Chapter 23 On The Other Side Of The Border
Aurelia
Zhayad didn’t spare me a second glance. He turned on his heel, every muscle in his massive frame coiling like a predator scenting blood, and strode toward the scout who stood panting at the edge of the training yard.
“Ask a shifter-guard to escort her back to my wing,” he barked over his shoulder to the nearest shifter, a burly male with scars crisscrossing his arms. “Lock her in the bedroom. Guard the room. And watch for her magic, she walks right through doors and walls.”
His voice was cold steel, laced with the kind of quiet fury that made the air drop ten degrees.
He didn’t wait for acknowledgement. He just kept movingast, disappearing into the shadows toward the gates.
The scout fell in step beside him, speaking urgently. “Varrick’s men are furious, Alpha. After you humiliated Varrick at his own party… they’re itching for a fight. Any spark, and it’s war.”
Zhayad’s growl echoed back. “Let them come. I’ll paint the borders with their blood myself.”
My stomach twisted. Varrick’s scouts weren’t just probing, they were out for vengeance.
Because the vial never made it, I had made sure of that.
And now Zhayad was marching into a trap, blind to the full truth, and convinced I was the enemy when the real enemy was disguising as the pack's matron.
The shifter-guard stepped forward, his hand reaching for my shoulder.
I slapped it away before he could touch me.
“No need to lay a finger on me,” I snapped. “I’ll go on my own.”
He raised a brow, amusement flickering in his yellow eyes, but he gestured ahead with a mocking bow.
“After you, Luna.”
The walk back to the pack house felt like a march to the gallows.
Corridors blurred past, torchlight flickering on stone, distant howls from the borders rising like a war cry.
The guard shadowed my every step, his presence a silent reminder that in the Onyx Fang, I was a prisoner, not their queen.
The bedroom door loomed.
He pushed it open, ushered me inside with a grunt, then slammed it shut.
The lock clicked behind me like a final verdict.
Footsteps positioned outside, two guards, maybe three, their scents heavy with suspicion. They all thought I was a creepy witch and not a girl trapped by fate in their pack.
I paced the room like a caged animal, back and forth, my bare feet silent on thefloor, the mate bond thrumming with Zhayad’s distant rage.
It pulled at me, sharply and insistentl, begging me to reach out, to explain, to warn him.
But how? He was gone. And even if I could summon the vial now, pull it from its dark hiding place, what good would it do locked in here?
I sank onto the edge of the massive bed, my fingers digging into the silk sheets.
I dozed off for what felt like only a minute. I woke up with a loud jerk, my senses alerting me of someone's presence in the room.
But when I opened my eyes fully, I wasn't in the bedroom. The bedroom was gone.
There were no silk sheets, no scent of pine and Zhayad lingering on the pillows.
Instead, cold dirt pressed against my back. Moonlight sliced through jagged cracks in wooden walls, painting thin silver bars across my skin.
I was in a small, rotting shed. The air smelled of damp earth, mildew, and something faintly metallic, blood, maybe, I hoped not. Or old iron.
My wrists burned. Rope, thick, coarse ropes bit into them, twisted tight behind my back and lashed to a rusted nail driven into the beam above.
My ankles were bound the same way, my knees forced together, circulation already prickling.
Panic clawed up my throat. How?
I remembered pacing until exhaustion threatened to drag me under. I must have dozed off on the edge of the bed, only for a minute, two at most.
For how long had I really been asleep to end up tied with ropes and alone in the middle of nowhere?
It had to be Ravina. Everything about this smelled of her.
I screamed for help, hoping a passerby would hear and come to my aid. I screamed until my throat turned raw and hoarse, broken cries that bounced off the rotting walls and died in the dark.
No one answered, just wind rattling the cracks and the faint, eerie chirp of night insects.
When my voice gave out completely, I slumped against the ropes, my chest heaving.
No help was coming. I was alone, truly alone for the first time since Zhayad claimed me.
I closed my eyes and reached deeper than I ever had inside me. The magic rose like a black tide, slow at first, then surging, violent, tearing through me like lightning in my veins.
It hurt. Gods, it hurt, like fire eating bone, like my blood was boiling from the inside out.
But I didn’t stop. I pulled harder and willed it outward.
White, blinding light exploded through the shed.
The ropes smoked, charred, then snapped with a sound like breaking bone.
I collapsed forward, my face slamming into the dirt floor, gasping. I was exhausted, thirsty and starving. Every muscle screamed for me to stop moving, but I was free.
I crawled to the door, trembling all over, and pounded on it with both fists.
The old wood groaned, then cracked. Miraculously, it gave way from the outside, splintering inward as if someone had kicked it down.
I staggered through the opening. And froze.
Moonlight poured over open ground. There was nothing, just endless dark forest stretching in every direction, the air thick with the smell of wet earth and something sharper, something foreign.
I was on the other side of the border. The realization hit me like a fist to the gut.
I was on Varrick’s territory. Or rather, the no-man’s-land between packs.
Either way, I was outside Zhayad’s protection, outside his reach. My legs buckled, but I caught myself against the shed wall, my nails digging into rotting wood.
Ravina hadn’t just framed me. She’d delivered me straight to the enemy. Zhayad was fighting and bleeding for his pack, believing I’d chosen my father.
And I was here, helpless, magic-drained, and alone, exactly where the lie would look like truth.
I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the faint, frantic tug of the mate bond. It was weaker now and fading.
“Zhayad,” I whispered into the night, my voice cracking. “Please… feel me.”
But the bond only echoed back silence. And the distant, rising howls of unfamiliar wolves closing in from the trees.
I had only seconds before they found me.
Run, my brain screamed.