Feral Bonds: The Alpha's Torment

Bound by Blood and Fate

Selene's POV

"Don't you dare touch her?" Damian's voice boomed out, his anger flickering like wildfire. He stood between me and Lucien, his figure bursting with raw force, the muscles in his back tense as his grasp on me tightened. Though the turmoil was all around, I could still feel the pull of the link between us—stronger than ever, even after everything. My heart hammered against my ribs like a battle drum.

Lucien laughed—low, guttural, and hostile. "What's the deal, Damian? frightened? You have failed her once already. Why do you believe you could help her right now? His speech was venomous, his dark form barely out of reach but still near enough to cause chills down my spine.

All I could do was gaze at the guy I believed I could trust, the man who had rejected me, who had split me apart and left me to cope with the aftermath on my own; I wanted to react, wanted to shout, wanted to fight back. Still, I was here, more than ever wanting him. It was deplorable.

"You don't get to talk about her like that, Lucien," Damian snared, his voice black and lethal. "You know a darn nothing about her—about us."

Damian stated it with such earnestness that I felt as though I would burst apart in his arms. Our relationship buzzed, a wild energy calling out to me, demanding me to see it, to submit to it. I couldn't, though. Not during the time everything had been broken between us. Not when he had turned down me initially.

" Us?" Lucien laughed, his joy twisted with vicious contempt. " Damian, there is no "we." Never was. You already have your road picked; she is already mine."

I stopped; a sudden chilly surge passed over me. "What?" asks I inhaled; my voice trembles. "What do you mean, she’s yours?"

Lucien had twisted delight in his eyes. Damian, the Seer The Seer is her. And long before you did, I also knew. The prophecy predicted all—Selene, the hybrid endowed with the ability to transform everything. You were, however, too blind to perceive her for what she really is."

I passed out in waves of vertigo. The Seer here The one thing Damian had been so sorely trying to avoid. My blood became cold as awareness sank in. The words of Lucien chilled me from the back-off. Should Lucien know, there was no way out of this. Not sprinting.

Lucien said, "You're not ready for what's coming," his voice lowering to a whisper. Then neither is she. He stopped, his mouth curved in a sinister smirk pointing at me. "You see, Selene, the prophecy goes beyond mere strength. It addresses giving up something. concerning blood.

Damian said, "Shut up," advancing forward with a tight and ready to attack body. "You know a damned nothing about her. She is not a weapon you should be handling.

Lucien's smile, nevertheless, never changed. He questioned quietly, "Isn't she?" "The fate of all wolves was set the minute she was born and entered the world. Damian, she was never supposed to be just a hybrid. She was supposed to go to the front of the stage. To reign.

I stopped breathing. His words squished down on me like a smothering weight. Was it indeed? Was I truly intended for something so much more perilous than I could have ever dreamed, so much bigger?

"Enough," Damian said, his voice a low growl as his eyes darkened with hardly held rage. His hand rested on my shoulder, so anchoring me; still, I couldn't get away from the persistent sense that something was quite wrong. He approached me.

a quick flash of action. too fast for processing. Lucien ran forward, his hand stretched toward me. His fingertips just barely brushed my arm, but enough to shock me with something dark. Something old and savage, a rush of force shot inside of me. I gasped, my body stiffening as an unusual vitality flowed through me.

Damian hissed, moving so quickly I couldn't keep up. He snatched Lucien's wrist and viciously slammed him into the tree, shaking the earth. "Stay away from her!" Damian shouted.

But Lucien simply laughed—his nasty, sarcastic chuckle that made my skin crawl. "Damian, you cannot keep her forever safe. You know, right? With a sickening ease, he twisted his wrist, separating from Damian's hold. His black eyes gleamed. Though I shall be her final mate, you may have been hers first.

His words seemed to me like a hook in my chest, drawing. The link, the unquestionable link still binding me to Damian, flashed and stretched, as if caught between two conflicting forces, both strong and overwhelming.

Damian's face clouded, his eyes blazing with a mix of wrath and despair. His voice rough with passion, he advised, "Stay away from her, Lucien." "You're messing with something else entirely."

Lucien backed off and raised his hands in imitation submission. His smile broadening, he added, "I don't know anything." "Because shortly she will be mine, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Damian snarled, not while I was breathing.

"Then you better hold your breath," Lucien said coolly, his voice tinged with laughter. "Because, Damian, a storm is approaching and it affects not only you. It's for her. For all of us in general.

