Killian has left?”

He shakes his head. “After you killed King Cyril, the nobles all fled back to their fiefdoms, but the Bonded are still here. They await their orders to the front. Only their new ruler can issue those commands, and they were expecting to hear from the young Valtiere in the morning.”

Morning. Oh goddess. It will be morning soon.

My body has been operating on adrenaline alone, and the sudden reminder that so much time has passed settles a heavy blanket of exhaustion over me. I rub my eyes, struggling to keep them open.

“I’ll…” I pause, trying to remember what I was going to say. “I’ll speak to everyone in the morning, then. You should get some rest.”

I don’t realize I’m tilting over until my foot snags on stone in a clumsy, futile attempt to catch myself. I thud into Stark’s chest, his calloused, tattooed hands closing around my arms.

His touch sears me back toward momentary wakefulness, and I push him off, blinking rapidly.

“Go to bed,” he says gruffly.

“Absolutely not.” I’m too tired to even glare. “I’m not leaving Saela’s side.”

Stark huffs and drags his hand through his hair. He marches past me, Aldrich and Helene trailing in his wake, and grumbles something that sounds an awful lot like “Stubborn woman.”

Saela has quieted down somewhat. She still thuds herself against the bars repeatedly, but she does it weakly now, her temple just barely tapping the iron. Her eyes settle on nothing, see nothing.

A few minutes later, a loud scraping sound jars me from my misery. Stark sets a sleeping pallet down on the dungeon floor. He swipes his hand over it to remove some dust, then pats it like he’s trying to convince me it’ll be comfortable.

I thud down onto it without argument, too weary to try to find something to fight him about. But I’m determined to stay awake to watch over Saela, so I lie on my side as Stark settles in beside me, back against the stone wall.

I can’t help it, though. My eyes are too heavy, and no matter how much I resist it, they close.

The familiar spiraling sensation of falling into a dream hits me. I open my eyes to try to stay awake.

But I’m not in the dungeons anymore.

I’m somewhere dark, a room of unending grays and shadows, with no floors or walls or ceilings. The shadows swirl around my feet like fog.

It’s too real to be a dream, and my breath catches in panic.

Turning, I look in every direction, but there’s nothing but the endless expanse.

“You’re finally here, my child,” says a deep, echoing, eerie male voice—the same voice that’s been speaking to me all along. The voice that told me to get the crown. Whose voice?

And where is it coming from? My gut churns; something is very wrong.

I whip around, looking for the source, but still nothing is there. The shadows trail upward like smoke. They drip downward like stalactites. I start to shiver.

Where am I, I open my mouth to ask, but no sound comes out.

“You’re here, but you’ve let open a door you cannot close… and so he’s here, too,” the voice tells me.

He’s angry with me, I can tell—whoever he is. A tremor of fear skitters through me.

The shadows start to swirl violently, spinning around me, closing in. The funnel of darkness tightens and tightens, until it starts to wrap around my throat and choke me.

I scream in my sleep and awake with a breathy gasp. My nails dig into the cot. I’m not sure how long I was out, but Anassa and Cratos must have returned and left again because there’s a dead elk in Saela’s cell.

And a gruesome sea of blood staining the stones.

My sister is asleep in a ball on the floor, her entire face and arms up to her elbows drenched in gore.

I swallow down the sobs as I sit up. Stark is still asleep, propped up against the wall, his head leaned against stone. It can’t be comfortable there.

Moving over, I kneel beside him. His thick, dark lashes twitch as he dreams. I reach out to touch him. Just to wake him, I tell myself.

But before I can, pain spikes through my head. I wince, my hand flying up to the spot of agony. It’s invasive, as if someone is slowly pressing a needle into my temple, deeper and deeper, inch by inch.

And once it’s lodged deep enough, I hear it.

Him.

“Good morning, Bonded,” Killian says.

I would recognize his voice anywhere. Once it whispered across the tender space of a pillow. It’s distorted now, but it’s still smooth and beautiful.

Somehow, even though he’s not Bonded, he’s accessing our silent river of communication. He’s communicating with me telepathically. What the actual fuck?

