The Bone Hall was a cathedral of silence.
Its entrance was carved into the mountainside behind the main keep—no windows, no torches, only a low-burning, blue flame that licked the ceiling like forgotten breath. The stone walls were lined with skulls—Lycans of past eras, warriors and kings whose bones had been preserved in ritual ash.
Elara had never felt so unwelcome.
"Outsiders do not enter this place," one of the elders warned as she stepped through the threshold behind Kael.
"I'm not just an outsider," she said coldly. "I'm the one the pact chose."
They didn't argue.
But they didn't hide their disgust.
Kael took her hand.
Not tightly.
Not protectively.
But deliberately.
Like a claim.
Or maybe… a shield.
At the far end of the hall, an altar rose in steps carved from petrified marrow. Upon it rested a circular basin, wide and shallow, filled with dark, coagulant blood that shimmered with silvery veins beneath the surface.
The Wolf King's remains.
Kael's father.
The one he'd killed.
The ceremony was ancient.
Each of the five elders stepped forward to cast a token of lineage into the basin: a tooth, a claw, a drop of their own blood.
When Kael approached, the room tensed.
He knelt beside the basin.
Rolled up his sleeve.
And made a cut across the palm of his hand.
His blood fell into the basin.
The surface shimmered.
Then hissed.
Like the blood itself rejected him.
"Elara," he said quietly, without turning his head. "Give me your hand."
She hesitated.
The elders growled.
"She is not of the blood."
"She is mine," Kael said, louder. "And blood has already accepted her."
One of the elders moved to stop her.
Kael bared his fangs. "Touch her, and I'll feed you to the basin myself."
The elder stopped.
Elara stepped forward.
Offered her hand.
Kael's fingers curled around hers.
He lifted her palm over the basin.
And let her blood fall.
It struck the surface.
The basin hissed again—
—but this time, it glowed.
The color shifted.
The blood boiled.
The silver threads writhed like living roots, forming glyphs that none of them could read—but all of them recognized.
The ancient language of the First Howl.
The language only the Wolf King had been able to speak.
Then the bones began to move.
A shiver ran through the walls.
The skulls lining the hall turned—one by one—until all of them were facing Kael and Elara.
And from the basin rose a shape.
Not a body.
Not quite a ghost.
A projection of memory and magic.
A towering, spectral wolf made of swirling ash and bone fragments.
Its hollow eyes locked onto Kael.
"You return," it said in a voice made of wind and flame. "And you bring her."
Kael lowered his head. "I seek judgment."
"You spilled my blood."
"I ended your tyranny."
The Wolf King's projection growled. "You always were ungrateful."
"You always were cruel."
The ghost turned to Elara.
"You do not belong here."
"I bled on the altar," she said. "And you woke for me."
"You are marked."
"I didn't ask to be."
"But you bear it still."
She lifted her chin. "I'm not afraid of you."
The ghost bared its spectral fangs.
"And yet, you should be."
Then it looked at Kael.
"You want her protected."
"Yes."
"Then make her sacred."
Kael frowned. "What?"
The ghost raised one clawed hand.
"Speak the rite. Claim her not as blood, not as mate, but as axis."
The elders gasped.
One dropped their staff.
"That rite is forbidden."
"It is final," the ghost said. "And binding across all bloodlines. She who is claimed as axis may not be harmed by kin. Her body becomes boundary. Her death becomes curse."
Kael looked at Elara.
She was still bleeding.
Still silent.
Still staring at a ghost made of the man who'd once broken her mate.
"Elara," Kael whispered. "If I do this—there's no undoing it."
She didn't blink.
"Then do it right."
Kael knelt.
Placed his hand in the basin.
The liquid ignited.
His voice, steady, sharp, rang through the chamber:
"By fang, by flame, by the shattered spine of the king who made me—
I name her axis of my reign."
The flames surged.
The glyphs carved themselves into the stone beneath her feet.
The spectral wolf howled.
And then collapsed into a swirl of ash that spun through the air—
—before slamming into Elara's chest.
She staggered.
Collapsed to her knees.
When she looked up, her eyes glowed faintly gold.
The mark on her collarbone burned brighter than ever before.
Kael knelt beside her.
"I just made you untouchable."
"You just made me part of your throne."
He smirked.
"You say that like it's a threat."
Outside the hall, the snow had started again.
Thick.
Heavy.
A burial of sound and vision.
But inside them, something had crystallized.
Not love.
Not quite.
But something colder.
And harder.
Oath.