Chapter 4 The wedding ritual

Lena's legs buckled as the guards dragged her forward. Rough stone scraped her bare feet raw. Iron grips bruised her arms as they hauled her across the threshold of the great hall and into the bitter night.

The cold sliced against her torn skin and carried the stench of burning herbs and fresh blood.

The ritual grounds stretched wide and desolate before her. Black pillars ringed the clearing like silent sentinels, their carved runes shimmering under the red light of the moon. Fires roared in iron braziers, flames leaping hungrily.

A hush fell over the gathered pack.

Hostile faces surrounded her. Some twisted with cruel amusement. Others watched with solemn hunger. They had not come to witness a rite. They had come to savor her suffering.

At the center stood the altar, a slab of obsidian soaked in generations of blood. And beside it waited Alpha Darius.

He stood bare-chested, firelight dancing across the red runes painted on his skin. His dark hair fell past his shoulders like a wild mane. The golden mask hid half his face. One eye burned crimson. The other glinted a piercing, icy blue.

He looked like death wearing the skin of a man.

Their eyes met, and Lena's breath froze in her throat.

The guards forced her to her knees before him. Sharp stone cut into her flesh. She made no sound.

"Begin," Darius commanded, his voice striking like iron on stone.

Lena lifted her chin even as her body trembled.

A figure stepped out of the shadows. She was not a hunched crone but a woman of dangerous beauty, robed in crimson that shimmered like molten rubies. Her violet eyes glowed with power. When she spoke, her voice was soft and sweet, yet something merciless stirred beneath it.

The witch.

With graceful precision, she drew a crescent-shaped dagger, black as midnight and pulsing with dark energy.

A guard seized Lena's wrist and yanked it forward. She resisted, and he tightened his hold until bone ground against bone.

The blade kissed her skin, cold, then sliced deep. Lena gasped as her blood spilled into a waiting bowl, steaming where it met the night air. Sharp pain flared, followed by a deeper fire that twisted through her veins.

The witch marked her with the warm blood. Brow. Collarbone. Lips.

"Sanguine ligata est. In carne ligata, in fato aeterno devincta," she intoned, her voice echoing like stones grinding in a crypt.

The bond is sealed in blood. Bound in flesh, bound by eternal fate.

Lena's body shuddered. The blood carried a power she could feel to the marrow, ancient and unbreakable.

Darius stepped forward, gripped her chin, and forced her eyes up to his.

"You are mine now."

The crowd roared its approval.

The witch lifted the bowl and poured the remaining blood over Lena's head. It soaked her hair, ran down her face in red rivulets, and stained her crimson gown until it looked like fresh slaughter.

Then she offered the dagger to Darius.

He took it without breaking his stare and slashed his own palm. Dark blood welled thick and hot.

"Drink." He pressed the wound to her lips.

Lena turned her face away.

"Drink." Softer this time, and far more dangerous.

Magic coiled around her like a serpent. Her lips parted against her will and touched his flesh. Thick, metallic blood flooded her mouth.

She swallowed.

A scream tore from her throat.

Pain ignited inside her, setting her blood on fire and ripping at her soul. Her body convulsed.

The pack cheered.

Darius smiled. "Good girl." He smeared blood across her cheek in a mockery of a lover's caress. "You learn quickly."

But Lena was not learning. She was shattering.

The witch returned with a chalice of dark liquid. "The final seal."

Darius took it and brought it to Lena's lips. "Drink, and you become mine in body, mind, and soul."

Her eyes widened in terror. She fought to turn away.

She could not.

The potion touched her tongue, and fire consumed her from within. It tore flesh from bone and soul from self. Her back arched, and her scream drowned beneath the roar of magic.

She collapsed, twitching on the stone as the pack howled in triumph.

Darius knelt beside her, seized her chin, and forced her eyes open.

"Welcome home, wife," he whispered.

Darkness swallowed her.

~~~~~~~

Later that night, a raw, soul-rending scream shattered the silence of the castle.

Lena writhed against the invisible bonds of the blood oath, her body convulsing as ancient, vile magic tore through her veins like liquid fire. Her broken cries echoed down the cold stone halls, desperate and agonized, the sound of a woman being slowly unmade.

No one came. None dared.

High above, in the shadowed sanctuary of his private chambers, Darius heard every single scream.

He stilled for a moment, then smiled.

His hands gripped Scarlet's hips with bruising force as he fucked her without mercy from behind. His thick cock slammed into her soaked cunt in savage, punishing strokes, and the wet slap of flesh echoed off the walls. Scarlet moaned loudly and pushed back against him like a bitch in heat, her body trembling.

But it was not her voice that fueled him.

It was Lena's.

Another tortured scream ripped through the castle, longer and more broken than the last.

Darius's eyes darkened with cruel delight. He wrapped Scarlet's hair around his fist and yanked her head back as he drove deeper, his hips snapping brutally.

"Turn around," he growled.

Scarlet obeyed at once, flipping onto her back and spreading her legs wide for him. He shoved back inside her in one brutal thrust and buried himself to the hilt. He fucked her harder and faster, every stroke fed by the sound of Lena's suffering below.

"Yes, my Alpha," Scarlet gasped, her nails raking down his back. "Harder. Mark me. Let them all know I am yours."

But Darius was not listening to her.

He was listening to Lena.

Every scream, every broken sob, every desperate cry sent a dark pleasure surging through him. His cock throbbed inside Scarlet as he pictured Lena writhing in agony downstairs, her body burning, her mind fracturing, her spirit shattering under his curse.

He lowered his head and bit Scarlet's neck hard enough to draw blood, his hips pounding relentlessly. "That is it," he whispered against her skin. "Scream for me." The words were meant for the woman far below.

Lena's next scream was weaker, hoarse, almost animal.

Darius groaned, low and feral. His thrusts turned punishing, chasing the high of her pain. He imagined her tears, her helplessness, the way her body must be twisting in torment.

He came with a guttural growl, spilling deep inside Scarlet while Lena's broken cries still rolled through the stone.

Even as he pulled out, his seed dripping from Scarlet's ruined cunt, his mind stayed on Lena.

He would break her. Piece by piece. Until she forgot she had ever been whole. Until she looked in the mirror and saw nothing but the wreckage he had made of her.