Violet

The wolves I had been holding in the air dropped to the ground.

Their bodies hit the sand with heavy thuds, and for a moment, I didn’t understand what had happened. My syzygy had just... released them?

Not because I let go, but because the grip itself had vanished.

A numbing sensation spread through my chest like ice water pouring into my veins.

I staggered, pressing my hand to my chest. Something was wrong.

Then I felt Zephyr.

Her presence in my mind, which had been so vivid and fierce just moments ago, was dimming. Through our bond, I felt her confusion, her pain, and beneath it all, a creeping paralysis that was swallowing her from the inside out.

And it was also affecting me.

I immediately turned around.

Palisa had Zephyr pinned. Her massive jaws were clamped around the base of Zephyr’s neck, and even from this distance I could see the dark fluid leaking from the bite. It dripped from Palisa’s fangs in thick, viscous threads, sinking into Zephyr’s fur and the wound beneath.

Poison.

Dread consumed me entirely.

Whatever was in Palisa’s bite seemed far worse than poison. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

And it was so powerful it was affecting me too.

Zephyr thrashed, trying to throw Palisa off, but her movements were already sluggish. Her massive body, which had been a blur of speed and fury moments ago, was now slowing.

"No!" I launched myself toward them.

My legs buckled beneath me.

The numbness had spread from my chest to my limbs, and I hit the sand hard on my knees. My hands sank into the pink grains and I stared at them, watching my fingers tremble as the sensation drained from them.

Whatever was happening to Zephyr was happening to me too.

What did she do?!!!!

My syzygy guttered like a dying candle. The expanded awareness that had stretched for miles contracted to nearly nothing. The power I had been wielding moments ago, the crushing, seizing, overwhelming force of it, went almost quiet.

I couldn’t feel the sun.

It was right there, burning overhead, and I couldn’t draw energy from it. The connection was severed, cut off by whatever was coursing through my blood.

Panic hit me so hard my vision went white.

Palisa released Zephyr’s neck and stepped back with a bloody grin. My wolf’s massive body heaved with laboured breaths. Her golden-marked fur was matted with blood and that dark, oily substance that continued to seep from the bite wound.

Then Zephyr began to dissolve.

Her physical form shimmered at the edges, becoming translucent, and I watched in horror as her body broke apart into wisps of light that streamed toward me. They sank into my skin, my chest, my bones, and Zephyr was gone from the visible world.

But I could still feel her.

Faint. Dim. Like a voice calling from the far end of a very long tunnel. She was inside me, curled around whatever core of energy we shared, weakened but alive.

Still there.

Still mine.

The relief lasted half a second before Palisa’s paw slammed into my side.

The impact launched me across the sand. I tumbled, rolled, and came to a stop face down, choking on grit. Pain exploded across my ribs and I felt something crack.

I tried to push myself up. My arms shook violently.

Palisa was already on me.

Her teeth closed around my shoulder and she bit down. I screamed as her fangs punched through muscle, and ground against bone. She shook her head once, and that short savage wrench tore through my flesh, sending agony ripping down my arm.

I clawed at the sand, trying to crawl free, but she planted one massive paw on my back, pinning me down. Her weight crushed the air from my lungs.

"Finally."

The voice erupted inside my skull and I went rigid with shock.

It wasn’t just the sound of Palisa’s voice. It also felt like her presence, sliding into my thoughts with the casual invasion of someone opening a door they had every right to open.

Palisa’s consciousness pressed against mine, and I felt the edges of her mind, vast and old and rotting with something I couldn’t name.

"How..." I gasped against the sand.

I wasn’t under her control as a pack wolf so why could she directly speak to me through a mind link like this?

"You were never officially banished, little wolf. You ran. But you were never cast out. Which means I still have the right to speak to you like this."

Her jaws released my shoulder only for her teeth to find my thigh. She bit down with deliberate, measured force. Not enough to sever my limb, but just enough to make me scream.

"I have waited so long for this, you many rat!" she hissed inside my mind. "You have no idea how long."

Memories crashed into my head that weren’t mine.

All from Palisa’s viewpoint.

A Lycan woman running through a forest, clutching a child to her chest. Palisa’s wolves cutting her off, surrounding her. The woman’s desperate scream as they tore the child away.

And there was Palisa, watching u disguised excitement as she experimented on the child.

Tortured memories after another fitted through my mind, with Palisa sick excitement bleeding into my senses.

I felt violated.

A Lycan man, old and frail, dragged from a hole in the ground where he had been hiding for decades. Only for unspeakable acts to be done to him.

The memories poured in faster, a cascade of horrors spanning centuries. Lycans hunted, captured, experimented on, broken.

Palisa had been there for all of it. Not just participating, but heading groups of it.

"Stop," I choked. "Stop! Get out of my head!"

"Why?" Her amusement was a physical thing, pressing against the walls of my skull.

Then she reached deeper.

My own memories surfaced, ripped from wherever I had buried them. The pack house in Damon’s territory. The older wolves who would corner me when no one was watching. The words they used. The things they did. My grandmother’s face, growing thinner and paler in those final weeks while I sat beside her bed, helpless.

The rejection. Damon’s cold eyes. The patrol wolves sent to kill me in the dark.

Every wound I had ever suffered was being peeled open and displayed for Palisa’s entertainment.

And beneath it all, I felt her real intent. She wasn’t just torturing me. She was trying to break my mind open, to crack through whatever resistance I had and make me compliant.

The same thing she had done to that mother at the summit!

She wanted me docile, broken, and controllable.

I was slipping.