The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 358

Chapter 358: Love Him Enough To Lose Him

TEMPLE OF THE MOON GODDESS

River ran through white stone columns that caught the late afternoon light.

The priestess looked up.

She was standing at the altar, her silver eyes open, her white robes still, her posture carrying the particular quality of a woman who had been waiting rather than praying.

"I know why you are here, child."

River crossed the temple floor, her breathing ragged. Her eyes were red.

"The chosen bond between Tristan and I," River said. "Can you sever it without him being present?"

The priestess studied her. The study lasted three seconds.

"Yes."

"If I am the only one present, what happens?"

The priestess walked towards her.

"A chosen bond is built by two. It can be dissolved by one, but the cost is asymmetric. The one who chooses to break the tie takes the responsibility." She paused. "The damage falls upon you, child. All of it lands on the one who lets go. The other feels the absence, but the wound belongs to the hand that released."

"And Tristan?" River’s voice was barely a whisper. "He will not be harmed?"

"No, he won’t. The wound is entirely yours, child."

River took a steadying breath.

"Please perform the severing."

The priestess looked at her for a long time. The look carried the weight of a woman who served the Goddess and understood that divine mercy was sometimes indistinguishable from divine cruelty, and the girl standing in front of her was about to learn the difference.

✦✦✦

The stone slab was cold.

River lay on her back in the center of the temple, her white hair spread across the stone, her hands at her sides, her pink eyes open and fixed on the ceiling where the moonlight filtered through an opening that framed the sky in a perfect circle.

The altar surrounded her. The silver glow of the moonstone pulsed in rhythm with her breathing, as if the temple itself was syncing to her heartbeat before it was asked to stop something connected to it.

The priestess stood at her head. The words that came from her were older than the temple, carrying a cadence that belonged to the first age of Fae civilization, when bonds were woven by gods and severed by the same hands.

River’s hair began to glow.

The white turned luminous, the gold at the tips brightening. Her body followed.

Then the priestess stopped chanting suddenly. The cost of continuing was going to be paid by the least deserving person in this temple.

River glanced over at her.

"Please. It’s okay."

She gave a nod and continued.

The words reached the passage that commanded the tie to release. The magic in the temple responded.

The pain began at the star on her neck and radiated outward, through her chest, through her arms, through every nerve and vessel and pathway that their love had built over years of choosing.

River screamed.

TRISTAN’S QUARTERS

The dark veins on his face receded.

The corruption pulled back from his jaw, retreated from his temples, the black lines thinning and fading as the barrier between his soul and the fated tie dissolved, and the fated tie, freed from the obstruction of the chosen bond, began to do what it had been designed to do.

His body was healing. His soul was being stabilized by a connection to a woman he had never wanted, and the woman he had built everything for had just hurt herself to make it possible.

He got out of the bed. His legs were unsteady. His magic was recalibrating. The healers reached for him. He moved past them at a dead sprint.

✦✦✦

ONE HUNDRED MILES NORTH

Lucian Moon was running with his men. Wolf form, full sprint, the ground blurring beneath paws.

The pain hit him mid-stride.

It was beyond anything he had prepared for. A shock so violent it broke his shift, his wolf form collapsing into man, his body tumbling across the forest floor, scattering his men in every direction.

He landed on his back gasping.

His Beta was there in a flash, shifting mid-sprint and dropping to his knees beside him.

"What is it, Alpha?"

Lucian’s eyes were wide. Dilated. Fixed on the canopy above him, seeing nothing in it and everything inside his own chest.

The fated matebond between him and River was still there, still intact, still carrying her signal, but the signal had changed.

"What did you do, River," he breathed.