Chosen by the Alpha Who Destroyed My Pack

Chapter 8 – Touching the Source

By the time dusk slid through the infirmary windows, Sylvi’s nerves felt like stripped wire.

Jorek slept, breath slow. Kalen stared out the window as if he could see Lisse on the other side of the trees. Ilyss had sent most of the staff away, leaving the wing quiet, tense.

Corren stood by the doorway, arms folded, watching her like she was both solution and ticking bomb.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“No,” Sylvi said. “That’s the point.”

On the cot between Jorek and Kalen lay the third patient: a young woman named Mara from a neighboring pack, brought in at midday by shaking relatives. Her bond hadn’t gone silent yet—but it was fading. Sylvi could feel it from across the room: a thin, flickering line, like a candle guttering in wind.

“If I’m ever going to track whoever’s doing this, it’s here,” Sylvi said, voice low. “She’s still connected to her mate. The cut isn’t done. I can follow the damage while it’s fresh.”

“And let the blade follow you back,” Maerin said tightly from the wall. “We don’t know what that thing did to you and Jorek already.”

“I know precisely what it did,” Sylvi snapped. “It marked me. Used me as a conduit. If I stay on the sidelines now, it doesn’t make me safer. It makes me blind.”

Ilyss huffed. “She’s not wrong.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Corren said.

He came closer to the cot, his scent settling like a steadying weight. Sylvi could feel the pack’s eyes on her from every corner, but the room narrowed down to the woman on the bed and the alpha at her shoulder.

Mara’s skin was clammy, lips bloodless. Her fingers twitched, grasping for something only she could feel.

“She keeps saying she can hear him,” Ilyss murmured. “But faint. Like from under water.”

Sylvi sat on the edge of the cot, palms flat on her own thighs. Her hands shook; she made herself still them.

“Everybody clear,” she said. “If I go too deep and it lashes, I don’t want anyone else in the way.”

“I’m not leaving,” Corren said immediately.

“Then don’t touch me,” Sylvi shot back. “If this thing rides my gift again, the last thing I need is your wolf in the circuit.”

Their eyes locked. His jaw flexed.

“Fine,” he said, stepping back half a pace. “But I’m not going farther than that door.”

“Alpha,” Maerin warned.

“I said what I said,” Corren growled softly.

Sylvi dragged in a breath, then another. “Okay, Mara. I’m going to try to feel what’s happening to your bond. You might feel… pressure. Memories. Don’t fight it. Just breathe.”

Mara’s eyes fluttered. “I don’t… want to forget him.”

“You won’t,” Sylvi said, hoping it was true. “Not if I can help it.”

She laid her hand over Mara’s sternum, above where the bond-thread should run deepest.

Pain surged up, sharp and immediate—but not like Jorek’s, not like Kalen’s empty hollow. This was a live wire, fraying, sparks flying.

Sylvi followed it inward.

She saw it: a glowing strand stretching out from Mara’s chest into the dark, frayed at the edges, something black and tar-thick chewing its way along.

“Got you,” she whispered, not sure to whom.

She reached farther, fingers of will sliding along the strand, past Mara’s body, past the edge of the pack’s territory, into the cold between.

There—the rot coalesced into a knot, a slick tangle of foreign magic gnawing at the bond. Up close, it smelled like old smoke and iron.

Sylvi pushed closer, ignoring the way her own nerves screamed. If she could see how it was woven, she could maybe—later—start to unpick it.

“Easy,” Ilyss’s voice came faintly. “Don’t let it pull you.”

Too late.

The knot shivered.

Something on the other end noticed her.

The darkness turned, awareness unfurling like a slow, delighted smile.

Ah, there you are.

The voice wasn’t sound; it was pressure against the raw edges of her gift. Sylvi’s body jolted on the cot. Her fingers spasmed against Mara’s skin.

Corren’s snarl cut through the haze. “Sylvi—”

“Don’t,” she gasped, but her voice was far away.

The foreign magic surged up the strand toward her, cold and hungry. Reflex made her yank back—but the knot lunged, digging ethereal hooks into her, following the path her touch had made.

And beneath that onrushing dark she felt it: recognition.

I remember you.

Pain lanced through her skull. Her own inner bondscape flared into view—her wolf, startled and bristling; ragged scars where old connections used to be; the thin, tentative thread that hummed like Corren at the edge of her awareness—

The darkness arrowed straight for it.

NO.

Sylvi threw herself sideways in that inner space, slamming every shield she had between the invader and that fragile, precious line. The impact ripped a scream out of her, pure instinct.

In the physical world, her body arched. Corren moved despite his promise, his hand closing hard around her wrist.

The second he touched her, everything detonated.

Power roared up from Mara, through Sylvi, into Corren, their three magics smashing together in a blinding, white-hot surge. For a heartbeat, she felt Corren’s wolf slam into hers, teeth bared—not in anger, but in desperate defense.

Between them, something flared—bright, searing, the unmistakable snap of a bond trying to form.

And in the same instant, the foreign presence lunged again, straight at that new, blazing line.

Found you, the voice purred.

The world went white.