Fury Bound (The Wolves of Ruin, #2) — Chapter no 2

2

MERYN

t’s almost impossible to reach out to all the Bonded at once.I Only two people have the power, as far as I know: the Sovereign Alpha, Siegrid Therion… and, apparently, me. But as Killian speaks, certainty forms in my bones: He’s reaching every Bonded throughout the entirety of Nocturna.

My eyes dart down to the engagement bracelet he clamped onto my wrist; the ruby still swirls with dark shadows. It’s been like that ever since he drew on my magic in his chambers. And there’s that lingering wrongness.

Part of my power is cut off from me, ensnared in whatever twisted spell is woven into this bracelet.

Whatever he’s doing—he’s doing this by using my powers, stealing my magic.

“The Faceless Goddess has blessed me with the ability to communicate through the wolf bonds as a reward for my fealty to the Bonded and to the

kingdom,” Killian says smoothly.

I can’t help it—I laugh.

What absolute bullshit. And so totally predictable. He’s going to lie to every one of the Bonded in the same way he lied to me.

My face flushes with angry heat, and I claw at the bracelet on my wrist.

But it once again tightens against my skin, making me wince in pain. Just then, images pulse through my mind.

With a shocked jolt, I realize he’s sharing memories down the bond, just as Anassa taught me to do.

There I am, my silver hair shining, my face covered in blood from the battle at graduation. Anassa looms behind me as I grab the Dire Blade, the king’s wolf-pommel sword that compels the direwolves. My face twisting in a fearsome scowl, I bring the sword down in a merciless strike across the king’s throat.

My true self felt pumping adrenaline and pride in this moment, but right now those feelings are overshadowed by Killian’s—or, at least, what he wants us to believe he experienced.

Cold horror runs through him. Pain, heartbreak, and terror.

The vision twists into the next memory. We’re in Killian’s room. I have him pinned, straddling him as he squirms below me, uncomfortable and terrified. My hazel eyes are wide and wild-looking, and I once again raise the wolf-pommel sword. I press it to his neck.

Killian projects a memory of stinging pain as the blade cuts into the delicate skin at his throat. His heart pounds in fear as he stares up at the monstrous woman before him, a woman he made a mistake to trust.

A woman who was not at all who she seemed, who has finally revealed her true, ugly self. It’s like he’s taken my own perspective toward him and flipped it on me.

In both memories, I am an indisputable villain.

I’d hate me, too, if this was all the context I had.

The vision ends, and I blink back into the dungeons. Stark catches my eyes. His gaze is murderous, his tattooed hands clenched into tight fists that demand action.

“Meryn Cooper has driven me from Sturmfrost and seized the throne,”

Killian goes on.

My blood boils. He knows the truth as well as I do: I’m no Cooper. I’m a Sturmfrost Queen. And I will reclaim the birthright that his family stole from mine.

“She is dangerous, unstable, and the enemy of Nocturna. This delusional commoner is not to be trusted.”

A strangled choke escapes me. I want to believe that no one could possibly listen to him, but I believed him, once. And I can’t hide from the element of truth of those memories.

I did those things, and I looked terrifying doing them.

But he’s a fucking Siphon.

“I am establishing a stronghold in the west and will be rallying forces to retake my throne. I encourage anyone who believes in truth and justice to come join me. Together, we will return Nocturna to its rightful glory.”

With that, the connection ends, with a mental twist that violently ends the channel he’s opened.

“Truth and justice?!” I shout, my words echoing in the nearly empty dungeons. Unfurling my fists, I realize my nails have carved crescents into my palms, practically drawing blood.

My mind is intimately connected to the stream of Bonded emotions.

Their reactions pour in from across Nocturna in a torrent of shock,

disbelief, and confusion.

Fuck.

I lock eyes with Stark again. “I need to address them. Now.”

“Yes,” he says simply.

“But I…” I look down at myself. I’m still in the stupid fucking gown that Killian put me in. The same one that was in the memory he just showed everyone.

It’s the uniform of an unstable, delusional woman. I don’t want to feed into that lie.

“You look—” Stark says, then stops short, pressing his full lips into a tight line. Emotions swirl behind his eyes, dark and unreadable, as he

studies me.

I lift my head. “What?”

“You’re presentable enough,” he says stiffly. He must’ve understood the reason for my hesitation. “Waiting any longer will leave room for doubt.”

I swallow roughly and nod. Then I force a deep breath in and out of my lungs. I just have to remind myself that the truth is on my side, not Killian’s.

And I have some damning memories to show off, too.

“Anassa,” I mind-speak to my direwolf. “Can you reach all the wolves who are here at the castle, and make sure their riders come to the arena?

Let them know that I’ll have answers for them.”

This is something I could probably do. But I’m not sure how to just reach the people who are physically here in Sturmfrost—and if I reached out too far, would Killian hear me?

