My Mate, My Executioner

2. Blood and celestial link

Arya pressed her forehead against the freezing glass of the balcony.

Behind her, the warded hallway stretched silently into the dark. It was lined with heavy iron doors that only opened for the Cult Alphas. For twenty-three years, her entire world had been purified air, sterile white walls, and shamans constantly measuring the weakness in her blood.

She touched her chest. Her heartbeat felt thin, fluttering like a bird trapped inside a glass box.

It had always been this way. The Cult shamans told her that her heart was hollow. They swore that if she ever breathed the raw, unfiltered air of the

outside world, her lungs would collapse within minutes. She believed them,because she had no reason not to.

"Just five minutes, Caspian," her voice came out smaller than she wanted.

Behind her, Caspian shifted nervously. He was an Omega wolf bound to the Cult’s service, one of the guards rotated to watch her door. He was also the only one who ever spoke to her with genuine kindness. She had spent weeks begging him to let her feel the real wind just for a few seconds. Tonight, he had finally caved.

The torches along the wall flickered across his sweating face.

"The High Shamans will have my head if they find us out here," Caspian whispered. His neck was stiff, his eyes darting frantically across the courtyard. He jumped at the slight rustle of the wind.

Arya did not answer. She pushed open the glass door, stepped down the staircase, and walked out onto the open grass.

The cold hit her first.

It wasn’t the clean, fake, magical cold of her warded room. This was sharp.

Real. She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly, bracing herself, waiting for her lungs to seize just as the shamans had warned.But nothing happened.

She took another, deeper breath. Her chest didn’t hurt. Her throat didn’t close.

For the first time in her life, she felt entirely, wonderfully alive.

She looked out at the dark valley ahead, dotted with the distant fires of the Cult's perimeter guards. They were completely oblivious to the fact that the prized prisoner was standing outside her cage.

"They told me the outside would kill me," she said softly. "They said my heart was hollow. That the air was poison."

Caspian kept his back pressed against the shadows of the wall, his hands twitching at his sides.

"The High Shamans do what they must to keep you safe," he replied, his voice strained.

"I don’t feel safe, Caspian." She turned back to look at him, a sad tightness gripping her chest. "I feel like a secret. Why do a hundred elite Alphas guard a girl who faints if she walks too fast?"

Caspian opened his mouth, then closed it. She saw the war in his eyes—duty fighting against the quiet kindness that had made him bring her out here tonight.

"Just look at the stars, Arya," he finally whispered. "We are already out here.

Maybe that will make you feel better."

Arya looked up. She wondered if anyone else in the kingdom was staring at the exact same stars.

Because she was looking up, she did not see the shadow detach itself from the wall behind Caspian. No one did.

Draven did not drop from the sky. He did not crash through the fence. He stepped out of the pure darkness at the edge of the tree line as if the night itself had spit him out. One moment, there was nothing. The next, a massive, brooding warrior materialized from the shadows. His clothes were darker than coal. His dead, empty eyes locked entirely onto the girl.

Caspian never stood a chance.

Draven moved with terrifying, silent precision. His jaw elongated. Razor-sharp Alpha fangs tore into Caspian’s throat, ripping it out in a single, brutal motion before the guard could even draw a breath to scream.

Caspian’s head separated from his body. It hit the grass with a heavy, sickening thud.

Arya went pale. Before the scream could even reach her lips, Draven crossed the distance in a blur of black smoke and clamped his heavy, calloused hand over her mouth.

Caspian lay dead at her feet, his face frozen in permanent shock.

She looked up at the executioner standing over her. He was a nightmare of muscle, his sharp features looking like they had been carved. But his eyes were what terrified her most. They were a void. No hate. No anger. Just cold and lethal

"Twenty-three years," Draven whispered, his voice a low, gravelly vibration.

"You’ve been a problem, Little Vessel. Time to close the book."

Arya’s legs gave out. She stumbled backward onto the cold grass, her hands shaking violently. "I’m nobody! I’m just sick. Please, don’t hurt me."

"Sick," Draven muttered, a humorless breath escaping his lips. "You’re a plague to my pack. And tonight, I’m the cure."

He lunged. His jaw unhinged, his lethal fangs extending to tear her throat out.

The tip of his fang grazed the delicate skin of her neck, drawing a single, tiny drop of blood.

CRACK.

The sound snapped like dynamite exploding inside Draven’s skull. Two blinding, white light erupted from their skin.

Links of glowing celestial energy violently materialized out of thin air. A chain whipped wildly, burning with a cosmic fire, and it wind tightly around Draven’s wrist. The other also snapped directly onto Arya’s.

The Spectral Moon-Chain.

An unyielding wave of agony slammed into Draven. His vision went gray. Deep within his spirit, his inner wolf shrieked in sudden,paralyzing terror.

Inside his mouth, a brutal cracking sensation tore through his jaw. He gagged, choking on his own blood as his long, lethal wolf fangs splintered at the root.

They shattered out of his mouth, hitting the ground like broken glass.

His mind fractured. For a second, a memory snapped into his brain: A beautiful girl. Long silver hair blowing in the wind under a full moon at the top of a mountain.

Then the image vanished, leaving his mind empty, confused, and furious.

Draven dropped heavily to his knees. He gasped for air, clutching his shackled wrist as the celestial energy burned deep into his shadow spirit. Defanged and bleeding from the lips, he tried to force a shift.

His wolf refused.

Trembling, Draven dragged his hand to his belt and pulled free his steel combat knife—the only weapon he had left.

"What did you do to me?" he roared, his face twisted in pain and rage.

Arya stared at him, utterly terrified. The lethal assassin who had just decapitated Caspian was on his knees, bleeding, trembling, and bound to their wrist by a glowing rope of light.

And then, a sudden heat flared in her own veins.

It was the sickness the shamans had spent decades suppressing, but it roared to life like a wildfire reacting to the void inside Draven. The energy expanded in her chest, threatening to tear her body apart.

Her body didn’t choose to move; it was drawn to him by an invisible magnetism.

Arya stumbled forward, her feet slipping in Caspian’s spilled blood.

Panicking, she tried to pull away. In her struggle, her fingers accidentally slapped against the burning, glowing links of the chain on Draven's wrist.

She gasped, expecting the light to scorch her skin.

It didn’t burn.

The instant her skin made contact, both chains connected and the agonizing spirit-burn torturing Draven’s wolf vanished. It was like plugging a gaping leak with a cork. The geometric shackle fell perfectly silent, the links ceasing their aggressive, spinning rotation.

Draven gasped, breaking the surface like a drowning man, sucking freezing air into his lungs.

He stared up at her. Arya stared back, her chest heaving, her cheeks wet with tears. She had absolutely no idea why the lethal monster who had just tried to kill her had suddenly stopped trembling the moment she touched him.

Ahoooooooooo!

A loud, echoing warning howl ripped through the night, bouncing off the courtyard walls. A second wolf answered. Then a third.

The guards had detected the sudden explosion of Arya’s cosmic power. Shouting erupted from the high towers, followed immediately by the terrifying clash of armored boots rushing toward the field.