The first lie I told tonight was my name.
They called me Lira Voss at the gate—some forgotten noble from a dead coven. The second lie was my smile, polite and empty as I stepped into the Gilded Athenaeum. The third? My silence. I hadn’t sung in ten years. Not since they burned my mother alive for the crime of existing. Not since he dragged me from the Iron Grove, my voice shredded, my rebellion crushed beneath his boot.
Kaelen D’Vaal.
I didn’t need to see him to know he was here. The air changed. Thickened. Charged, like the moment before lightning splits the sky. My skin prickled, my pulse a wild thing against my ribs. I kept my head high, my spine straight, my breath steady. Ten years of hiding. Ten years of training. All to walk into this den of vipers and dismantle it from within.
The Truce Gala glittered like a poisoned jewel. Chandeliers of frozen starlight dripped from the vaulted ceiling, casting fractured light over silk and fang. Fae in gowns spun from moonlight glided past vampires draped in blood-red velvet. Witches murmured in corners, their sigils pulsing beneath lace gloves. Werewolves stood like sentinels, muscles coiled, eyes sharp. The Supernatural Council had gathered to celebrate peace. A farce. I was here to remind them that peace built on lies doesn’t last.
I adjusted the thorned rose crown in my hair—real thorns, tipped with silver. A warning. A promise.
Then I saw him.
Across the ballroom, beneath a cascade of black crystal, Kaelen stood like a storm given flesh. Broad-shouldered, clad in a tailored coat the color of midnight, his presence carved a void in the crowd. No one touched him. No one dared. His golden wolf eyes—inhuman, ancient—locked onto mine.
And the world ripped open.
A shockwave of magic slammed through my chest, so violent I staggered. My knees buckled. My vision whited out. I tasted copper—blood from my bitten tongue. Around me, the music stuttered. Glasses cracked. A chandelier trembled.
He didn’t move. But I felt him. In my bones. In my blood. In the hollow of my throat where my voice had been buried.
The bond.
It had been severed. Buried. Denied. We’d both fought it—me with silence, him with exile. But it wasn’t dead. It was waiting. And now, after ten years, it roared back to life like a starving beast.
“You,” he said. The word was a growl, low and lethal, cutting through the sudden hush. He crossed the floor in three strides, the crowd parting like water. Up close, he was even more dangerous. Heat radiated from him, primal and raw. His scent—pine and storm and something wild—flooded my senses. My body remembered him. Traitor.
“Me,” I said, lifting my chin. My voice was a weapon. I kept it soft, controlled. “Surprised to see me, Alpha?”
His jaw clenched. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Neither are a lot of things.” I glanced at the vampire noble sipping blood from a crystal goblet. “Like honesty.”
He stepped closer. Too close. My breath hitched. The bond flared—a hot, electric pull between us, like a tether made of fire. I could feel his heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Predatory.
“You’re wearing a lie,” he said, eyes on my rose crown. “That thorned silver. It’s a Siren-Witch sigil. You’re not Lira Voss.”
“And you’re not supposed to feel me,” I shot back. “So why is your pulse racing, Kaelen?”
He didn’t answer. Because he couldn’t. The bond didn’t care about denials. It knew us. It wanted us.
Then the floor trembled.
A deep, resonant chime echoed through the hall, like a bell forged in blood. The Council elders rose, their faces grim. At the center of the room, a circle of runes ignited—ancient, pulsing with crimson light. The Bloodmark Oath. I’d read about it in forbidden texts. A failsafe from the First Accord: if two fated mates of opposing factions entered the same sacred space, the oath would bind them to prevent war.
And we were standing in the center of it.
“By the Accord,” intoned Elder Mareth, a vampire with eyes like frozen rubies, “the Bloodmark Oath is invoked. Kaelen D’Vaal, Alpha of the Northern Packs, and Symphony—”
My real name. He’d said my real name. Panic clawed up my throat.
“—you are bound by ancient law. For thirty days, you must remain within ten feet of one another. Should you separate beyond that distance, you will suffer agonizing death. This is not a request. This is fate.”
The crowd erupted. Gasps. Whispers. A few cruel laughs.
Fated mates.
The words were a joke. A curse. We weren’t mates. We were enemies. I’d tried to burn down their world. He’d stopped me. He’d won.
“This is a mistake,” I said, backing away. “I’m not—”
Pain lanced through my chest. I cried out, clutching my ribs. My vision blurred. The bond—no, the curse—was already enforcing itself. I took another step. The pain doubled. I fell to one knee.
Kaelen didn’t move. But I saw it—the flicker in his eyes. The same agony. He was feeling it too.
“Ten feet,” he said, voice rough. “Or we die.”
I looked up at him, hatred and helplessness warring in my chest. “You’re enjoying this.”
“No,” he said, offering a hand I didn’t take. “I’m remembering what a pain in the ass you are.”
He hauled me up anyway, his grip unyielding. The moment our skin touched, the bond flared. A jolt of heat shot up my arm, straight to my core. My breath caught. His did too. His golden eyes darkened, pupils dilating. For a heartbeat, something raw passed between us—something that wasn’t hate.