There’s a beat of silence, and then Anassa responds, “It’s done.”

My gaze lingers on Saela’s sleeping, bloodied form. She looks so small

and helpless, even with the truth of her existence splattered around the cell.

Leaving her for even a moment is a dagger into my gut. It’s wrong.

And for the second time, Stark seems to read my mind. “Helene and Grigore will watch over her while you’re gone. Nothing will happen to her.

I promise you.”

His voice is curt and businesslike, but his words are so gentle. All I can do is give him a tense nod.

It hurts to leave Saela’s side, but if I don’t go, Killian is going to corrupt the rest of my world, too.

The arena is quiet, but my heart is pounding. I swear the reverberations are rattling the walls with each pump of my blood.

Stark is to my left, standing resolutely as though the hundreds of eyes looking up at us don’t bother him in the slightest. Anassa and Cratos flank us, surveying the people gathered below.

Bonded are filing in, and I have to blink away the image of the final culling that King Cyril ordered. Ordered from the very platform where I stand now. The blood running from bite wounds, as Rawbonds turned on one another. Angry and red and wrong.

My stomach flips. “I want to end any unnecessary killing,” I think half to myself, half to Anassa. Her acknowledgment is a steadying hum in the back of my head.

It’s mostly newly graduated Rawbonds here, though some Bonded who had come in for the graduation have joined the crowd. Those seasoned soldiers stand in formation, but the young warriors mill about in groups, packs largely standing together.

From the corner of my eye, I spot Jonah’s red-streaked dark hair from where he stands with some of his weasel-faced friends, clustered together and speaking to one another in low voices. Every one of them has a hand rested on a sword hilt or the handle of a dagger.

He looks up, and there’s a sharp-edged glint to his gaze that makes me uneasy. We’ve been at odds ever since the morning of the Ascent, when he attacked Izabel, and he’s never turned down a chance to try to hurt me.

Anassa’s noticed his group, too, and her sides start to buzz with a low growl, but none of them makes a move toward us.

Around the perimeter of the arena, castle servants stand nervously, fidgeting. Stark ordered every servant in the castle to gather—ensuring maximum witnesses for whatever is about to happen—but some are still wandering in through the arena doors.

It’s difficult to wait here on the dais. I feel like an impostor. How could I not?

I thought I was a commoner only months ago. I still am a commoner in so many ways. My dress is filthy from the dungeons, my hair is a tangle of silver-white, my eyes are probably red-rimmed from sleep deprivation and endless crying.

Part commoner, part Bonded, part queen, but a mess the whole way through.

But I’m here. I have to be here. I have to be more than I am.

“You must, so you will,” Anassa tells me, reminding me of what she said on the day I unexpectedly became Alpha of the Strategos pack.

“I must, so I will,” I agree.

Stark steps forward and hands me a cone-shaped amplifier, and I take it with an only slightly shaking hand.

In the half hour since I left the dungeons, Anassa has been coaching me on how to reach all the Bonded. I need to send a complex message— including memories—to thousands all across Nocturna. I’m prepared for it to be taxing, but I know I can do it.

Because if Killian could reach everyone with my magic, then so can I.

Bitterness is a potent fuel, it turns out.

After several slow breaths, I shut my eyes and push my consciousness outward. My mind flows along familiar streams first. Anassa. My pack. My people. Stark, confusingly.

The channels I’ve used before are open, clear. I can sense more minds beyond them, though, as if through a low fog that hangs over water. I squeeze my eyes tighter and push. Then, after a brief moment of resistance, I burst forward.

I flow into the minds of the other Bonded below me, then spill beyond the walls of the arena. If Killian is somewhere here in this connection… I can’t sense him.

It’s almost too easy. There’s a vast sea of magic inside me, and each Bonded mind is a river flowing from its source. I need only to focus on my magic and follow the natural current to them.

Easy to make the connection, that is—but incredibly overwhelming to hold on to it, especially when it all starts to flow back to me, drowning me in connection. It’s dizzying, and as when I sent my memories to Aldrich, sweat starts to bead on my forehead.

Then come the minds of the Bonded at a farther distance, battle- hardened veterans on the front, weary and angry and impatient. I stagger slightly, trying to hold the channels open.

But instantly, a hand meets my back—steadying me, pushing me

upright.

Stark.

I swallow and widen my stance to avoid any further dalliances with gravity. When I open my eyes and lift the amplifier to speak, Anassa’s mind surges forward, meeting my own. Words gather in my consciousness, and Anassa’s influence urges them outward like ships sailing down every Bonded tributary.

This is the kind of leader I want to be. Direct. Honest.

“I want to address what you all heard from Killian earlier. You deserve to know the truth, all of you. Yes, I killed King Cyril,” I tell them, speaking aloud so the servants can hear while I echo the words in my mind, projecting them to all the Bonded.

