Bound By Rejection

Chapter 13: Kael’s Jealous Rage

The moment the iron door flung open, Lyra knew.

She didn't need to see him. She didn’t need the scent of storm and pine and primal rage that rolled in like a physical wave. She knew because the mate bond, newly sensitized by the loss of the wolfsbane collar, exploded in a shockwave of violent, possessive fury.

Her heart didn't just pound; it convulsed with the raw influx of his adrenaline. Her wolf, fully awake now and bristling beneath her skin, answered his internal roar with a snarling defiance that was both terrifying and exhilarating.

Caz paused mid-sentence, his pale silver eye narrowing toward the open door. “Guess story time’s over.”

Lyra didn't move. Her fingers tightened around the frayed edge of her cot, the silver cuffs digging into half-healed scabs at her wrists. Her own power thrummed in her veins, hot and ready, challenging his storm.

Kael stood silhouetted against the weak torchlight, a magnificent, terrifying shadow. His shoulders, usually a picture of Alpha control, were coiled and tight. His amber eyes, when they finally focused on her, were burning with a desperate, wild intensity she hadn’t seen since their earliest, most reckless courting days. But this was not passion. This was primal terror masked as territorial rage.

The guards didn’t announce him. They didn't dare. Lyra heard the hurried shuffle of boots retreating down the corridor. They were afraid of him, not just as their Alpha, but as a man who had finally lost control.

Then Kael saw Caz.

Caz, who was now standing fully upright, looked back at the Alpha with the effortless, casual arrogance of a rogue who had nothing to lose. He didn't look intimidated. He looked bored.

The shift in Kael was instantaneous and absolute. The raw fear that had spiked through the bond vanished, replaced by a pure, blinding, murderous jealousy.

“Leave us,” Kael commanded, his voice sharp and cold, vibrating with barely restrained violence.

Caz looked at Lyra, raising a brow, silently asking if she wanted him to fight.

She shook her head, subtly, almost imperceptibly. Let the predator focus on the decoy.

Caz shrugged, a gesture of careless dismissal that earned a visible tremor in Kael's jaw. “As the lady wishes,” he drawled, then sauntered to the far corner of the cell, turning his back to both of them and slumping onto the cot, his posture radiating insolent indifference.

Kael ignored him, his focus snapping back to Lyra. He advanced, every step eating the distance between them. The stone floor seemed to tremble under his heavy, authoritative stride.

He stopped just short of the silver chains that still bound her to the wall. He didn’t look at the scars on her arms; he looked at her face, at the newly kindled defiance in her eyes.

“What was that?” he demanded, his voice a low, gravelly snarl. “The bond, what did you do to yourself? What did you break?”

Lyra raised her chin, meeting his incandescent stare. The mate bond throbbed, a violent rhythm beneath her ribs. It was painful, but she forced herself to use it. She pushed her own dominant emotion, cold, controlled contempt, back through the link, aiming it straight at his soul.

“I only disabled the collar you forced me to wear, Kael,” she said, her voice quiet but steady. “I stopped feeding your poison. Did you think I’d simply wait for you to come finish the job?”

He flinched. The flicker of guilt, that tiny, irritating spark she had felt so rarely, flared through the bond, immediately smothered by his overwhelming possession.

“I was trying to protect you, dammit!” Kael exploded, his hand slamming into the stone wall beside her head, sending dust and mortar raining down. “The Elders were going to execute you! The branding was the only way to save you, to buy us time. To show them you were broken enough to be controlled!”

Lyra laughed, a dry, hacking sound that held no humor, only bitter irony. “To show them? Or to show yourself, Kael?”

“If I refused, they would’ve questioned me about the power, about your fire—”

“And you couldn’t have that,” she whispered, her voice trembling with the edge of her raw rage. “Not the perfect Alpha. Not the golden boy. You chose to save your title by sacrificing my body.”

“I chose the Pack over a civil war!” he roared. “I chose order! I chose the greater good!”

“You chose yourself!” Lyra spat, the words slicing through the air like thrown daggers. “I was the Pack. I gave you everything, my fire, my loyalty, my heart! And you chose to save your political neck!”

The air thickened, suffocating. Kael grabbed the silver chain, the one connecting her to the wall, his grip shaking so violently the metal hissed faintly.

“Is that why you brought him in here?” Kael’s gaze slid, burning hot and venomous, to the corner where Caz sat. Jealousy, thick and black and corrosive, flooded the mate bond, instantly overriding his guilt. It was the only emotion Lyra knew he couldn’t master. She felt his Alpha-wolf screaming for the throat of the rogue near his mate.

“Is he replacing me?” Kael’s voice dropped to a low, lethal growl. “Are you telling him the secrets that were only ours? Is he touching you?”

Lyra let the mate bond confirm the jealousy was real, then she countered it with a cold, devastating truth. “You think this is about you, Kael? You think I care who you sleep with, or who touches me?” She gave him a look of absolute, final dismissal. “You gave me a Mark of Shame. The Goddess gave me a Mark of Power. And your only role now is to be the ruin that allows me to rise.”

She drew a deep breath and focused on the Prophecy Vision: the scorched earth, the crown of thorns, his shadow-covered, defeated body. She pushed the terrifying certainty of that vision through the bond, aiming for the core of his Alpha belief.

You are not my ruler. You are my downfall. And I will not forgive you.

Kael staggered back a step, his breath hitching, his eyes widening. He felt it. He felt the cold, unyielding weight of her destiny, the prophesied end she had chosen for him.

Caz, who had been silent, finally spoke from the corner, his voice an amused, gravelly interruption. “She deserves better than this cage, Alpha. She deserves a throne you weren’t brave enough to build.”

Kael didn’t even look at him. He was transfixed by Lyra, his own possessive magic and rage battling against the terrifying power of her prophecy.

“I should kill you both,” Kael whispered, his voice dangerously soft, yet Lyra felt the genuine, crushing weight of his lethal intent through the bond.

“Do it,” Lyra said, her voice clear and without hesitation. “Then at least you’d stop being a coward.”

He stared at her for one agonizing, endless moment, a flicker of the man she loved, drowning under the weight of the Alpha she hated.

But he didn't move. He couldn't.

The image of her final, unyielding strength, the woman who chose her destiny over his love, was the one blow that completely shattered his control. He turned abruptly, his muscles coiled with a violence he was forced to contain.

His boots pounded the stone as he left, the sound shaking the very walls of the dungeon. The guards scurried in behind him, faces pale with nerves, slamming the heavy iron door shut.

The scent of pine and rage slowly dissipated.

Lyra sagged back against the stone, exhausted, the residue of his toxic emotions fading from the bond. She was shaking, but not from fear. From the effort of the psychological war she had just won.

Caz rose from his cot, stretching his arms above his head. He gave her a long, slow look of profound respect.

“Well played, Lyra Blackthorn,” he said, his silver eye gleaming in the dark. “He knows now that he needs to choose: kill you, or watch you become the end of him. That bought us the chaos we needed.”

He walked to the eastern wall and ran his hand along the almost invisible seam of the Ancient Seal. “He won’t be back tonight. He’ll be too busy justifying his failure to Raina and the Elders.”

Lyra pushed off the wall and walked to the eastern seam, her heart pounding a steady, purposeful rhythm. The moment she was waiting for had arrived.

“How do we break it?” she asked, her voice low and fierce.

“Your hands,” Caz said, simply. “Your fire. And every ounce of hatred that man just left in your soul.” He stepped back, gesturing to the cold, ancient stone. “Show me the White Wolf, Lyra. Show me how you burn a kingdom down.”