Stark’s eyes fly open immediately. The alarm on his face tells me he can hear it, too.

Killian’s voice speaks again in our heads.

“There is a usurper in your midst.”

It’s almost impossible to reach out to all the Bonded at once.

Only two people have the power, as far as I know: the Sovereign Alpha, Siegrid Therion… and, apparently, me. But as Killian speaks, certainty forms in my bones: He’s reaching every Bonded throughout the entirety of Nocturna.

My eyes dart down to the engagement bracelet he clamped onto my wrist; the ruby still swirls with dark shadows. It’s been like that ever since he drew on my magic in his chambers. And there’s that lingering wrongness.

Part of my power is cut off from me, ensnared in whatever twisted spell is woven into this bracelet.

Whatever he’s doing—he’s doing this by using my powers, stealing my magic.

“The Faceless Goddess has blessed me with the ability to communicate through the wolf bonds as a reward for my fealty to the Bonded and to the kingdom,” Killian says smoothly.

I can’t help it—I laugh.

What absolute bullshit. And so totally predictable. He’s going to lie to every one of the Bonded in the same way he lied to me.

My face flushes with angry heat, and I claw at the bracelet on my wrist. But it once again tightens against my skin, making me wince in pain. Just then, images pulse through my mind.

With a shocked jolt, I realize he’s sharing memories down the bond, just as Anassa taught me to do.

There I am, my silver hair shining, my face covered in blood from the battle at graduation. Anassa looms behind me as I grab the Dire Blade, the king’s wolf-pommel sword that compels the direwolves. My face twisting in a fearsome scowl, I bring the sword down in a merciless strike across the king’s throat.

My true self felt pumping adrenaline and pride in this moment, but right now those feelings are overshadowed by Killian’s—or, at least, what he wants us to believe he experienced.

Cold horror runs through him. Pain, heartbreak, and terror.

The vision twists into the next memory. We’re in Killian’s room. I have him pinned, straddling him as he squirms below me, uncomfortable and terrified. My hazel eyes are wide and wild-looking, and I once again raise the wolf-pommel sword. I press it to his neck.

Killian projects a memory of stinging pain as the blade cuts into the delicate skin at his throat. His heart pounds in fear as he stares up at the monstrous woman before him, a woman he made a mistake to trust.

A woman who was not at all who she seemed, who has finally revealed her true, ugly self. It’s like he’s taken my own perspective toward him and flipped it on me.

In both memories, I am an indisputable villain.

I’d hate me, too, if this was all the context I had.

The vision ends, and I blink back into the dungeons. Stark catches my eyes. His gaze is murderous, his tattooed hands clenched into tight fists that demand action.

“Meryn Cooper has driven me from Sturmfrost and seized the throne,” Killian goes on.

My blood boils. He knows the truth as well as I do: I’m no Cooper. I’m a Sturmfrost Queen. And I will reclaim the birthright that his family stole from mine.

“She is dangerous, unstable, and the enemy of Nocturna. This delusional commoner is not to be trusted.”

A strangled choke escapes me. I want to believe that no one could possibly listen to him, but I believed him, once. And I can’t hide from the element of truth of those memories.

I did those things, and I looked terrifying doing them.

But he’s a fucking Siphon.

“I am establishing a stronghold in the west and will be rallying forces to retake my throne. I encourage anyone who believes in truth and justice to come join me. Together, we will return Nocturna to its rightful glory.”

With that, the connection ends, with a mental twist that violently ends the channel he’s opened.

“Truth and justice?!” I shout, my words echoing in the nearly empty dungeons. Unfurling my fists, I realize my nails have carved crescents into my palms, practically drawing blood.

My mind is intimately connected to the stream of Bonded emotions. Their reactions pour in from across Nocturna in a torrent of shock, disbelief, and confusion.

Fuck.

I lock eyes with Stark again. “I need to address them. Now.”

“Yes,” he says simply.

“But I…” I look down at myself. I’m still in the stupid fucking gown that Killian put me in. The same one that was in the memory he just showed everyone.

