Chapter 182

Chapter 182
Arius‘s pov.
Freya’s mouth on mine was a sin I didn’t believe in until it happened. Warm, steady, unafraid—no hesitation, no apology. She turned me by the collar and kissed me like she’d decided to stop arguing with fate for one breath. For one impossible heartbeat.
And of course that is the exact moment her mates arrive.
A sharp whistle cut the air. Freya jerked back, breath ragged, eyes wide. I felt the absence of her like a blade sliding out of my ribs. I didn’t have to look to know who stood at the treeline; the air told me—ozone and fury, iron and command. Dorian, boiling red, fists clenched, the wolf in him prowling just beneath the skin. Dante beside him, already amused at the mess. Calipsa, alert and pale. And Tiberius… not entirely present. The valley had its hooks in him; he stared past us, expression distant, like he was listening to a lullaby only he could hear.
Perfect. Chaos, my oldest friend.
Selene clicked her tongue, because of course she’d enjoy this. “How unfortunate,” she sing-songed, lips curved in a satisfied scythe. “You weren’t supposed to see that.” Her delight rolled off her like perfume—the old Selene peeking through the road-worn restraint. The one who loved a fire as long as she wasn’t the one burning.
I ignored her. I was busy trying to slow my own heart. Freya’s kiss still thundered in my blood, and it rattled me in ways I didn’t have names for. I’d laughed at her before—You want to teach me feelings?—but right now every nerve felt newly skinned, tuned to her.
“Dorian,” she started, stepping forward, palms raised. “I—”
He didn’t look at her. His eyes were locked on me like sights on a target. “Move away from him.” Calm voice, lethal underneath.
“Later,” I said lightly, because someone needed to break the tension before we all did something we’d regret. “Your Majesty.”
His lip curled. “I’m not in the mood for your shit.”
“Never are,” I murmured, but I was already shifting my attention past him to Tiberius. The hunter’s eyes were unfocused, his breathing shallow, hands flexing at nothing. The valley’s whisper was strong in him—stronger than it had been on me. That bothered me. I don’t like being outplayed, even by ancient geography.
Freya felt it too. She pulled free of Dorian’s orbit and went to Tiberius, speaking softly, urgently. “Tiberius… look at me. Hey. It’s Freya. Come back to me.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.
Calipsa’s voice edged in, cool and clinical. “The valley tries to keep what it thinks it can soften. It shows you what you lacked most. It makes the hunger feel like peace.”
Freya’s jaw tightened. “I know how it feels,” she said, and gods help me, I believed her.
Selene, because she cannot let a wound alone, added sweetly, “How strange it is that you shouted Dorian and Tiberius to wake you, and yet your voice doesn’t wake him. Maybe you’re not what anchors him, Freya. Maybe you never were.”
“Selene,” I snapped, warning in my tone.
She only shrugged, malicious spark dimming into something rawer. Exhaustion and pain were spiderwebbing her features, and for once I wondered if her cruelty was just a broken bone she kept worrying.
I crouched in front of Tiberius and watched the minute muscles of his face. A child’s longing, right there beneath the hard-set lines. Mother. The valley had given him a mother. Damn clever. “Freya,” I said without looking up, “you need a name. The right one. What pulls him?”
“All I’ve tried is us,” she whispered, voice fraying. “Our bond. It’s not—”
Selene’s smirk wilted as she looked at Tiberius longer. “He was forged on duty. But he was starved of softness.” She swallowed. “Say what he never got to hear.”
Freya closed her eyes, inhaled once, then leaned in. Her voice gentled into something I’d never heard from her—honey and ache. “Tiberius… sweetheart, you’re safe. I’m here. I won’t leave you. I won’t. Come back.”
The hunter’s breath hitched. Barely, but it did.
Dorian took one step forward, then another, and the valley flinched around him, as if it tasted anger and wanted more. Calipsa’s hand shot to his wrist. “Careful,” she hissed. “It will bargain with that rage.”
“I don’t bargain,” he said through his teeth, but he stilled.