Then he dropped my hand like I’d burned him.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
“You don’t get to make the rules anymore,” he said, stepping close again. Our arms brushed. The pain eased. The bond purred, satisfied. “You’re not here to dance, Symphony.”
“No,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I’m here to burn it all down.”
“And I’m here,” he said, voice low, dangerous, “to make sure you don’t.”
The crowd watched. The elders watched. Somewhere, Queen Lysara watched. I could feel her gaze like a blade between my shoulders.
But all I saw was him.
Kaelen D’Vaal. My jailer. My curse. The man who’d broken me once.
And now, for thirty days, I was chained to him.
I straightened, smoothing my gown. “Then you’d better keep up, Alpha.”
He didn’t smile. But something in his eyes—something that looked almost like approval—made my stomach twist.
We were forced to stand side by side during the Council’s address. Ten feet. That was all the curse allowed. I could feel the heat of him, the rhythm of his breath. When he shifted, his arm brushed mine, and the bond sent a pulse of warmth through my veins. It was maddening. Intimate. Wrong.
“You’ve gotten better at lying,” he murmured, not looking at me.
“You’ve gotten worse at hiding your temper,” I shot back. “Still flinch when someone mentions the Iron Grove?”
His hand clenched at his side. “You started a war.”
“I started a reckoning,” I said. “My mother didn’t betray the Court. She was framed. And you—you helped them do it.”
“I followed orders.”
“And that makes it right?”
“It makes it necessary.”
I laughed, low and bitter. “You always did love your precious order. Even when it’s built on blood.”
He finally looked at me. “And you love chaos. Even when it gets people killed.”
“Better dead than complicit.”
He studied me, his gaze tracing the line of my jaw, the pulse in my throat. “You’re different.”
“So are you,” I said. “Less hair. More arrogance.”
A ghost of a smirk. Gone in a breath. “You’re still reckless.”
“And you’re still controlling.”
“Someone has to be.”
The tension between us wasn’t just hatred. It was something hotter. Sharper. A current that sparked every time we neared. The bond fed on it. Thrived on it.
During a lull in the speeches, a vampire noble—Lyra Vex, I’d later learn—approached Kaelen with a glass of dark wine. She was beautiful in a venomous way, all sharp angles and crimson lips. She touched his arm, her nails painted black.
“Kaelen,” she purred. “I didn’t know you had a date.”
“She’s not my date,” he said, pulling his arm away. “She’s my prisoner.”
My laugh was sharp. “Try ‘captive audience.’”
Lyra’s eyes narrowed. “Charming. And what’s your name, little witch?”
“The one he won’t say,” I said, smiling sweetly. “Must be embarrassing.”
Kaelen exhaled through his nose. “Don’t start.”
“Or what?” I turned to him. “You’ll drag me out again? I’d like to see you try.”
He stepped into my space, his body a wall between me and Lyra. “Don’t test me, Symphony.”
My heart hammered. Not from fear. From something worse. Want.
“Or you’ll do what?” I whispered. “Mark me? Too late. The bond already did.”
His eyes dropped to my neck. So did mine. And there it was—a faint, glowing mark, like a brand of intertwined thorns and fangs. The bond mark. Visible. Public.
The room stilled.
Lyra’s smile turned icy. “How… interesting.”
Kaelen didn’t deny it. Didn’t explain. Just stood there, a silent declaration: she is mine.
I wanted to spit in his face. I wanted to claw that look from his eyes.
Instead, I lifted my chin and met the stares around us. Let them see. Let them whisper.
I wasn’t his. Not now. Not ever.
But the bond said otherwise. And for thirty days, I had to pretend.
When the gala ended, we were escorted—escorted—to the Obsidian Court, Kaelen’s fortress in the Scottish Highlands. No car. No driver. Just a teleportation circle that burned with wolf sigils. He took my hand to stabilize the jump.
The moment we landed in his private chambers, I yanked my hand back.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
“You’ll die if I don’t,” he said, shrugging off his coat. “Get used to it.”
The room was vast—stone walls, a roaring hearth, a bed that looked like it belonged in a warlord’s den. No warmth. No softness. Just power.
“Where am I sleeping?” I asked.
He gestured to a door. “There’s a guest room.”
I moved toward it.
Pain. White-hot. I gasped, clutching my chest. The bond—enforcing the ten-foot rule. I was too far.
Kaelen didn’t move. “The curse doesn’t care about walls.”
I glared at him. “Then where the hell am I supposed to sleep?”
He looked at the massive bed. Then at me. “With me.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Then you’ll die,” he said, stripping off his shirt. “Your choice.”
I stood there, trembling with rage. With something else. Something I refused to name.
He was right. The bond would kill me if I tried to leave.
But I wasn’t going to make this easy for him.
I walked to the bed, yanked back the covers, and lay down—on the very edge, as far from him as the curse would allow.
He watched me for a long moment. Then he lay down too, his body a furnace beside mine.
Neither of us spoke.
But in the dark, I could feel him. The rise and fall of his chest. The heat of his skin. The unspoken war between us, raging silent and fierce.
And the bond—pulsing, alive, waiting.
I closed my eyes.
I had come here to burn it all down.
But the fire inside me? It wasn’t just for revenge anymore.
It was for him.