Damian tried to intercept him, but Lucien was already fading like smoke in the darkness into the shadows.

Breath shallow, my head whirling, I gazed at the spot he had stood on. His words heavily hung on me, drawing me down into an unclear abyss. About one thing—I was far from ready for whatever was ahead—Lucien was accurate.

I also had no idea whether Damian was either.

A cold, numbing ache shot through my chest before I could absorb anything else, like wildfire spreading through my veins. I gasped, gripping my side as my eyesight fogged.

"Selene!" Damian's voice was tinged with apprehension. "What're you experiencing?"

My lips would not move as I attempted to talk, to assure him I knew nothing. The agony got worse, spiraling down until it seemed as though my whole soul was being ripped from me. Shaking, I dropped to my knees and used my hands to get support from the ground.

Damian's face turned with terror. "Selene!" he said, his hands out to seize me. But before he could touch me, a piercing screech erupted—a scream that sounded like it originated from the furthest, darkest recesses of the planet.

My eyesight distorted by tears and darkness, I glanced up and saw something that stopped my blood flow.

Lucien's figure watched coldly, calculatingly from the brink of the woodland, as though he had expected this all along.

Then he murmured into the darkness one last, menacing word: "Now it begins."

The planet spun. As the agony surged through me, intense and unrelenting, my body jolted like fire. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think—everything was whirling, a vortex of pain and terror. Damian's voice seemed far-off, muffled and dim, like I may be underwater.

"Selene, please! His voice broke under desperate need. His hands rubbed into my flesh, but not enough. Though it was raw and unvarnished, I could sense his worry, and it just made the gnawing terror in my chest even worse.

"Stay with me, terrible!" Damian's hold intensified, his arms around me, but I couldn't concentrate. The weight felt to be pressing on my own soul was intolerable. The darkness was dragging me beneath and seemed like it may swallow me completely.

A low, sarcastic laughter that sent shivers down my spine reverberated through the woods. It was Lucien. His presence stifling the air around me, I knew before he even set foot in the clearing.

"Do you suppose you could guard her, Damian?" Lucien's voice exuded nasty delight. Rising from the shadows, he had a keen, calculated look. "You couldn't even protect her from me the first time."

Damian's jaw was constricted. Although his muscles stiffened under my touch, the hopelessness in his eyes screamed louder than any of his words. "Lucien," he said, his voice low and menacing. "If you harm her"—

"She's already hurting, Damian," Lucien said, his eyes flashing with hate. "That's nothing, though, when what's ahead. For what I have scheduled, you are not strong enough. His smile was nasty, the type that made every instinct in me cry for protection. "You know as well as I do, this is beyond you now. About her. Her key is here. She always was."

I cried, "Stop it," just a whisper, but it made no difference. Lucien was already much too far beyond. His words were poisoning me, creeping beneath my skin.

My body was betraying me even as I struggled to stand and push through the agony. The weight of the prophecy and the curse was intolerable. I could sense it—all true. Though I had no power, I was the Seer, the one meant to alter everything. I knew not how to stop it.

Lucien stepped nearer, his eyes locked on my with a stifling intensity. Selene, "It's already started." There is nothing you can run away from here. None of us can.

The ground around us shook fiercely, as if the earth itself were responding to the strength that rushed within me, before I could answer. I yelled, the sound of my voice blending with the earth's roar underfoot.

Damian drew me in, his expression clearly horrified. "What the hell is happening?" he insisted, his hold on me tightening.

Lucien just grinned, though, with shining eyes. "You ought to have let her free, Damian. This is only the starting point.

The ground opened in front of us then with a startling, thunderous c***k.

I could hardly understand what was happening—everything around me was spiraling into anarchy. The earth's split grew more pronounced, and from the bottom something started to rise. Exuding a cold, terrible force that made every part of me scream in dread, a black figure, hideous and gigantic, pushed up from the gaps under.

Damian turned to meet me, a mask of will covering his face. "Run,Selene!" His voice was sharp and full of unvarnished terror. "Now!".

But before I could move, before I could even think, I felt something ancient, icy and sharp, grabbing at my very essence.

Lucien laughed once again, but it was different now—deeper, more disturbing. "You think you might flee, Selene?" His voice rang in the anarchy, a last caution. "You cannot escape destiny."

Then the creature surfaced from the sea, its form terrible and hideous, something far beyond anything I had ever seen, and its eyes glowed with an awful light.

Damian tried to shield me, but before he could, the thing screamed, its sound rattling the very earth below.

I couldn't get out.