He had been holding him for a very long time now, since the office, since Lilith had been in that room and her scent had been everywhere. Zev had gone from pressing to something much more immediate, and Lucian had spent the entire time since then using every resource he had to keep the distance between what Zev wanted and what was going to happen.
But It was getting harder.
That was the honest truth of it, and Lucian had stopped pretending otherwise somewhere around the time Finn put the second set of chains on his wrists.
The moon was almost fully risen.
He could feel it.
Not the way he felt warmth or cold, those were ordinary sensations that arrived from outside and registered in the skin. This was different. This was something arriving from inside and pushing outward. Like something in his blood had been waiting all month for exactly this alignment: the moon at its peak, the old instincts running hot, the curse that had been sitting on him for years using the moon as an amplifier for everything it normally just whispered.
Lucian looked at the window.
At the silver light.
He could feel Lilith through the bond.
That was the thing he had not told his brothers, not fully. The incomplete bond, whatever partial thread connected him to her, was stronger tonight than it had ever been. He could feel her. Not clearly, not the way he understood Nicholas could feel Kael’s settled awareness of her. More like a direction. A warmth. The knowledge of exactly which point in space she occupied.
Upstairs in her room and probably asleep now.
And Zev knew it too.
"She is there," Zev said.
"I know," Lucian replied
"She is ours." Zev said again
"I know." He replied the wolf again.
"The chains...." Zev started saying but then stopped, as if he expected that his human should know that putting a chain on them on a night like this wouldn’t change the fact that they needed to go to their mate.
"Yes," Lucian said. "The chains are necessary."
"Zev went quiet, but Lucian knew very well that the wolf wouldn’t give up without a fight."
Lucian looked at Finn beside him.
Finn was watching him.
Lucian looked back at the window.
The moonlight column reached the centre of the floor.
Suddenly the moon became full. Moonlight shined through the window of the dungeon. It hit all three of them at once.
Nicholas felt it as a wall, something slamming into his chest from the inside. His back went rigid against the stone, and his hands closed on the chains.
Kael surged forward with a force that Nicholas had not felt since the first year of the curse, when he had not yet learned how to handle it.
But this time was different.
This time Kael hit the front of his chest and found something to hold onto: her scent. Still faint on his skin. The memory of her in his mouth minutes ago.
The bond...real and warm, settled in a way it had not been on any previous full moon, pulled at Kael like an anchor.
Nicholas felt Kael strain forward. Felt him hit the anchor and he felt him stop.
Nicholas exhaled long and slow and pressed his back harder against the stone.
Hold, he told Kael.
Kael held onto that anchor with everything they both have, but it was not easy.
Every howl from outside was a needle. Every sound of the pack running free was something that pulled at both of them simultaneously. But the anchor held, and Kael stayed. Nicholas kept his eyes open, kept his breathing even, and counted the seconds.
To his left, Sebastian had gone completely still.
His head was back against the stone. His eyes closed. His chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was slightly too controlled.
Rhen was pushing.
Nicholas could see it in every line of Sebastian’s body, the stillness that was not peace but its opposite. The white knuckles on the chains. The jaw set so tight it had to hurt.
Then Sebastian’s hand moved slowly and deliberately into his pocket.
He pulled out the fabric he had been carrying since Nicholas’s office and brought it to his face without opening his eyes.
Pressed it there and he took a deep breath and his whole body changed.
Not relaxed, because nothing about this night was relaxed, but something changed. The tension in him redirecting. Rhen finding something to hold onto the same way Kael had found the anchor of the bond.
Sebastian kept the fabric pressed to his face and did not move and did not speak.
Nicholas looked away.
On Sebastian’s other side, Lucian had gone somewhere else entirely.
The moon hit Lucian like a freight train.
That was the only honest description of it.
Not a wall. Not a surge. But a freight train, something enormous and fast and completely indifferent to what was in its path.
Zev did not press this time around.
He took over.
Lucian felt it happen in stages that were too fast to do anything about. The warmth in his hands first, that specific deep warmth that preceded a shift, running up from his fingertips into his palms, his wrists, the joints of his forearms starting to ache with the change that was coming.
He tried to push it back.
Used everything he had.
Years of practice. Years of learning exactly where his edges were and how to hold them on full moon nights.
But none of it was enough.
Not tonight.
Not with the moon at its peak and the curse running hot and the bond pulling at Zev through the incomplete thread like a rope attached to something Zev had been trying to reach for weeks.
"She is upstairs,"Zev said. Not a statement now. It sounded more like a command.
"No,"Lucian said.
"She is ours, and she is upstairs, and I am going to her." Zev declared.
"No...." Lucian started saying.
The first bone broke.
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