claimed by the demon king

Chapter 3

ANYA'S POV

The thunder hit so hard the candles went sideways.

Half the council was already on their feet before they understood why. Someone's chair scraped back and fell. Nobody picked it up.

Anya was already at the window. The ocean below the cliffs was moving in the old patterns. Not the maintenance patterns the festival ritual produced every year. The other ones. The ones the founding records described and nobody alive had ever seen.

The breaking patterns.

She turned back to the room.

"The binding is gone," she said. "He is out."

Silence. The kind that follows something that cannot be taken back.

Then everyone started talking at once.

"The ritual was performed three weeks ago it should not have..."

"If he surfaces without the mate present he will be...."

"Eighty three years and it breaks tonight of all nights..."

"We are not ready we were never actually..."

"WILL EVERYONE STOP."

Nerida's voice cut through the room and the noise dropped instantly. Still seated. Spine straight. Both hands flat on the table. She looked at Anya. "The pendant. Tell me exactly what it did and when."

Anya set the pendant on the table.

It was dark now. Cold. It had burned blue for the first time yesterday and had gone completely inert the moment the binding broke, like whatever signal it had been sending had resolved itself without waiting for them to act on it.

Three generations of her bloodline had carried this pendant. Her grandmother for forty years. Her mother for thirty. Anya for thirteen.

Yesterday was the first time it had done anything at all.

"It activated yesterday morning," she said. "Warm first, then stronger through the afternoon. It flared hard once I was moving through the festival crowd when it happened. Within seconds it settled back." She paused. "And tonight it went dark entirely the moment the binding broke."

The room sat with that.

"So the mate is somewhere in this town," Kael said.

"Somewhere in this town or close enough that the pendant registered," Anya said. "That is all I know."

"Then why has the pendant never reacted before," Elowen said. "Eighty three years. Three generations of your bloodline carrying it through this festival every single year. Why now."

Nobody answered immediately.

"The binding was degrading," Theron said. "We have known for a decade it was weakening faster than the ritual could compensate. It is possible the bond only becomes detectable when he is close enough to the surface. That the pendant could not register what the binding was suppressing." He looked at Anya. "Now that it has reacted we know she exists. We know she is nearby. We know nothing else."

"We know she is somewhere in a town full of festival visitors and residents and we have no description and no name," Nerida said flatly. "She could be anyone. A resident who has simply come of age. A visitor passing through. Someone who has lived here for decades and never triggered it before because the binding was too strong." She looked around the table. "We have nothing to narrow it."

Silence.

"It is not as though she is walking around with I AM THE LYCAN KING'S MATE written on her forehead," Anya said.

The room did not find this funny. Which was fair because it wasn't.

The doors opened. The junior delegate who had been sent to the ocean floor stood in the doorway. Her face had a color to it that faces were not supposed to have. She crossed the room without speaking and placed a fragment on the table in front of Anya.

A piece of chain. Old. The symbols along its surface cracked and completely dark.

Broken.

"There is nothing down there," the delegate said quietly. "The chains are on the ocean floor in pieces."

Nobody spoke for three full seconds.

"He is already out," Kael said. "He is already moving."

"Find her." Anya said it at normal volume. "Tonight. Every person we have in this town. Every contact. Every faction representative who owes this council anything." She looked at each of them. "We find her before he does. Because if he reaches her first we lose the only position we have."

She did not say what happened if they failed.

Everyone in that room already understood.

Outside the storm had no intention of stopping.

RHEA'S POV

The lodge lights were still on when I hit the path. My lungs were wrong. My legs were doing something automatic and separate from me and I let them because stopping was not an option.

I hit Yara's door without knocking.

She screamed and launched off the bed. "What the—"

"We need to leave," I said, already moving toward her wardrobe. "Right now. Tonight."

"Rhea..."

"He is coming." I pulled the wardrobe open and started moving clothes onto the bed. "He was on the beach. He talked to me. He said he is coming back and I believe him and we need to go before he does."

Yara went still. She looked at me the way she does when she's deciding whether something is a crisis or a breakdown. I kept packing.

"Riri." She crossed the room and put both hands on my shoulders. "Stop."

I stopped. Not because I wanted to. Because she was looking at me like that and it still worked even now.

"Tell me exactly what happened," she said. "From the beginning."

"There is no time..."

"Make time. Three sentences. Go."

I stared at her. "I went swimming. Something pulled me under. When I came back up he was standing on the beach and he told me he was coming for me." I pulled out of her hands and went back to the clothes. "Three sentences. Now we go."

"Who is he."

"The lycan king." I said it fast and kept moving. "The one on the statue. The one the whole festival is about. He is out and he knows who I am and claims I am is mate."

The silence behind me had a particular quality.

"Yara I am not joking..."

"I know," she said quietly. "I can see that."

The door opened. Lucas stood there in yesterday's clothes, squinting. "I could hear you from my room. What's happening."

"Get your things," I said. "We are leaving."

"It's midnight."

"I am aware..."

Three knocks at the front door. Slow and deliberate.

All of us went still.

I felt the blood leave my face. "I told you." My voice came out barely above a whisper. "I told both of you."

Lucas moved toward the door. I grabbed his arm.

"Don't."

"Rhea..."

"Please." The word came out stripped of everything. Just the actual fear underneath. "Please don't open it."

He looked at me for a long second. Then at the door.

"I'll handle it," Yara said, already moving.

"Yara..." I dropped Lucas and went after her. She was closer. She was already at the doorknob. I grabbed her arm with both hands and she was stronger than me and she knew it and she still stopped when she felt how hard I was shaking.

She turned around.

"Riri."

"He said he would come back." My voice was breaking and I hated it. "He said it like it was already decided and I believe him and I cannot let you open that door."

The knocking continued. Patient. Unhurried. The same patience from the beach.

Lucas came up behind me. "Hey." He turned me around and put both hands on my face, thumbs below my cheekbones the way he always does when he needs me to look at him. "Look at me. I'm going to open the door. If anything feels wrong I will slam it shut and we run. Okay?"

"You don't understand what he is..."

"Rhea." His eyes steady on mine. "Trust me."

I did trust him. That was the problem.

Yara opened the door.

I didn't decide to scream. It came out of me before I knew it was happening, tearing up from somewhere below my ribs, and something came with it. Something that had been sitting in my chest since the ocean dragged me under. Since the bracelet burned my palm. Since I'd stood on a balcony two nights ago watching water move in patterns I shouldn't have recognized.

It came out all at once and I had no say in any of it.

The lamp shattered. The mirror exploded outward. The door tore off its hinges and spun into the dark outside. Lucas went down hard beside me. Yara hit the wall near the entrance and slid slowly to the floor.

Silence.

I stood in the middle of it with my hands out in front of me. My ears were ringing. My legs were barely working. I looked at my own palms and they looked exactly like my palms and I had no explanation for any of it.

"Lucas." My voice came out wrong. Thin. "Yara."

"Still alive." Lucas pushed himself up from the floor, looked around the room, looked at me. "Did you do that."

"I don't know." My hands were shaking. "I don't know what that was I swear I don't."

Yara sat up near the entrance. Pressed her hand to the back of her head. Looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before. Not afraid exactly. Something quieter than afraid.

"It sure was you, darling."

The voice came from outside. Calm. Almost conversational.

A woman stepped through where the door used to be. Older. Composed. Dressed like someone who had not dressed for a midnight emergency like she had known exactly what she would find and had dressed accordingly. She looked at the shattered lamp. The mirror in pieces across the floor. The door lying in the garden.

She took her time with all of it.

Then she looked at me.

"Impressive," she said softly. "Very impressive."