You Chose Me. Now Stay.

𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬 | 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐝 | 𝐒𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧 | 𝐀𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦

The bond was never a choice.

Reena Sterling and Cassian Thorne grew up running the same borders, sharing the same secrets, trusting each other with the kind of ease only childhood friends can know. Until life tore them apart and left whatever they once were nameless and unfinished.

Now their packs demand an alliance. The solution is clean, efficient, and merciless: a forced mating bond. A political claim neither of them fights.

Cassian accepts it the way he accepts every burden; without hesitation, without explanation. He offers no warmth, no reassurance. Only distance. Controlled. Intentional. As if space is the last defense against something that could ruin them both.

Reena gives him nothing in return. No flinch. No plea. Just the same quiet control she's perfected since the day she lost everything that once mattered.

But the past they buried doesn't stay silent. Old grief surfaces in jagged silences, in words meant to wound, in the way they still reach for each other before pulling back. Every sharp remark, every deliberate cruelty, is just another attempt to push the other away before the bond can claim what little of their hearts remains.

Yet something older than their pain is stirring.

Raven-thorn marks spread through the packs like a debt coming due. A woman waits at the treeline; marking wolves, marking boundaries. She is not here for the alliance.

She is here for what was stolen long ago.

And Reena is beginning to realize she is not the hunter in this story.

𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑡.

Will the forced bond become their cage... or the only thing strong enough to heal what they both lost?