It’s the uniform of an unstable, delusional woman. I don’t want to feed into that lie.

“You look—” Stark says, then stops short, pressing his full lips into a tight line. Emotions swirl behind his eyes, dark and unreadable, as he studies me.

I lift my head. “What?”

“You’re presentable enough,” he says stiffly. He must’ve understood the reason for my hesitation. “Waiting any longer will leave room for doubt.”

I swallow roughly and nod. Then I force a deep breath in and out of my lungs. I just have to remind myself that the truth is on my side, not Killian’s. And I have some damning memories to show off, too.

“Anassa,” I mind-speak to my direwolf. “Can you reach all the wolves who are here at the castle, and make sure their riders come to the arena? Let them know that I’ll have answers for them.”

This is something I could probably do. But I’m not sure how to just reach the people who are physically here in Sturmfrost—and if I reached out too far, would Killian hear me?

There’s a beat of silence, and then Anassa responds, “It’s done.”

My gaze lingers on Saela’s sleeping, bloodied form. She looks so small and helpless, even with the truth of her existence splattered around the cell. Leaving her for even a moment is a dagger into my gut. It’s wrong.

And for the second time, Stark seems to read my mind. “Helene and Grigore will watch over her while you’re gone. Nothing will happen to her. I promise you.”

His voice is curt and businesslike, but his words are so gentle. All I can do is give him a tense nod.

It hurts to leave Saela’s side, but if I don’t go, Killian is going to corrupt the rest of my world, too.

The arena is quiet, but my heart is pounding. I swear the reverberations are rattling the walls with each pump of my blood.

Stark is to my left, standing resolutely as though the hundreds of eyes looking up at us don’t bother him in the slightest. Anassa and Cratos flank us, surveying the people gathered below.

Bonded are filing in, and I have to blink away the image of the final culling that King Cyril ordered. Ordered from the very platform where I stand now. The blood running from bite wounds, as Rawbonds turned on one another. Angry and red and wrong.

My stomach flips. “I want to end any unnecessary killing,” I think half to myself, half to Anassa. Her acknowledgment is a steadying hum in the back of my head.

It’s mostly newly graduated Rawbonds here, though some Bonded who had come in for the graduation have joined the crowd. Those seasoned soldiers stand in formation, but the young warriors mill about in groups, packs largely standing together.

From the corner of my eye, I spot Jonah’s red-streaked dark hair from where he stands with some of his weasel-faced friends, clustered together and speaking to one another in low voices. Every one of them has a hand rested on a sword hilt or the handle of a dagger.

He looks up, and there’s a sharp-edged glint to his gaze that makes me uneasy. We’ve been at odds ever since the morning of the Ascent, when he attacked Izabel, and he’s never turned down a chance to try to hurt me.

Anassa’s noticed his group, too, and her sides start to buzz with a low growl, but none of them makes a move toward us.

Around the perimeter of the arena, castle servants stand nervously, fidgeting. Stark ordered every servant in the castle to gather—ensuring maximum witnesses for whatever is about to happen—but some are still wandering in through the arena doors.

It’s difficult to wait here on the dais. I feel like an impostor. How could I not?

I thought I was a commoner only months ago. I still am a commoner in so many ways. My dress is filthy from the dungeons, my hair is a tangle of silver-white, my eyes are probably red-rimmed from sleep deprivation and endless crying.

Part commoner, part Bonded, part queen, but a mess the whole way through.

But I’m here. I have to be here. I have to be more than I am.

“You must, so you will,” Anassa tells me, reminding me of what she said on the day I unexpectedly became Alpha of the Strategos pack.

“I must, so I will,” I agree.

Stark steps forward and hands me a cone-shaped amplifier, and I take it with an only slightly shaking hand.

In the half hour since I left the dungeons, Anassa has been coaching me on how to reach all the Bonded. I need to send a complex message—including memories—to thousands all across Nocturna. I’m prepared for it to be taxing, but I know I can do it.

Because if Killian could reach everyone with my magic, then so can I.

Bitterne