This is 3/3 of a triple update! Making sure you’re starting from the right chapter!!!!

ENJOYYYYY

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Luciel’s P.O.V

The werewolf stares at me with unblinking light blue eyes that rival the ice sheets surrounding us. They shine beneath the film of the unshed tears swimming in his eyes.

Maeve warned me that he had not stopped shedding them since they found him, but they do not fall now that his eyes are on me.

She also said that his name was Peter.

The blood drains from his already pale face, erasing the slight flush his crying had brought over his skin, and I am almost certain it is because of the word he just uttered.

Mate.

Eyes bore into me from all corners when they are not darting from him to me, and I am as viscerally aware of them as I am their already stirring questions that quietly gather the longer the silence continues without any interference.

I know I am the one who is meant to say something, as Pylen and the one who has just been named this intruder’s mate, but there is not a single word that rises within my mind.

It is empty. Shock has rendered it so, and I have no way to alleviate it.

Mate? Surely he was mistaken, but only Maeve stands near me, and the weight of his attention has not once shifted from me since his eyes first found mine.

He trembles, sways even, but he never looks away.

And then he sways even more harshly, tipping to one side, and—

“Atieno,” I snap just as the boy’s eyes roll into the back of his head.

Atieno jerks his arm out, catching the small wolf before he crashes. Openly bewildered, he hastily props him up before he looks back to me, an open question waiting in his glowing, orange eyes.

“Pylen,” Maeve whispers at my side, and I jolt.

When I look at her, open disquiet stares back at me. It is damning.

“Check the boy. Hide his tracks. Search for any others,” I shoot, the commands snapping out of me with trained precision as I force myself back into action. “Maeve.”

The sentries above disperse in a blur, seeing my will done while I take one last glance at the unconscious wolf before I retreat into the tunnel I’d just emerged from. Maeve follows soundlessly, but waits until the familiar hum of Atieno’s magic surrounds us to release the breath she has held well until this point.

Neither of us speaks.

I stare at the ice curved ahead of me while she stares at the flooring with her hands on her hips, the two of us uncharacteristically speechless.

“It may be a ploy,” she says after a long moment. “An odd method of infiltration, but a possibility.”

I nod. She had said that he was warded heavily with magic that branched from each of the surface witch’s branches when she found me with the report of the intruder.

A lone werewolf allegedly searching for his mate.

“But there has been talk of wolf sightings for months,” she states after another bloated moment of silence. “We thought them fiction, but if it were an attack, I do not think he would have allowed us to see him.”

I nod again, because what she says makes sense, but none of it helps trigger a thought of my own from my whirling mind.

“He was also terrified,” she notes after another moment. “I do not believe that was feigned.”

Another nod.

I try to rattle something from my mind, but all that arises is memories of a green-streaked sky I’d sat beneath months ago and the streak of blue that had crossed it after I had challenged the Gods.

A streak of blue that perfectly matched the wolf’s irises.

“Luciel,” Maeve whispers, and I am forced to meet her gaze.

It is odd, seeing the girl I once knew within the woman I have seen grow from her. But for this rare moment, when we are both so lost, she appears like the young vampire who checked her fangs nightly to see how they grew.

“I challenged the Gods,” I blurt as the boy who once stood beside her to measure mine as well.

“You what?” Maeve asks, her obsidian eyes widening in their sockets.

“On the night we started the millennium celebration, I surfaced,” I explain, and she nods sharply. “I spoke to them, complained really. I wanted to know why I was still here, and when they failed to answer, I said if this was really a season of change, then,” I swallow, glancing over her shoulder and in the direction of where the wolf rests, “to bring it forth.”

“Luciel!” Maeve hisses, a horrified hand rising to cover her lips. “You do not challenge the Gods!”

“I do not believe in them!” I hiss back, and when she rears back, I resist the urge to roll my eyes like the wolf. “You know this, do not act the scorned. I said it in the moment. I was not being true, but now—”

“Now there is a werewolf here claiming you as his mate,” she hisses, eyes bulging as she clings to herself as if she might shatter. “Luciel, what have you done?”

“I did not do anything!” I retort with aggravation as I begin to pace between the tunnel’s tight walls. “You are the one who told me to surface.”

“To find life again, not to welcome the Gods’ discipline!” She parries with equal frustration. “The boy found you, Luciel, and he claims a mate bond.”

“Yes, I am aware,” I snap as my fingers find the roots of my scalp. It seems I too need something to hold to while the world attempts to upturn itself.

Silence falls over the space between us once more, returning us to the quiet I have known for centuries, only it does not fit the same with the presence of a new heartbeat just a matter of paces away.

The mages’ hearts learned to beat as one after years spent under the ice. It was shallow and subtle enough to be a familiar tune that faded to the background with time until it was almost non-existent.

