One week ago, my team and I had found a group of woodland creatures at our borders. Their ritual had interfered with the sacred power of Shift Day. We’d given most of them the gift of a worthy end, but their leader, Syagros, had fled with the few remaining survivors. Apparently, he had made his way here. “If there were side effects from the disturbed ritual, it could explain the massacre.”
“It’s one of the few things that would make sense,” Aion said as he knelt next to a dead dryad. “Woodland creatures aren’t known for turning on their own.”
The explanation didn’t entirely satisfy me. There was something else here, something that went beyond the traces of a ritual gone awry. My claws vibrated with an awareness I’d never experienced before. I needed to keep looking. But… For what?
I didn’t particularly care about Syagros or his fate, but my feet carried me toward him, anyway. The grass sizzled and turned to ash under my paws. Why was I doing this? I should be finishing the harvesting instead of lingering over one dead satyr. Why was this important?
I only needed to take a couple of steps forward to find my answer. A unique scent hit my nostrils, clean and kind, despite all the violence around it. Like home, tingling mist, andasphodels in fresh bloom. Alive, and holding the unmistakable resonance of death energy.
I found her pinned underneath Syagros’s corpse. The beautiful, golden-haired human who had drawn me here. There was so much blood, on her, around her, everywhere I could see. But even with her unconscious and dying, something in my chest recognized her.
What I felt was not just desire, though that crashed through me with so much force I could barely breathe. This was deeper, a pull as unavoidable and undeniable as Thanatos himself. This broken, dying human was meant to be mine.
Every monster in Asphodelia was woven from death by the Moirae’s hands. Within our weave, there lay a secret. Our ability to bond. It was only a possibility, a hope and a dream. We could only bond with humans, and only when they were death-touched. I’d never given the possibility much thought, not for myself.
And yet, here she was. My soul bonded. My mate. The one my weave responded to.
I shoved Syagros aside and reached for her. The moment I touched her skin, every protective instinct inside me awoke.Keep her safe,my beast roared, and I intended to do just that. When my team approached, I had to resist the urge to snarl at them.
“What a valuable find,” Phonos hummed under his breath, assessing her with a predator’s keen eyes. “A death-touched woman, and one of great worth.”
On some level, I knew he wasn’t wrong. Such women were priceless for Asphodelia. But the way he said it, the way he phrased it… It made every muscle in my body go taut.
Skaros read the tension in my posture immediately. “Theron found her. She’s his responsibility.”
“We’re here together,” Phonos protested. “As a team.”
Normally, I might have laughed. He’d never been happy with joining us on our harvests. Compared to a Keres, all of us were inferior weaves.
But I didn’t have time for Phonos and his arrogance. My mate was injured, and she needed my full attention. Everything else could wait.
Ignoring Phonos and the others, I placed my hands over her wounds. Hellfire existed to burn, and that was what it demanded. But as a hellhound, as a Cerberus aligned to the past, I could twist my skills into something else.
Amber light flowed from my palms, wrapping her injuries in a fiery stasis field. The bleeding stopped immediately. Her shallow breathing steadied, but she didn’t open her eyes. This wasn’t enough. “Hold on,” I begged her. “Don’t you dare leave me now.”
Not when I’d just found her. Not when every fiber of my being was screaming that she belonged with me.
Skaros frowned, his leathery wings twitching at the sight of my struggle. “Your hellfire’s flickering, Theron.”
“Something beyond the physical is threatening her,” Aion said, his voice tight with tension.
Out of all of us, Aion was probably the best at sensing that. He’d been crafted with a unique attunement to death energy, a bronze colossus meant to both contain and use our power source. But even he could not help me now.
“What are you going to do?” he asked me.
There was only one option. One last thing I could attempt. A selfish act, perhaps, because such a perfect creature surely belonged to Thanatos himself. But I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t let her go.
I’d never attempted what I was considering. My abilities let me read memories from the dead, catch glimpses of their final thoughts. But diving into a living person’s mind - even one barely clinging to existence - could destroy me. My soul could wither away into nothing, and even the Moirae wouldn’t be able to drag it back.
The pull toward her made the choice easy. If she died, my existence became irrelevant. The resonance between us guaranteed it.
Following the threads of her lost consciousness, I allowed my mind to travel beyond the stasis field. The clearing faded around me, replaced by something infinitely more dangerous. Her memories of the massacre.
“Barren witch!” someone screamed at her, and I felt and heard it all.
Suddenly I was experiencing her trial, feeling her emotions carved into my bones. The rope cutting into her wrists. The burning shame of her secret laid bare, sterility that marked her as worthless to her people. Her supposed curse, which had damned other women in her village, just because they wore the dresses she’d woven.
Callista. That was her name. A woman who’d hidden her dark secret for years, and had given it up to save others. To save Syagros, of all people, after the clash between us and his forces.
