MOON OATH: THE CHOSEN MATE

Ten months ago

The girl on the bridge was screaming.

Not words. Just sound. Raw and animal and wrong coming from a human throat. Her hands clawed at her chest, tearing through the thin ceremonial dress until blood ran down her ribs in dark rivulets.

"Hold her down." Lycian's voice was steady despite the horror unfolding before him. "Sera, now."

The healer rushed forward with two other pack members. They grabbed the girl's arms. She fought them with strength that shouldn't have been possible. Threw off a full-grown male wolf like he weighed nothing. Her eyes rolled back until only whites showed.

"The transformation is rejecting." Sera's hands glowed with violet light as she tried to channel healing magic into the convulsing body. "Her immune system is attacking the bond. Treating it like a disease."

"Can you stop it?"

"I don't know. I've never seen this before. The mark is spreading too fast. It's supposed to take days. This is happening in minutes."

Lycian watched the silver lines race across the girl's skin like living things. Beautiful and terrible. They covered her arms, her throat, crawled across her face until she looked more marked than human.

Her name was Maya. Twenty-four years old. A teacher from the human city three hours away. She'd been terrified when the mark appeared. Fought the bond for two weeks before Lycian convinced her to come to the kingdom. Promised her she'd be safe. Promised her the transformation wouldn't hurt.

He'd lied.

"Please." Maya's voice came out broken. "Make it stop. Please make it stop."

"We're trying." But Sera's magic wasn't working. The mark kept spreading. Consuming.

"Lycian." Kael appeared at his shoulder. "The pack is watching. They need to see you in control."

He looked up. Three hundred wolves ringed the ceremonial grounds. All watching. All waiting to see if their Alpha King could keep his third mate alive long enough to complete the bond.

The first two had died during their ceremonies. Heart failure. Organ collapse. Both ruled as natural consequences of human bodies trying to contain wolf power.

But Lycian knew better. Knew someone was sabotaging the bonds. Knew someone wanted him to fail. He just couldn't prove it.

Maya screamed again. This time the sound cut off abruptly. Her body went rigid. Then she collapsed, boneless, onto the stone ground.

Silence fell. Heavy. Suffocating.

"Sera?"

The healer pressed her fingers to Maya's throat. Waited. Her expression went carefully blank.

"She's alive. Barely. But Lycian, her mind—" Sera's voice dropped. "I can feel it through the healing magic. Her consciousness is fragmenting. The transformation is happening too fast for her brain to process. If we don't slow it down, she'll be alive but gone. Trapped in a body that's become something she can't understand."

"Then slow it down."

"I can't. The mark won't let me. It's like the bond is trying to complete itself by force." She looked up at him with violet eyes full of sorrow. "Someone tampered with the ceremony.