This one stands out.

It is new, and strong, and even though it was skittering through him minutes ago, its steady beat still sings the tune of his name. A new presence.

“A life bond,” I curse as I slam a hand to the wall. “How in all the Hells would I have a life bond, and with a werewolf?”

Maeve does not reply. She remains quiet, which gives my now spilling thoughts all the room they need to multiply.

While I did not feel the bond, I understood the concept well enough to know what this meant.

A werewolf’s mate bond was a sacred virtue, as rare and sought out as treasure itself. It was ordained by their Goddess to treat her servants to a love match that would follow them when they returned to her spiritual realm.

They most often sprouted amongst their own kind, but there were cases where they intermixed with other species. Those were rarer still, for it meant that not only did she split a soul, but she gained another God’s permission to place the other half in a creature that did not belong to her.

If this wolf was to be believed, then I held the other half to his soul, and he, mine, but that could not be.

I had already shared my soul with another, and she had taken it with her when the light left her eyes.

“You do not want it?”

My fingers dig into the ice and refuse to give.

“…Why would you even ask?”

Arraya had been the love of my life, and the one I meant to pair with before betrayal and calamity took her away from me. But even so, my heart and soul belonged to her, and only her.

Even in death, I was hers. I had never once wavered on that, and I was not going to now.

“Because—”

Another presence joins us, breaking Maeve’s words before they can be spoken.

I look up even though I already know it is Atieno and release my grip of the ice as he looks carefully between us.

“He fainted,” Atieno reports after a moment. “Another is with him now, but I thought I might check in on matters.”

“He fainted?” I ask even though I had assumed as much. It was just odd to witness.

I could not remember the last time I watched another lose consciousness against their will.

“The shock of the situation,” he offers amicably, “but I also believe that perhaps—”

“He is terrified of us,” Maeve finishes without Atieno’s care. When my eyes meet hers, there’s a certain resolved hardness in them. “Us, not the situation. He relaxed somewhat each time Atieno spoke to him, but with me?” She shakes her head.

Well, that better explained the way he blanched when he saw me. It also made matters far simpler.

“He will want the bond either,” I state, surer of it as I recall the sheen in his blue eyes. “We can break it and let him leave on his own.”

“That is more preferable than by force,” Atieno agrees, though he does not hide his grimace.

“Maeve mentioned wards,” I acknowledge, and he nods.

“To put it in layman’s terms, he wears a suicide vest,” he states, his eyes set on mine. “Any harm comes to him, and every hint of life in his vicinity will be wiped from this realm.”

“Gods’ curses,” I mutter, and he nods.

“Whatever magic surrounds him is old and can not be removed.”

“A danger we can not entertain,” Maeve notes, but Atieno is not done.

“I can not remove it, but I could weaken it behind our walls,” he says to our shared surprise. “I already have in part. It is a two-tiered spell: attack and retreat. I can neuter the ‘attack’ element, so that we aren’t harmed majorly if it is triggered, and he returns to wherever he comes from.”

“Why would I have him behind our walls?”

Atieno’s lips part, but he does not speak as he glances to Maeve. They share a glimpse before she straightens and steps forward.

“Break the bond with him if you do not seek it, and then we will return him to his own kind with care,” she says firmly, and my eyes narrow.

She was right, of course. It was what I planned to do, but something in her tone and the mention of ‘if’ lingers in my mind.

I stare at her, but there is no time to get to the bottom of it as a shout comes signaling the wolf’s rise.

We part together, and Atieno’s magic falls away as I step out first. The boy lies in a bundle of the mage’s furs, only just beginning to stir, and I pass them all by until I stand over him.

This close, with the shock fading, and no one else standing between us, I look at him properly for the first time.

I have never thought to describe another man as ethereal, but it is the word that comes to mind.

Long blonde hair frames his face, a perfect match to the long blonde lashes that flutter open to reveal the blue irises again. They are even more striking up close, a brilliant blue that carries the ice in these walls I have always known within them.

He blinks slowly at first and then faster as the blood rushes back into his face and he takes me in with an audible breath.

“It was real,” he whispers, and I raise a brow.

He sits up, his earlier fright seeming to have left him completely until he registers movement behind me, and then it comes back like a spiteful beast.

His heart begins its incessant hammering that turns the rush of his blood into thrashing waves. A newborn would find that sound akin to a siren’s call.

I listen to it mutedly while I watch him begin to shake and heave, a second away from losing consciousness again.

Maeve was right. He was terrified of us, but that at least made this quick.

Moving slowly, I stoop down beside him, and his eyes quickly snap to me to track the movement. I take my time until I settle on one knee, but once we are eye to eye, we just stare at one another, and there is a moment where I forget what I am meant to be doing.