Whatever the valley murmured to me earlier, it had been poison-fine and easy to refuse because it required me to admit too much. Tiberius’s trap was kinder—and therefore crueler. It was the kind of net a man would beg to stay in. I reached very carefully and set two fingers against his pulse. Strong. Far too slow.
“Freya,” I said, “talk to the boy in him. Not the hunter. Call him home.”
She swallowed. “Tiberius, love… I know the quiet you’re feeling. But it’s not real. I need you. I need you angry and loud and sarcastic and impossibly stubborn. I need you to argue with me about strategy and tell me when I’m being reckless and—gods—just breathe with me, not with a ghost. Please.”
His eyes flickered. Not much. Enough to make Dorian’s shoulders drop a fraction and Dante mutter, “That’s it, princess. Keep going.”
Selene folded her arms, but she didn’t look away. And in that pause—because this valley loves a well-timed incision—something else rose like fog.
It started as a pressure in my ears, then a weight on the chest. A hush rolled over the trees, the air silvered, and I knew the valley was addressing the newcomers. Testing them. Enticing them. Dorian’s jaw tightened, his eyes went distant for a sliver of a heartbeat, and I wondered what sweetness it dangled before a king who had everything except an ordinary life. Dante’s mouth twitched with a memory I couldn’t see. Calipsa’s fingers trembled; even she was not immune.
“Focus,” I said sharply, mostly to myself. “We fix the living problem first.”
I leaned closer to Tiberius, pitched my voice low. “You can have comfort, hunter. But not like this. Not alone. Not stolen. You’ll hate yourself in an hour, and you know it.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek. Freya took the cue and pressed her forehead to his. “Please,” she breathed. “I’m here. We’re here.”
For a moment longer he teetered on that edge, lashes trembling. Then—air flooded his lungs in a sharp inhale. His stare snapped into focus on Freya, pupils dark. He seized her wrist and crushed it to his chest like a man waking under ice, and she sagged with a laugh that was half-sob.
“Hi,” he rasped.
“Hi,” she whispered, smiling wetly.
The valley sighed—a sound you feel in the bone, not the ear—and let him go. For now.
Dorian finally exhaled, gaze still cutting toward me like he’d prefer my head on a pike. “We move fast and get the hell out of this place,” he said. Freya’s voice broke in, steady but burning: “No. I stay. I have to bring Reyna and Hera back.”
Selene, who had been too quiet for too long, straightened. “I’m going first.”
We all looked at her. Her eyes were bright, fever-wild. “Into the Mirror’s bargain?” I asked. “That eager to pay?”
“That eager to stop burning,” she shot back, and for the first time I heard it—raw, desperate honesty. “Your blood is a poison in me, Freya. Without my wolf, I am a cage that eats itself. I either fix it, or I stop being at all.”
Freya’s expression softened. “Selene—”
“Don’t pity me,” she snapped. “Just don’t get in my way.” She shut her eyes and whispered, low and fierce, “I am ready, Veyra.”
What answered was not a sound but a shift, like the valley held its breath. A cold radiance licked over Selene’s skin, then poured into her eyes—gold, sudden and blinding. Her spine arched. Her hands clenched. For three suspended heartbeats the whole world leaned toward her—and then it was done.
She opened her eyes and they were lupine gold.
“Nyra,” she exhaled, reverent and breaking. She laughed—small, disbelieving—and then she swayed.
I scented the problem before the words registered. No pack-scent clung to her. No bonds. Clean as winter. Severed.
Selene’s smile faltered. Her palm hovered over her sternum. “Nyra…?” she whispered, listening inward, and whatever answered made her knees give. She caught herself with shaking hands, tears cutting tracks down her face. “Okay. Okay. We’ll manage. Just us.” Her voice cracked. “Just us.”
Freya crouched, cautious. “What did it take?”
Selene laughed, ugly and wet. “Everything that made us belong to anyone but ourselves.” She dragged her sleeve across her cheeks and stared me down as if daring me to pity her. “No pack. No clan. No home. But I have her. And that will be enough.” She paused, then added, quieter, “Eventually.”
The valley does not do charity anymore. Point taken.