Immediately, the Bonded who weren’t at the graduation ceremony respond with further shock and confusion, their reactions rippling back through me.

“I killed him, but I had just cause. He was not the man we thought he was. In fact, he was not a man at all. My actions were not driven by insanity, but by my conscience.”

I gather up the images I know will prove me honest. Unlike Killian, I don’t need to twist and alter them to emphasize my point. The truth is

enough.

I show them everything.

The children behind bars, terrified and neglected. Saela, crying and reaching for me from her cell. Killian’s confession of his and his father’s true nature as Siphons, vessels for Alistair Brightbane. The way Killian’s

fangs glinted behind his sickening smile.

The memory of shadowy magic writhing around us, bending toward me then and back to him as he used my magic to escape.

The effect is immediate. Gasps and exclamations echo across the arena.

The older Bonded erupt into motion, breaking formation to gather in small groups or go to their wolves. Warriors and wolves pull away into their own corners of the arena to process and to confer.

Their feelings detonate in my mind as I maintain the mental connection.

Anger. Disbelief. Horror. Grief.

The castle’s servants, unable to see what I’m showing the rest, look around in confusion at the chaos. I speak quickly because I promised them answers.

“My name is Meryn Sturmfrost. I am a descendant of the Sturmfrost Queens, the original rulers of Nocturna. My family was stripped from their rightful place on the throne by a Siphon named Alistair Brightbane.”

More memories. The ancient crown, which now sits atop my head. The book from Stark’s collection, detailing the royal lineage. My mother’s journals, with their cryptic drawings.

“Alistair Brightbane has been body-jumping through generations of kings, using blood magic to maintain his rule and erasing the memory of the true royal line. Cyril and his son, Killian, are both Alistair’s descendants and his vessels, complicit in serving him.”

With that, the arena falls back into silence. Inside my head is nothing but noise, though. What the Bonded are feeling… it’s chaos. Even as they process my memories and my words, more than a few resist.

My hold on the communication channels flickers and sputters as some minds rebel against me, against my hold in their minds. Barriers go up as some Bonded instinctively reach to shut me out, just as I used to do with Anassa.

I gasp and strain against it. I manage to maintain the connection, though in places it’s whittled down, like just the tiniest thread. Bonded all around the kingdom are fighting me, rejecting the awful truth.

Can I blame them? Would I believe a single piece of this if I hadn’t seen it all with my own eyes? My gaze skirts over to Anassa, and she sends a pulse of reassurance through our bond.

“Do not worry. I am supporting your claims with the wolves,” she says.

I grit my teeth and focus hard on the river of communication inside me.

My temples begin to pound again with the effort.

Drawing as much strength as I can from Anassa’s support, I try a different tactic. Something that will help them to understand that I’m not the madwoman Killian is portraying me as.

“We can have a better Nocturna,” I say out loud while also thinking it to all who are listening. “We don’t have to deal with so much death in the Bonding Trials. People can have enough to eat, can be able to feed their families. I want to… I want to fix all that.”

The words come out jumbled, unpracticed. Nobody ever said I was good at giving speeches.

“I want to be a fair queen, someone you can be proud to serve. I’ll… I’ll listen to what people need. And I’ll do my best to do right by you all.”

Every word sounds more awkward than the last, echoing in the strained silence.

“Give me a chance, and I’ll prove myself loyal to Nocturna. Let me try to be the leader our country deserves.”

Exhausted and out of ideas, I release my connection to the Bonded with a dreadful mental pull, like a fraying rope suddenly snapping free. It’s draining and jolting. The other Bonded recoil from the inelegant use of my powers, and I wince and wait to see what the response will be.

Silence. Then quiet murmurs, Bonded to Bonded, human to human.

“To be clear,” comes Sovereign Alpha Siegrid’s stern voice, reaching out to all the Bonded in the same way that I did from somewhere leagues away, “my family and I are the sworn protectors of the crown, and we recognize Meryn Sturmfrost as the legitimate heir to the throne. As your Sovereign Alpha, I expect to see that same loyalty from all true Bonded.”

It loosens a breath from my chest.

She’s down at the front, but her words will carry weight for all the Bonded there and here. And as the Sovereign Alpha, she and her wolf could theoretically command all the Bonded to follow her lead.

I believe I could as well, in theory. King Cyril certainly could, using the Dire Blade.

But by putting this as an encouragement and not a direct command, Siegrid is giving our people something they haven’t had in far too long.

Something that I want them to have, too: free will.

I can only hope it will be enough.

For a long, awkward moment, nobody in the arena moves. The sound of my own labored breath seems loud and pathetic as I look around, not sure what to expect next.