His eyes hold a world’s worth of wonders within them, all flickering through in a rhythmic sequence, and they threaten to keep me captive forever as his heart slowly calms.

“I—” The moment my lips part, his eyes dart down, spot fang and then he is scrambling back.

I stare after him, and do not bother hiding my distaste even as a flush engulfs him. “I-I-I’m so—”

“I am Luciel,” I say, cutting him off before he can waste any more of our time. “I am the Pylen. You came and claimed a mate, then named me that mate. Is that correct?”

Infinite emotions flit across his widening eyes, one after the other, and he barely seems to compute them any better than I can distinguish them, but then he nods shakily and shifts a hand forward as if he means to come closer.

“It is obvious to me that you are terrified of me and my kin,” I say as I ease back to dissuade him of the notion, “so we can break this bond and you will be allowed to return to your people.”

This time, the emotion that flashes across his face is unmistakable. Heartbreak.

“W-W-What?” He asks, a panic making him sit taller. “B-B-Break—” He does not finish, can not seem to.

“Break the bond,” I finish for him. “You are terrified, yes?”

The flush returns, and in the midst of his rushed panting, he drops his gaze. He squeezes his hands together and wrings them, trying to get himself under control so that he can speak.

I am not sure if the stuttering is due to the fair or something else, but I wait nevertheless.

He shakes his head in the end.

I frown. “You are attempting to lie to a vampire?”

His heart spikes again, and my lips twitch at their corners. “Just the word and you are trembling.”

Head shooting up, those striking blue eyes find mine again, and wide as they are, I spot flagrant fear in them that is unmistakable. I sigh.

“I am not concerned,” I state before he can work himself into a fret strong enough to make him unconscious. “That you are scared of me is of no matter to me. You do not have to fear retribution. This bond is yours. I am as happy to break it as you are.”

I have seen many bleed. Before I was turned, when I once lived near the waters of another, warmer ocean, and hunted all the food I needed to eat. Then again, when blood from the vein became my substance.

I knew precisely what a creature looked like when it bled, and yet, for the first time in my long life, I witness what it is for a creature to bleed from the heart.

“N-No,” he whispers, eyes filling again and this time, the tears fall, silent as they are. I stiffen, but they do not stop. Shaking his head, he crawls closer despite his trembling. “No. I-I-I d-don’t w-want to b-break,” he pauses, heaving before his desperate plights for air break and turn into sobs. “Please n-no. P-Please don’t.”

The wolf cries quietly, but in the silent stillness, it is remarkably loud.

I stare at him, unable to do anything else as shock renders me mute again.

I never knew what to do when another cried, which luckily had not been a problem for me when vampires tended to outgrow that at a certain stage, but the wolf cries now, and with abandon as emotions get the best of him.

It is jarring enough that it takes me far too long to realise what he is saying.

“You do not want to break the bond?” I say, my disbelief unmasked.

He shakes his head harder, leaving it to that when his sobs fall out of him one after the other.

That… was not good.

When Maeve came with the report, I thought it was obvious to allow him to find his mate. When it was revealed I was the mate, I thought to let him break it to be free. Now he was saying he didn’t want to be free.

He, in fact, was not even saying that.

He was sobbing profusely, the picture of fright.

While the boy cries, I glance up, meeting the gaze of one of the scouts who’d left to see to my instructions. I raise a brow, and he steps forward.

“He was alone,” he reports with a bow. “There were no others, but there are humans looking for him at one of the stations. He is one of them, but they do not know what he is.”

Gods, this kept getting worse.

Humans were an annoyingly curious species, and with one of their own perceived to be missing, with little places for them to go, they would look for him endlessly.

“Pl-Please do-don’t,” the boy continues to cry as he looks between the scout and me. Fear runs rampant in his eyes as he strains to understand. He soon gives up and looks at me alone. “Please. I-I looked fo-for-for you f-f-for so long.”

My chest tightens uncomfortably, worse yet when his crying becomes more desperate.

I was not a cruel man. I did not enjoy others’ suffering, and I certainly did not enjoy this werewolf’s heavy wailing.

I wanted to stop it, but I did not have the slightest clue how.

“Pylen,” Maeve starts, but I raise a hand to silence her.

The wolf looks between the two of us before he settles on me again, his tearful blue eyes imploring as he sniffs.

“They said you are part of a research team,” I say, and his eyes widen an inch before he nods furiously, and then there’s a new type of panic in his eyes. “They are looking for you,” I inform, and he makes a soft sound that attests to the concern in his eyes. “You do not wish to worry them, so would it not be best to return to them?”

It is not a trick, only an honest question, but he stiffens as if it were a test.

Gnawing on his lips, a fresh shimmer fills his eyes before he shakes his head.

I resist the urge to sigh.

“You would rather stay here? Even with how you fear us?”

He nods. He shakes as he does, but he nods.

