REBORN ALPHA

The Coronation

Draven descended the stairs one step at a time, clapping slowly, a crown of black iron hanging from two fingers.

"You always did arrive at the worst moment," he said. "That's what made you a good Alpha. You never knew when to stay dead."

"Let her go," I said.

"Oh, I can't." He smiled sadly. "She's the point."

He knew, Rowan whispered. He knew the mark would go to her.

"It was never about breaking the ritual," Draven went on, strolling toward the pedestal as if the room were his. "That was Seraphine's little romance. I wanted something bigger. The Moon Stone gives power to whoever it bonds with, but only through a Luna. A willing one. Or one close enough to death that she can't refuse."

Sable hung in the silver light, eyes blazing, her mouth moving with words that weren't hers.

"You planted the book," I said. "You made sure she'd find the ritual."

"I made sure she'd care enough to do it." He glanced at her, almost gently. "Sable loves fiercely. Her brother. Her friends. You. A girl like that will walk into any fire if she thinks she's saving someone. And when the mark reached her heart..." He lifted the crown. "The Stone would choose her, and she would choose me."

"She'll never choose you."

"She doesn't have to. The Stone only needs her alive at the moment of the bond." He turned the crown in his hand. "And you, brother, are the one person who can make that happen. Because the second you kill me, the Stone breaks, and she dies with it."

The trap closed around me so completely I almost admired it.

Kael, Rowan said quietly. He's not lying.

I know.

So what do we do?

I didn't answer. Because Draven had already moved.

He hit me like a battering ram.

I hadn't even finished shifting when his shoulder drove me into the vault wall and the stone cracked behind my spine. His wolf was huge, gray-furred and faster than I remembered. Claws opened my chest. I snarled and grabbed his throat, and we crashed through the pedestal's stone steps in a tangle of fur and blood.

"You were always soft!" he spat, shifting back mid-fight, hands around my neck. "You never wanted the pack the way I did!"

"I built the pack!"

"And I would have kept it!"

He slammed my head against the floor. White stars burst across my vision.

Kael! Rowan shouted. Let me!

He's too strong.

Alone, yes. Not both of us.

The words landed like a slap. Because I knew what he meant. The merge. The thing neither of us dared say aloud.

I don't know what it does, I said.

Neither do I. Rowan's voice was steady now, steadier than I had ever heard it. But I know I'd rather die as part of you than lose her.

Above us, Sable's voice rose, high and terrible. "The Luna is chosen," she said, and the entire vault shook. The silver in her veins flared to a blinding white.

Draven laughed, bloody-mouthed, hands still locked on my throat. "Hear that? Three more minutes, brother. Then I'll be the strongest Alpha in a thousand years."

I stopped fighting him.

I closed my eyes, and for the first time, I reached not for my wolf but for the quiet, frightened, brave presence that had been sharing my skin since the first night.

Rowan, I said. Are you ready?

No, he said, and I could hear him smiling. Do it anyway.

Something opened in my chest, not a furnace this time, but a tide. Warm and vast and gentle. I felt Rowan's memories pour into mine: the smell of his mother's kitchen, the sound of Sable laughing at six years old, the cold of the Ashfang cellar, the day he decided to die. I felt my own spill into him in return: the weight of a crown, the sound of a silver blade, the lullaby Seraphine used to hum.

We weren't two voices anymore.

Draven felt it. His grip slackened. His eyes widened.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Stop. Stop that!"

My hand closed around his wrist and tore it away like a twig.

I rose. The vault went silent. The light flickering off the walls had changed, not silver now but gold, and when I opened my eyes, I knew from Draven's face that they were no longer entirely mine.

"Brother," I said, in a voice that wasn't Kael's or Rowan's but both. "Sit down."

The command hit him like a physical blow. His knees buckled. He fell.

I turned to the Stone, to Sable, to the girl suspended in white light with a mark that was killing her.

And that was when a voice from the top of the stairs whispered, broken and breathless:

"Kael. Don't."

Seraphine stood in the doorway. Her cloak was in tatters. Blood ran from her hairline and her left arm hung useless, but she was alive. She had dug herself out of the mountain and followed us here, and she was staring at me with a horror I had never seen on her face.

"You've fused," she said. "Oh, no. Oh, Kael, what have you done?"

"I did what you said," I answered. "I saved us both."

"No." She shook her head, tears cutting through the dust on her cheeks. "I told you the ritual fails if no one gives up their place. I never told you what happens if the two souls merge."

Behind me, the Moon Stone began to hum.

Louder. Hungrier.

And Sable, hanging in the light, turned her glowing eyes toward me and smiled.

"Thank you," said the Stone. "Now there is only one soul left to take."