The crystal was humming.
Grimm was pressed so hard against Soren’s leg that her claws were digging into his boot through the leather.
The resonance field from the First Shadow’s crystal was doing things to everyone’s bonds.
Troy’s knight flickered twice, then three tis, and Troy grabbed his sword hilt with both hands and planted his feet because the knight had never done that before.
Selah’s fusion crackled.
Ice ford across her forearms in random bursts, breaking and reforming without pattern, and her breath was coming in short pulls.
Then Maren lost it.
The fire ca from everywhere at once.
Her temperature spiked so fast that Soren felt the heat on his face from ten feet away.
Her eyes went full gold, both irises, the color flooding out until there was nothing human left in them.
Two copper fox ears punched through her hair above her temples.
A tail of white-gold fla ignited behind her and whipped once and the air around it warped.
Troy drew.
The sword ca out clean and the knight’s light blazed white while Troy stepped between Maren and the rest of the group with the blade level.
"What is she?" Troy asked.
Soren moved before he thought about it.
He put himself between Troy’s sword and Maren’s burning body and the heat on his back was bad but the sword in front of his face was worse.
"She’s with ."
"She’s a beast, Kane. An untad, unregistered, feral beast in humanoid form. That’s a Class-S violation."
"She’s also the only fire-type in this room and that crystal is shadow-aligned. Put the sword down."
Troy’s eyes moved from Soren to Maren and back.
Maren was on her knees behind Soren.
The fox ears were twitching, the tail was wrapped around her own body and her hands were on the stone floor.
The human mask she’d held for six weeks was breaking apart and Soren could feel the resonance from the crystal pulling at whatever was inside her, drawing the beast out.
[DING! — Ember Kitsune exposed. Taming resonance at maximum. Primordial Heart attempting forced bond initiation. Tar consent required.]
Soren turned around and crouched in front of her.
Her hands were on fire.
Fla eating across her knuckles and climbing her wrists.
He grabbed them anyway.
The pain was imdiate and his palms were burning.
"Look at ," Soren said.
Her gold eyes found his. The beast was in them, the six weeks of hunger and loneliness and pretending.
"What were you?" he said.
"Hungry." Her voice broke. "I was just hungry. That’s all beasts are when they don’t have a tar."
"Do you want one?"
"You’re asking the fox if she wants a leash?"
"I’m asking the girl if she wants a family."
Her hands went still in his.
The fire didn’t go out but it stopped spreading and the gold in her eyes flickered once and ca back.
She stared at him and her mouth moved and nothing ca out, then she nodded.
[DING! — BOND ESTABLISHED. Ember Kitsune (Humanoid-Dominant): Maren Cole. Bond type: PRIMORDIAL TAR. Obsession Index initialized: Maren Cole 1/50.]
[DING! — Soul integrity: 66%. New bond established. Spiritual Friction aggregate rising.]
The fire in her hands cooled.
Her ears stayed.
She looked at her own hands in his and her fingers curled around his palms where the burns were already blistering.
"Shit..." she whispered. "Your hands."
"I’ve had worse."
"You literally have not."
Behind them Troy lowered his sword slowly. He didn’t sheath it.
Selah was watching from the edge of the chamber with her arms crossed and frost climbing up to her elbows and her expression was the kind of flat that ant she was having feelings she was going to process later, loudly, in the privacy of their room.
[DING! — Obsession Index: Selah 25/50 → 26/50.]
◆◆◆◆
The crystal cracked.
The First Shadow’s eye opened.
One eye, massive, filling the upper third of the crystal formation, and it was not an eye the way human eyes were.
It was a void shaped into the suggestion of seeing.
It looked at Grimm.
Then at Soren.
Then it reached through the crystal with sothing that wasn’t a hand and grabbed at the bond between them and PULLED.
Grimm scread.
The First Shadow was trying to reclaim her.
To pull Yara back to what she was before she chose a tar.
Troy’s knight fired blasts of white light that passed through the Shadow’s reaching arm and did nothing.
Selah threw ice.
It shattered against the crystal.
Maren flared gold and the fire hit the crystal surface and got eaten.
Nothing worked.
Then Yara manifested.
She stepped out of that shadow in full humanoid form, white hair, wolf ears, red eyes, and she was bigger than she’d been in the dorm room.
The shadows on the floor bent toward her and stayed.
She faced the crystal.
"I left you," she said.
"I left because you taught to devour and I wanted to protect."
The First Shadow’s eye tracked her.
Yara turned to Soren.
"Bond fully. Not in thirty days. Now."
Soren’s blood went cold. "My soul is at sixty-six percent. A full bond will drop below fifty."
"I know."
"Joan’s monitoring seal triggers at fifty. The Bureau gets everything."
"I know."
"If I bond you and survive, I lose the one thing keeping the Bureau off us."
"If you don’t bond with , she takes back." Yara’s voice dropped. "And I will spend eternity inside that crystal screaming your na."
The First Shadow reached again.
Maren’s fire was dying.
Selah’s ice was cracking.
Troy was shouting sothing about falling back.
Soren looked at Yara.
She looked back. "Choose, master."
He could hear his own heartbeat. "I choose you," he said.
[DING! — FULL BOND INITIATED: Yara Hale, Shadow Goddess of the Veil, Mythic Tier-6.]
[DING! — Soul integrity dropping... 60%... 55%... 52%...]
Soren’s vision went white, then dark and then sothing else entirely.
The last thing he saw was Yara walking toward the crystal with her hands open and every shadow in the sublevel following her.
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