Jarek has transformed his lodge table into an operating theater, spreading his research across the scarred wood with the kind of precision that makes my teeth ache.
Scrolls curl at the edges, pinned under iron weights cold enough to burn when I brush my fingertips too close. The parchment shimmers in the lamplight, covered in angular symbols that seem to writhe like cramped spiders when I look at them from the corner of my eye.
I run my hand across the table’s surface, feeling the grooves worn into the wood by generations of anxious claws—claw marks that catch my skin, mapping the history of every wolf who’s sat here before me, worrying at problems they couldn’t solve.
The lamp light catches Jarek’s ice-blue eyes as he adjusts his glasses, the lenses flashing opaque with reflected flame. Shadows carve hollows beneath his cheekbones, making him look suddenly skull-like, harried.
I can smell his anxiety—a sharp, acidic note cutting through the cedar scent.
"The death-tether exists because Abby bonded all five of us simultaneously," he begins, his clinical voice dissecting the air.
He traces a complex circular diagram with his finger—five points connected by lines that curve back into themselves like a snake eating its own tail.
"Traditional mate bonds create linear pairs. Energy flows two ways, then dissipates into the territory like blood soaking into earth. But our configuration..."
He taps the center of the circle. The parchment makes a hollow thump, like he’s knocking on bone.
"The nexus creates feedback loops. Sympathetic resonance. If one connection severs, the released energy doesn't escape—it cascades through the remaining structure instantaneously."
"Like dominoes in a circle," Theron observes, leaning over the table. "One falls, they all fall."
"Precisely. But with thermal and kinetic energy sufficient to liquefy soft tissue." Jarek pulls out another sheet. "There is no known anchor point, no ritual severance, no grounding mechanism to dissipate the feedback. The architecture is sealed. We survive together, or we cease together. Those are the only variables."
The words land in my chest like stones dropped into deep water. I feel the five bonds contract simultaneously—a synchronicity of dread that makes my ribs ache, as if five hands have reached inside my torso and clenched their fists around my heart.
"So we're simply tethered to the inevitable?" Hrollok mutters from the corner, his green eyes burning like balefire in the dimness. "No escape clause?"
"Affirmative," Jarek replies, meeting his glare without flinching. "Accepting the parameters allows us to focus on stabilization rather than impossible severance."
"Stabilization," Rhett rumbles from his seat by the fire. "You mean waiting."
"I mean ensuring the structure doesn't collapse prematurely," Jarek corrects, but his voice has lost some of its clinical edge.
He looks at me then, really looks, and for a moment I see the terror he's calculating behind those ice-blue eyes.
"If Abby dies violently, the feedback propagates at the speed of nerve conduction. We would have perhaps three seconds between her last heartbeat and ours."
"Christ," Theron breathes. "Three seconds to know we're dying."
The silence that follows tastes of ozone and old fear, metallic on my tongue, heavy enough to press against my eardrums.
The bonds in my chest pulse—five distinct rhythms that have synced to my own, five heartbeats that now feel like anchors dragging me down into deep water.
"Then we protect her," Grogan says, his aristocratic voice cutting through the heavy air.
He stands from his chair, his silver hair luminous in the firelight, and crosses to me. His hand finds my shoulder, heavy and warm.
"We establish protocols. Security details. We treat her survival as the single operational priority of the pack."
"For how long?" I ask, my voice sounding strange in my own ears—hollow, scraped raw.
I look up at him, at all of them, feeling the weight of their eyes.
"I'm human, Grogan. You can't expect me to survive every enemy coming for us. And when I die—"
"When you die, we follow," Rhett says quietly. His dark eyes hold mine with a gentleness that makes my throat close. "That's the math, Abby. That's the bond."
"That's not math," I snap, jerking away from Grogan's touch. The sudden movement makes the fire spit, sending sparks swirling up the chimney. "That's a suicide pact."
"We consented," Theron says softly. He moves around the table, approaching slowly, his hands raised like he's gentling a spooked animal. "Maybe not at the start, but we do now. Every time we touch you, every time we seal the bond—"
"You consented to me," I interrupt, my voice rising, cracking. "Not to your own deaths."
Hrollok laughs—a jagged, broken sound that scrapes against my nerves. "Welcome to our nightmare, little sacrifice."
"Find a way out," I demand, turning on him. My hands are shaking, I realize. My whole body is vibrating with a panic I can't swallow down. "There has to be something. Some ritual, some magic, some fucking loophole in the fine print."
I've raised my voice. The cabin feels too small suddenly, the walls pressing inward, the ceiling lowering.
The bonds in my chest are screaming—feeding back my own panic to me amplified, tinged with their own flavors of fear and resignation and grim acceptance.
"There isn't," Jarek says quietly. He closes his notebook with a snap that makes me flinch. "I've searched the archives back to the First Pact. The death-tether is absolute in circular bond structures. The only variable is time."
"Then we buy time," Grogan insists. He steps toward me again, and I step back, hitting the edge of the table. The iron weights rattle. "Abby, we find a way to protect you—"
"I don't want to be protected," I snarl, the words tearing out of me like barbed wire. "I don't want to be the goddamn singularity that five stars collapse into."
The bonds flare—sharp, metallic, tasting of adrenaline and despair. I feel Hrollok's fury, Theron's desperate hope, Rhett's crushing grief, Jarek's cold resignation, Grogan's weariness.
It's too much. The air is too thick, saturated with pheromones and fear.
I can't breathe.
"I'm not your Alpha," I say, my voice dropping to a whisper that fills the sudden silence. "And I can't sit here and watch you all make peace with being murdered by my fragility."
"Abby—" Grogan reaches for me.
I dodge his hand. My vision is tunneling, the firelight bleeding at the edges, the bonds in my chest pulling taut like ropes trying to hold me in place.
"I need air," I gasp, though the cabin is full of it, thick and heavy and wrong.
I turn and walk away.
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