Leader Aldrich steps forward first, breaking away from a group of older Bonded, walking slowly, head held high until the moment he bows it.

Standing apart from the crowd, he lowers to a knee. His wolf follows, bowing her head low, shutting her eyes.

Then Aldrich says, “I pledge my loyalty to you, Queen Meryn.”

Tears spring to my eyes at the acknowledgment, and I blink them back.

Hearing his words spoken aloud, calling me queen… the moment freezes crystalline in my mind, and I know I’ll never forget it.

My friends Izabel and Venna step up next, their wolves flanking the twins. I bite my bottom lip, hard, to keep the tears from returning. They both salute me and then kneel next to Aldrich, their wolves lowering their heads in respect. Tomison and Nevah and their wolves join them.

It’s strange, at first, to see them like that. They taught me to fight. I got drunk with them. We survived together. And they’re bowing to me.

Their faith in me expands in my chest, painful and comforting at the same time.

The tension in the arena is thick as everyone waits to see what others will do. Anassa’s growl starts up again, and I sense her mind focusing, straining against something—having her own mental communication with the wolves, I assume.

Then the rest of the Strategos Rawbond class strides forward, one or two pairs at a time. Silver-white wolves kneel, their riders bowing or kneeling beside them.

Their mass support sends warmth shooting through me. Even Anassa stands a little straighter as we survey the line of Strategos wolves and riders, all acknowledging a truth I’ve barely digested myself.

I’m the rightful leader of the Bonded, and of all Nocturna.

After that, the rest of the Trials instructors step up, and a handful of Kryptos, followed by some Daemos and Phylax riders.

But it’s not the majority of the Bonded, I notice. Clutches of older Bonded riders still stand apart, speaking with one another in low voices or silently communicating with their wolves.

The castle staff all cluster close to the exits to the arena, watching the scene with wary eyes or edging quietly away. I can’t fault them for not wanting to get closer to this massive gathering of direwolves and riders, though, no matter their loyalties.

A number of Rawbonds hesitate, too. Many of them are people I’ve seen a dozen times, even fought next to in this very arena, but have never actually spoken with or had a real interaction with.

Fucking Killian. I spent so much time with that lying asshole, and less time than I could have getting to know my fellow Rawbonds. Now I’ll have to work extra hard to get them on my side.

“Now that you’ve decided they are even worth having on your side,”

Anassa chides gently, and I realize I’ve been thinking toward her.

“You’re right,” I respond, sighing. “Though in my defense, maybe I would have paid more attention to building up support if I had known a little more about what was coming.”

Anassa gives a regal sniff and doesn’t respond.

“Please, rise,” I call, realizing that some of the Bonded are still bowing.

“I know the truth about the Valtiere line is shocking. And this is all very new. To be honest, I’m still figuring out exactly what all this means. I hope that I can count on your help to make sure this transition is peaceful.”

There’s sudden movement to my right, and I spin in time to see Jonah push through a group of my Kryptos supporters, sitting astride his wolf.

“You should mount,” Anassa warns, but I shake my head.

“I don’t want to escalate anything,” I insist. “There doesn’t need to be any fighting here today.”

Anassa’s tail swishes, but she lets it rest.

“You’re nothing but a gutter-born liar,” Jonah snarls.

I open my mouth to defend myself, but he turns toward the crowd, a bully with an audience.

“Are you really all going to let this king-killer steal the throne of Nocturna? What of our sacred mission as Bonded to protect king and country?”

Jonah and his wolf pace back and forth, knowing all eyes are glued to him, clearly relishing the moment.

“She claims that our prince is a Siphon. That his father, King Cyril, was one, too. If that were true, why would they have poured everything into

eliminating the Siphon threat to our south? We’ve been at war with Astreona for centuries, with the kings’ full support!”

Jonah swivels to face me directly, his expression hard and ugly.

“No. What makes more sense is that this upstart slut wanted to be queen, to live a life of luxury instead of fighting for her country. But Prince Killian wouldn’t have her after she’d lost her mind and killed our king. Like the spiteful whore she is, now she’s doing her best to steal what’s rightfully Prince Killian’s. King Killian’s.”

My breath leaves my body as I see people listening to him—believing him, or choosing to believe him. He’s inserted himself into a situation that does not concern him at all, crafted a discourse that is convenient to him,

and to what end?

Because he’s a vindictive narcissist.

I look around myself in frustration, grasping at something, anything, I can do to make these people believe the truth.

What weight could my words or actions hold now, if they all think I’m a liar and a traitor? If they’re more convinced by the men who’ve held power here for centuries—and not willing to listen to a woman from the slums?

With a hiss of metal on metal, Jonah deftly draws his sword from his scabbard, raising it high.

My blood heats with panic as he opens his mouth and directs my people against me.

“True Nocturnans, to me! Death to the usurper!”