Unbreakable Bond

Chapter3

"Sebastian?!"

The name tore from Lila's throat in a strangled cry of disbelief the moment her lupine senses rendered the powerful male form into recognizable features. Despite the pronounced muzzle, thick silver fur and hulking muscular proportions of his hybrid shape, there was no mistaking those piercing amber eyes or the distinctive hue of his tawny coat.

This was no stranger staking claim as her eternal mate. It was Sebastian Dravos - one of the Silver Moon Pack's most formidable warriors despite his low-ranking status. A skilled tracker and fierce protector who moved through the woodland realms with the silent lethality of a wraith.

And apparently, the ineshiyo - the other half of Lila's spirit - that the ancient encoded laws demanded she unite her very essence with in permanent sacred union.

A shudder rippled through her as the full implications bombarded her like a runaway stampede. How could this be? Sebastian was no heir of noble Alpha lineage destined to lead them as her future mate and pack emperor. He was a subordinate foot soldier at best, descended from a long line of unfamous ranks. Their stations could hardly be more disparate.

Yet as their ravenous stares collided in that suspended temporal rift, the universe seemed to judder and still around them in ceremonious reverence. Lila felt the visceral snap of their spiritual tethers intertwining, welding them into a single entity reinforced by the karmic covenants of the ancients. Her mouth grew arid as their shared consciousness expanded in blissful rapture, relaying a panoply of sensations and imagery forging the unbreakable psychic bond between true mates.

In that boundless synchronization, she witnessed Sebastian's own Awakening through his perspective - the surging metamorphosis racking his form, the consciousness-splintering pain lancing through his synapses until his world became a kaleidoscopic whirl of color, scent and disorienting impulses. Lila's lungs constricted with secondhand recollection of his torment until the incandescent rapture of their mate bond's revelation washed over him like a cosmic baptism under the moon's ethereal glow.

His amber irises dilated in rapturous awe as the filamental lifeline of Lila's essence materialized before his astral senses. She felt his profound yearning as a spiraling slipstream vortex of searing vitality when he instinctually followed the gossamer strand. No conscious thought could override the driving compulsion lashing every sinew taut with euphoric ache for divine completion. All that existed was Lila - his luna, his luminescent celestial mate.

Snarls of possessive carnality rumbled through Sebastian's chest with that soul-strafing epiphany...only to splinter with heart-rending dismay when the reality of who and what she represented sledgehammer ed into his consciousness.

His packmate - Alpha Maven's only offspring. Daughter of the esteemed bloodline he had served with lethal dedication since being orphaned as a pup. The future empress and spiritual matriarch who must be revered and protected at all costs...even from himself.

Through his tormented psyche, Lila witnessed how desperately he attempted to reject their bond - a mate connection that defied every natural law and societal tradition in effect. His paws backpedaled with frantic shakes of his head, denial wafting from him in fractured crimson tsunamis crashing against Lila's insistent yearning. Yet even as he willed the tendril of their essence to unspool and fray apart, it remained supernaturally anchored - an immutable tether searing into them both.

In that discordant spiral of ecstasy and anguish, Lila felt the last fragments of Sebastian's self-restraint unraveling like a pyre too long starved for oxygen. His rioting wolfen senses drowned out all coherent misgivings in a swirling vortex of rapacious desire. She experienced the scalding claws of lust under his pelt, felt the heavage straining against her own heated core, the draughts of her mate's virile, intoxicating scent. His whine rose in pitch, the universal Lycan invitation to consummate their eternal binding.

Powerless against the hypnotic undertow of instinct, Lila found her body responding in kind. Muscles tensed and coiled as a rumbling growl vibrated low in her chest - signaling her acceptance of their destiny. Her haunches elevated and shoulder blades flexed, shifting her center of gravity into predatory stalking stance. With pelt bristling and fangs barring back over a lolling tongue in carnal invitation, she began slinking toward Sebastian on sensually prowling strides.

His own growl spiraled into an ear-splitting crescendo of bestial arousal. Every nerve ending sparked with wanton blaze as the world whittled down to a churning panorama of his mate's exquisite form shimmering incandescent against the moon's full silvery splendor. His claws scored the earth, his massive frame sinking into position to mount her from behind in the ancient way of their kind--

"Enough!"

The command boomed through the clearing like a thunderclap. Lila's suspended haze shattered, adrenaline flushing cold through her as the Circle's perimeter erupted into pandemonium.

Warriors sprang forth from the shadows with spears and torches aimed squarely at Sebastian's massive form now bristling and braced in an aggressive crouch. Lila tried to interpose herself between them, a shrill whinny of panic escaping her, but a cadre of burly males shoved her back into the ring of sneering Moon Maidens.

At their vanguard strode the imperious presence of Lila's father, Alpha Maven - a Herculean figure of grizzled power with eyes blazing baleful azure-like gemstones amidst the rippling slopes of his battle-hewn muzzle. His posture was ramrod stiff, hackles raised in a clear threat display as he assessed the interloper defiling his only daughter.

"You dare court abomination here, worm?" His snarl raked over Sebastian in furious rebuke. "To imagine your filth even glancing upon my successor's sanctity is a perversion of the highest order. I should have your throat rent open and spine lashed until the goddess herself turns her gaze in disgust!"

As if spurred on by his alpha's tirade, the circling enforcers closed in on Sebastian with weapons aloft - a grim phalanx resolved to enact justice by bloodshed. For his part, the rogue male braced himself with obstinate resolve, refusing to submit so easily to their barbaric judgment.

Through it all, Lila could feel the mate principle stress testing the bindings of her consciousness with harrowing strain. Part of her psyche railed against this mutinous interference threatening to sever their nascent bond. Her wolf snarled and fought against any notion of being parted from her ineshiyo - the perfected whole of her very existence had been catalyzed to seek out and cherish for all eternity.

Yet beneath that ran a substratum of panic and denial. Surely some archaic fallacy was distorting reality itself for such a violation to occur. For her destined mate to be someone as lowborn and unexalted as Sebastian...how could the vaulted Goddess allow her future to careen towards such an inauspicious path of ruin?

Just as the clashing energies massing around them seemed Crescendoing towards an inescapable implosion, a piercing tone suddenly sliced through the maelstrom like an ethereal blade. One by one, the bristling warriors crumpled into insensate heaps until only Lila, Sebastian, the Moon Maidens, and Alpha Maven remained conscious and able to withstand the resonating harmonic assault.

At the vanguard of this new spectacle strode three wizened crones even more primordially aged than the priestesses overseeing the Awakening ritual. Encrustations of symbological scarring adorned their shriveled faces, each marking an ancient covenant with the cosmos itself. These were the vaulted Moondancers - the prophetic oracles and sacred conduits through which the

Great Mother's most recondite truths were spoken