Such listless bravery.

“Even though I do not want this match as you do?”

Something breaks within his eyes, and he stops breathing.

I do not mean to be heartless, but it would be more cruel to be dishonest when my feelings were already well known to me.

“I have no want for a mate or a life bond, and while you may seek one, it is not a shared feeling,” I say as gently as I can manage as I watch the boy’s hope crack, break and then shatter. “I am sorry, but this is a one-sided affair.”

His eyes fall again, finding the iced floor beneath us that he stares at.

Little hiccuped breaths breach the quiet, the stillness suddenly suffocating as I wait for him to come to the very terms I have.

It was rather unfortunate that the Gods thought to pair him with me, but there was a reason why these bonds were breakable. The circumstances we lived in often varied from what they had in mind, and there was no shame in admitting that.

I wait, holding patient and forcing the others to do the same. The wolf at least deserved the time to settle into reality.

He does, and does so with a deep breath before he looks up. His eyes find mine, but the shattered pieces are lost behind the determination blazing within.

He nods.

I frown.

He wanted to stay here, with us, even though he was terrified of my kind and had no chance of finding this bond reciprocated by me. Still, he wanted to stay.

“S-S-She said y-you ho-honoured bo-bonds,” he whispers without looking to Maeve, but I know he means her simply by the way I feel her stiffen. “I-I want t-this bond.”

He didn’t even know what he said or claimed, but he already claimed it for all to hear.

The custom of our clan was old, and we honoured bonds to allow a pair to find one another. It awarded a pair to know one another, but in those rare cases, they wanted one another.

This was in no way mutual.

Maeve takes a step, but my tilted chin helps her stop herself before I have to.

I eye him while I steal a moment to think.

Removing the boy with care was unlikely to set off the wards built around him, so that would rid us of that threat. We could take similar precautions to ensure he would not find his way down here again, but that did not get rid of the bond.

It kept it distant, and I could outlive him and wait for it to disappear with him, but there is something in his eyes.

Determination I had thought, but that seems to gentle a word for it now. Might perhaps.

Whatever it is, a decision has been made, and it promises that the boy will not give up.

That brought about an entirely new set of dangers, especially if he came with the threat of witches of his own.

My eyes narrow, and he shrinks under them.

I did not know how to break a werewolf bond, but a day or two and we could have the answer to that. Once I did, I could break the bond, but in the meantime, there was the shadow of the repercussions of his absence, and however that might ripple outward to wherever he originated from.

Time was needed in each case.

“Atieno,” I call, and I feel him step behind me as I stand again. “Send three to the station he comes from. Tell them to remove the evidence of his absence in whatever form that is to take.”

“Yes, Pylen,” he whispers before his magic swells around us.

The werewolf’s eyes widen as he tracks Atieno, but he keeps quiet as he holds his breath. Hope flickers in his eyes, but I ignore it.

“Maeve.” Her presence gathers beside me, as strong as her disapproval. “Find a room for our guest while he is with us and guard it, and him.”

“Yes, Pylen,” she grinds, and he pales a measure.

“And you,” I say, drawing his eyes back to mine. They really are so blue.

“P-Pa-Peter,” he whispers.

“I know.” His eyes widen before a fierce flush crawls up his neck and into his cheeks. “You, Peter…”

“Heil,” he supplies under the curtain of his hair. “Peter H-Heil-Calderon.”

A scout disappears from my left at the subtle pinch of my fingers, already seeing to uncover all there was to know about this werewolf.

“You, Peter Heil-Calderon, are our guest for the time being,” I state, eyes hardening with a clear warning. “Take a step out of line, and you will be given a reason to fear us.”

The hope bleaches him while I nod at Maeve before I turn and leave him be.

I had wasted enough time and gleaned everything I needed.

All that was left was to find out all there was to know about Peter Heil-Calderon before I broke the bond between us and returned him to the surface.

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And so it begins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on the triple update?????? Thoughts on them finally meeting??? on HOW they met???? on Luciel’s POV????

Honestly, I feel like it could’ve gone a whole lot worse! Peter found the clan in a good mood lmfaooo, but I love love lvoe that scene with Luciel and Maeve both freaking out, they’re so besties I love them

Now Peter just has to find a way to stay!!!!

Atieno tho… heard he was blocking magic and instantly he became fine to me lmfaoooo

Can’t wait to get into more about the witches/mages in this clan! and all there is to see as Peter is with his man!!!

The fun begins and so does the pain and suffering hehehe I’m so excited!

The next update won’t be until next month since this was a lot to prepare, so I hope yall can understand and wait for me! I keep everything posted on my board, insta or in the OMEGA chatroom on Patreon

That’s all for now tho! Remember to vote if you enjoyed!!!!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeeeee Humanssssssssssssssssss