Until The Last Alpha Begs

The Full Moon's Price

POV: Freya

The gardens felt empty now, even with the guards stationed every ten paces along the walls.

Rhydian had been distant ever since the day the fountain shattered. He didn't stand under the archway anymore; he stayed out near the perimeter line, his posture stiff and his eyes looking right past me whenever our paths crossed. He wouldn't even look at my face.

I told myself it didn't matter. I had much larger concerns to worry about, but the sudden absence of his easy conversation left this quiet, irritating space in my days that I hadn't realized he’d filled.

“You're distracted, girl,” Sable rasped, her voice cutting through the damp afternoon air as I finished another breathing cycle. “The mind must be completely clear if you want to hold the floorboards down.”

“I'm fine,” I muttered, my hand automatically dropping down to brush against my belly.

“You are lying,” Sable said, her eyes narrowing as she stepped closer, the smell of smoke drifting off her skirts. “The ancient thing inside you is waking much faster than we anticipated. It's stretching, Freya. It's testing the walls of the prison your mother built for it. If you let your focus slip for even a second, it will find the crack.”

I knew she was right. Beneath the wolf, I could feel the low, freezing vibration of that hunger constantly humming against my ribs, waiting for a chance to slip loose.

By the time night fell, the sky had turned a deep shade of bruised purple. The full moon rose over the valley peaks, looking massive and tinted with red.

I was alone in the training garden, trying to force the regular, even breaths Sable had taught me into my lungs, when the first cramp hit.

It didn't feel like a normal contraction. It felt like a hot iron rod being driven straight through my spine and twisted. I buckled forward, my knees hitting the dirt hard as a gasp tore out of my throat.

“No,” I choked out, clutching my stomach. “Ah—”

But it wasn't a choice. It wasn't like the quick power flares I'd experienced before—those were just surges, waves that rose up and eventually crashed back down—but this was a complete rupture.

Inside my skull, my wolf began to scream as it tore frantically at the very boundaries of my skin, trying to escape what was coming up from the dark. The ancient power rose instantly to meet it. The two mismatched rhythms fought for space, and the pressure built until my vision went entirely white.

I opened my mouth to call for help, but no sound came out. Instead, a blinding, liquid silver light poured straight from my throat, bleeding out of my eyes and escaping from beneath my fingernails like smoke.

I'm losing it, panic washing over my mind as my own thoughts started to slip away, swallowed by the freezing vacuum of the hunger.

Am I becoming something else?

The air itself began to scream around me, vibrating with a high, deafening pitch. I looked down through the silver haze in my eyes and watched the grass beneath my hands instantly turn black and wither into ash. The stone tiles cracked with loud, wet pops, the fractures spreading outward from my knees like a spiderweb.

“Freya!”

A voice cut through the roaring in my ears, but the scent hit me a second later.

Rhydian.

He came skidding around the broken archway, his face turning pale as the silver light hit his skin. He took one step into the shimmering, freezing radius of the blast wave and caught his breath, his own wolf instantly snarling in his chest as the pressure tried to crush him.

“Stay... back!” I managed to howl, the syllables dragging over the raw heat in my throat. “Rhydian, get away from me!”

“Get out of the way, Rhydian,” a cold voice commanded from the edge of the clearing.

Zevren stepped through the shattered archway, the pressure of his Alpha aura slamming into the garden like a wall. The silver light coming off my skin flared violently at his presence, the air sizzling between us, but he didn't even flinch.

His eyes were completely wide, fixed on the moonlight bleeding from my fingertips.

Rhydian didn't move immediately, his boots dug into the cracking stone, his hand hovering near his blade.

“Alpha, the magic is unstable. It's tearing the ground apart—”

“I said, move,” Zevren hissed, his voice dropping into a dark, guttural growl that forced Rhydian back by sheer pack command.

Rhydian’s jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth would shatter, but he had to step back into the shadows, his eyes locked on mine with a helpless fury.

Then Zevren was right there, stepping straight into the shimmering, freezing radius of the blast wave and grabbed my wrists. The moment his hands touched my bare skin, a shock traveled up my arms. His palms were burning hot, his grip tight enough to bruise.

“Look at me, Freya,” he muttered, his face inches from mine as he forced my arms down. “Let it out. Stop fighting the tide. Let me guide it.”

“It's... too much,” I choked out, my ribs expanding painfully as the silver light flared again, threatening to rip my skin apart. “Zevren, stop—”

“Hold still.”

He pulled me flush against his chest, his breath hot against my ear as his arms wrapped around my waist.

The ritual began without a circle or a chalice. It was just him, his voice dropping into a chant, speaking words I didn't understand.

As the chant deepened, his power surged out, wrapping around my magic like chains forged from his own raw will. It wasn't a gentle soothing; it was an invasion.

I gasped as I felt him push his way right inside my mind, cutting through the panic, shoving past my screaming wolf, and forcing his way down into the place where the guardian power slept.

The intimacy of it was absolute. It was louder and more naked than any physical act could ever be. He was parsing through my thoughts, anchoring his own pack energy into the very core of my soul, tying his lifeforce to the ancient hunger inside me to force it back behind the bars.

“Mine,” his Alpha consciousness roared through the bond, deafening and possessive. “You are mine, Freya.”

I screamed against his shoulder, my fingers clawing into the fabric of his coat as the two powers clashed, grinding together until the silver light began to dim, retreating back under my skin like oil sinking into dirt.

The suffocating pressure in the air slowly dissipated, leaving only the sound of our ragged breathing in the wrecked garden.

When it was finally over, the silence felt heavier than the storm.

Zevren’s grip loosened slowly, his hands lingering on my hips, his thumb brushing over the torn fabric of my shirt where his fingers had pressed too hard into my skin. He was breathing heavily, a triumphant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“See?” He whispered, his voice dangerously soft against my neck. “You need me, Freya. Without me, that beautiful, monstrous thing inside you will burn you to ash from the inside out. We are bound now.”

I was stabilized, the agonizing cramps fading into a dull ache, but I felt hollowed out. Cleaned out from the inside. My body was humming with a new, parasitic connection that felt entirely wrong, a weight tying me directly to his pulse.

He let his hands slide away, his expression smug and entirely satisfied as he stepped back.

“Rest tonight. We train again at dawn.”

I didn't answer him. I didn't even look at him. I stumbled past his shoulder, my legs shaking so violently I could barely keep my balance.

My clothes were torn, my skin was already turning black and blue where his grip had anchored me, and as I dragged myself out of the dirt toward the barracks, I didn't dare catch Rhydian's eye in the dark.

The cage wasn't just locked anymore. Zevren had woven himself right into the bars.