Chapter 2: A Bond Unseen
1312 Words
They told me I’d feel it like lightning.
What didn’t they say? Lightning doesn’t ask permission.
I stared at the note in my hand, the ink already smearing from where my fingers had pressed too hard. I reread the words: The prince has chosen her.
Then the line below: You leave at dawn.
Every instinct screamed to tear the paper, throw it into the hearth, and pretend it never touched my floor. But my wolf had already stirred, restless, prowling behind my ribs.
Not from the message.
From something else.
It started as a flicker. A jolt in the center of my chest, subtle as a whisper. Then, just as suddenly, it surged. Like a thread pulling taut, a tether from my sternum to somewhere unseen.
I staggered back, one hand on the wall. My breath hitched, muscles locking down.
No.
Not now. Not this.
The bond.
The mate-bond.
I’d grown up hearing the stories—how it snapped into place when your fated mate came close enough. How it roared like thunder or burned like wildfire. But this… this was different.
It wasn’t loud. It was quiet. Dangerous in the way still water hides its depth.
And worst of all?
It wasn’t pointing anywhere.
Just pulling.
My wolf snarled softly under my skin, confused and alert. Not panicked. Not pleased either.
It felt… wrong. Not broken, not poisoned—just… veiled.
Like someone was hiding.
I clutched the note again. There were only two people it could be about: Selena and Prince Lucien Thorne.
He had chosen her. Publicly.
But if that was true—
Why was the bond pulling me?
Not her.
The thought just slid in, like a shard of glass. Didn’t even know if it was mine.
Tarris met me at dawn with a blank face and a fresh horse. I didn’t ask questions. The note hadn’t offered answers, and I wasn’t in the mood to play court games with a guard who hated my bloodline more than he hated mud on his boots.
The sun hadn’t yet broken the clouds, and frost still bit the edges of the trail as we rode out through the east pass. I didn’t bring much—just my worn satchel, mother’s blade strapped to my back beneath a wool cloak, and the usual scowl Tarris never tried to break.
He glanced at me once, maybe twice, as we climbed higher toward the watchpoint overlooking the valley. When we finally stopped to water the horses, I turned on him.
“Why me?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Why not, Selena?”
His jaw twitched. “Orders.”
“From who?”
No answer.
“Why now?”
Still nothing.
I was used to silence. I wasn’t used to it feeling like a warning.
We mounted again and rode without speaking. My skin itched the whole way, the tug in my chest constant, like an invisible leash tightening around my lungs. The worst part wasn’t the pain—it was the silence inside.
My wolf had gone quiet.
Not in fear. In confusion.
As if she couldn’t find the scent she was supposed to follow.
We crested the final hill by midday. Below, the spires of Blackthorn Palace rose like daggers from the frostbitten earth, wrapped in veils of mist and shadow.
I’d expected grandeur. Fire-lit towers. Courtiers in crimson silk.
What I saw instead was stone, cracked and old, ringed by black pines. And guards—dozens, all watching the gates.
This wasn’t a palace.
It was a prison with better tailoring.
The room they gave me was small, barely enough for a bed, a basin, and a barred window. Walls were bare, but the floor was clean, blankets were too. That said something.
They didn’t think I’d stick around.
I sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing the ache in my wrist, and that pull in my chest came back. Stronger. Hotter.
Someone had entered the palace.
My wolf paced again, tail raised, ears alert.
Still no direction. Just that ache—like hunger, but laced with something darker.
Need.
I curled my fists and stood. Pacing the room helped, but only for a minute.
I had to find the source.
Had to see if this was real—if the bond had snapped to life too late, or too soon, or with the wrong person entirely.
I slipped out the door.
No guards. No lock.
That was the first sign that something was off.
The hallways of Blackthorn were cold, empty. Too quiet for midday. Too shadowed for stone.
I followed instinct. Not the pull—too scattered—but my training. Watch for patterns. Listen for shifts in the wind.
Halfway down the north wing, I heard voices. Low. Urgent.
I pressed against the wall.
“I told you to wait.”
Lucien Thorne.
His voice wasn’t what I expected.
It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t cruel.
It was tired. And edged with something sharper.
“You think she suspects?” another voice asked. Older. Male.
“She feels it,” Lucien said. “But she doesn’t know.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“She’s necessary.”
I stepped back. My breath caught.
They were talking about me.
Of course they were.
And yet…
The pull surged again.
Lucien’s voice changed. Dropped into something quieter.
“Do you feel it?”
“Not yet,” the other said. “But she will.”
That twist hit my gut again.
They weren’t talking about the prince’s choice.
They were talking about the bond.
And someone was hiding it.
I didn’t go back to the room. I found the inner courtyard instead—cracked stone, an old fountain, no guards in sight. I needed space. Air.
Instead, I got a visitor.
"You’re not supposed to be here," he says.
Lucien Thorne's just standing there, at the edge of the courtyard, all cloaked in gray, hood pulled down low.
When I finally looked up, his eyes weren’t the gold everyone said they'd be. They were… dull. Tired.
Haunted.
"I didn’t ask to be," I said.
He just looked at me. For a long time.
Then nodded.
“That makes two of us.”
I laughed. Once. “You bring all your brides in under guard?”
He didn’t flinch.
“I didn’t know they were bringing you,” he said. “That wasn’t my decision.”
“So who made it?”
His silence was answer enough.
I looked away, trying to hide the fact that my chest was practically vibrating now. That damned bond pulled harder the closer he got.
But it wasn’t… full. It didn’t click. Didn’t burn.
Just hovered.
A connection was unfinished.
“You feel it,” he said softly.
I froze.
"Don’t you?" he asks.
"I don’t know what I feel."
Lie.
He saw it. I could tell.
"I'm not your mate," he says, voice sharp. "If that's what you're thinking."
“Funny,” I said. “Because my wolf thinks you’re lying.”
We stared at each other.
Something passed between us then, not a bond. Not fate.
Recognition.
Pain.
Like we’d both stepped on the same landmine and were too stubborn to call it what it was.
That night, the bond grew quiet again. Not gone—just buried. I slept with my hand on my blade.
But I didn’t dream.
At least, not until the moon hit my window just before dawn.
That’s when I saw her.
A woman with my eyes and my mother’s face.
She stood in a stone hall drenched in red light, whispering a name I didn’t recognize.
“You were never meant to be chosen.”
I jolted upright.
Outside my door, a shadow moved.
Not Tarris. Not a guard.
Someone with golden eyes.
And this time…
The bond snapped.
Clean. Pure. Painful.
And then—
Gone.
- Writer
