Chapter 103 The forest
The forest was silent except for Marcus's ragged breathing as he ran. His boots pounded against frozen ground, each step jarring his bones. Twenty feet ahead, something moved through the darkness that made his stomach turn.
It looked like a wolf. But wolves didn't move like that.
Its spine twisted at wrong angles as it ran. Its claws were too long, scraping grooves into tree bark as it leaped between trunks. The creature's eyes glowed with an intelligence that made Marcus's skin crawl.
'Adrian, come to the northwest sector. You need to see this thing.'
Marcus's mind link carried pure urgency. The creature was fast, impossibly fast, weaving through gaps in the trees that forced Marcus to slow down and find another path.
Then Adrian appeared.
One second the path ahead was empty. The next, the Alpha King was there, running so fast the trees blurred around him. Adrian didn't slow for obstacles. He smashed through them. A young tree splintered under his shoulder. He used a boulder as a launching point, flying over a gap the creature had just cleared.
The distance between them vanished.
Keal materialized beside Adrian like he'd stepped out of thin air. His robes streamed behind him as he matched the Alpha's speed, his glasses somehow still perched on his nose.
They didn't need to speak. Adrian cut left. Keal moved right. Marcus pushed harder, closing the triangle around their prey.
The creature's head snapped between them. For the first time, something like fear flickered in its glowing eyes. It pivoted toward a gap in their formation.
Adrian's claws found its shoulder first.
The impact drove them both into a moss-covered boulder. Stone cracked. The creature shrieked, a sound that was half wolf and half something worse. Its claws raked Adrian's ribs, tearing through cloth and skin.
Adrian didn't even flinch. His hand closed around the creature's throat and slammed its skull into rock two times then Keal's blade found the space between its neck bones.
The creature went still. Its jaw hung open, revealing a dead rabbit still caught in its teeth. Blood pooled beneath them, too dark and too thick. The smell hit Marcus like a punch: rot mixed with chemicals that burned his nose.
"Help me move it," Adrian said.
His voice was steady despite the blood running down his side. Together, they dragged the body deeper into the woods. Keal led them to a clearing Marcus had never seen before, hidden behind curtains of weeping willows. A wooden table waited there, old and stained with blood.
They heaved the creature onto it. Marcus stepped back, chest heaving, while Keal pulled out a leather roll of surgical tools from inside his robes.
"How long?"
Adrian's question hung in the cold air. He pressed a hand to his bleeding ribs. The wounds were already closing, skin knitting back together, but his eyes never left Keal's face.
"Since I lost them." Keal's hands moved with smooth efficiency, spreading the creature's jaws wider. "My family.“
He pulled out a small glass bottle and filled it with the creature's saliva. The liquid hissed when it touched the glass.
Marcus watched the scholar work. Something was different about Keal tonight. He moved like he'd done this before. Many times before.
"Lila was a breakthrough since my research stated. The time she ran from the palace was the time these creatures come out to haunt." Keal's knife made a clean cut along the creature's stomach. Organs spilled out, the wrong colors and wrong shapes. He collected samples in bottles, labeling each one. "That night when I pursued her fir the rejection ritual, certain patterns emerged, connections I'd missed before began to become even clearer."
He paused and met Adrian's gaze over the corpse. "Your Majesty, I need you to listen carefully. Lila is special, unique in ways I'm only beginning to understand."
"Speak plainly."
"There's a spell." Keal set down his knife. "Cast on both of you. The rejection ritual didn't work. It couldn't work. The mate bond doesn't just break because of ritual words. Not when it runs this deep."
He pulled a blackened organ from the cavity, holding it up to the moonlight. "Someone wanted you to believe it did. Someone with resources and knowledge and a very specific goal."
Adrian's jaw clenched. The muscles in his neck went tight. "You're saying everything I felt was fake?"
"Not fake, it's twisted." Keal's voice stayed gentle but firm. "The anger, the hatred, the need to hurt her... all of it was designed to keep you apart."
"Impossible."
The word cracked like a whip. Adrian turned away, shoulders rigid. His hands opened and closed at his sides. "You don't know what I've done to her. The punishments, the things I've said. Every time I see her face, I want to..."
He choked on whatever came next.
"You want to protect her," Keal said quietly.
Adrian spun back. "What?"
"Underneath the spell's corruption, the bond still works. That's why the anger spikes when she's threatened. Why you can't stay away even though every logical thought tells you to let her go."
Keal cleaned his tools with careful movements. "Remember who you were before the rejection. Remember what you felt. Stop expecting her to remember, she can't. The spell broke her memories too. But you can build something new. Something real, not forced."
"Who ever did this, to pull you both apart have a hand on celest death.“ Marcus said
"I want justice for Celeste." Adrain uttered his voice low but stern.
Keal's eyes stayed steady. "We need to find her killers and make them pay. But ask yourself, Your Majesty, who benefits from keeping you and Lila at each other's throats? Who gains from your isolation, your rage, your inability to trust the one person the bond chose for you?"
Marcus cleared his throat. Both men looked at him like they'd forgotten he existed.
"The chemical," Marcus said, nodding toward the bottles. "Is it the same?"
Keal's expression said everything. "Identical to what killed Celeste's horse, yes. Same signature, same source, same person behind both."
Marcus's eyes blazed with anger. "Then they're already panicking. Lila's presence is danger to them, if they go this length then they want Lila dead too. The fear alone of Lila coming in between their plans is what made them act recklessly and repeat old mistakes."
Adrain voice dropped to something colder than the winter air. "Good, let them panic. Let them make more mistakes because when I find them, they're going to wish they'd never been born."
"They'll lead us to answers," Keal interrupted gently. "If we're patient, if we're smart. If you can keep Lila close enough to draw them out but protected enough to survive their next move."
The words settled over them like snow. Silently.
Marcus looked between the Alpha and the delta, then down at the monster on the table. Even dead, its eyes looked sad in the moonlight.
"What was it hunting?" Marcus asked.
Keal pulled
the rabbit from the creature's jaws and raised it up for him to see.
“They hunt mercilessly,”