After the events of the night before, the library seemed unnaturally quiet. And dark. Eli cleared his voice once to break the ominous silence and searched the light switch. Oh, great. It wasn’t working. At one point, the power had gone off – he remembered that – but then, he clearly recalled that it had come back. Or was he losing track of his own memories?
That meant that he needed a flashlight. Since he often studied here after hours, he knew where everything was. While struggling to ignore the fallen stacks and books strewn everywhere, the only remaining witnesses to what happened here only a couple of days before, Eli tiptoed around the librarian’s desk and searched the top drawer.
There it was. He grabbed the flashlight and pointed it straight ahead. The tall windows barely let the morning light in; usually, Eli loved this time of the day because he could still use the desk lamp and sink himself in study while pretending it was night and quiet. But right now, it gave him the chills. Had the large library always been so dark?
He stepped carefully over the scattered volumes, swinging the flashlight left and right, examining the damages. Hopefully, what he needed wasn’t among the damaged books now lying on the floor.
Jack had said some really worrying things. Eli could only hope that Rhett was alright; could it be that he still lingered in the woods surrounding the academy grounds? If he was close, Eli would love to be capable of sensing him. Although Rhett had released him from their bond, that wasn’t said and done, right?
He started reading the spines one by one. It seemed like a tedious task, and it was, but he didn’t know what else to do. Rhett had seemed so apt at finding the book he needed that time when he’d barely sank his hard cock in Eli’s ass for the first time. Wait, it wasn’t exactly the first time, but what happened between them during those fateful hours wasn’t hard to explain. They had fucked continuously with barely any break like two people who discovered that they couldn’t get enough out of each other.
A soft glimmer of gold light caught his eye from the left. Eli pointed the flashlight at the same spot, but the glimmer was gone. With a sigh, he resumed his usual perusal, but it happened again.
This time, he kept his flashlight down and moved closer. A book jutted out at a strange angle, as if an invisible hand had pulled it out only for him to find it. At this point, Eli didn’t intend to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He grabbed it and, fingers trembling with anticipation, he took it to one of the still intact desks. He placed it on the dark mahogany wood surface and stared at it, not knowing what he should do next.
Its cover was dark leather, scarred and uneven, etched with the faint impression of a wolf’s head in profile, his jaws open in a silent howl. The title was almost hidden, pressed into the hide in silver script that caught the light only when Eli tilted it slightly.
“On the Nature of the Bond,” he whispered, as if this room still functioned like a normal library and he should be careful about not disturbing others’ study efforts.
Well, it looked like this book was exactly what he needed. Still, he hesitated. What was he going to find in there? Would it be something terrible, like Jack had warned them about? But if Rhett knew that breaking the bond would destroy him, what did he choose to run away?
His stomach tightened. It was now or never, he decided. He doubted he’d have the guts to open it if he waited longer than that. With one last deep inhalation, he opened the book abruptly.
“When a lycan chooses, the bond is irrevocable. The mate becomes more than a mere companion; he becomes the axis upon which the wolf’s existence turns.”
That was the first line of the first chapter. This book, on the nature of the bond, as it advertised itself, wasn’t as heavy as the other Rhett had picked before, but the writing was small and tortured.
Written by hand, Eli realized. It wasn’t just some stylistic choice for a font. At a closer look, he could see the small hesitations and spots where the scribe’s hand had lingered too long on the page, forcing the paper to absorb more ink.
He had to read on. His lips moved, and his voice broke the silence once more.
“The bond is not a tether to be loosened at will. It is the life essence by which the wolf endures. Should the mate sever or deny the bond, the lycan’s spirit unravels. No prince, no alpha, no lineage is spared. To be rejected by one’s mate is to be undone, body and soul, until nothing remains but an empty husk.”
Fancy words, but they meant the same thing Jack had warned them about. Eli began to browse through the pages, his nervous fingers threatening to rip open the old paper now and then. There had to be something about breaking the bond without such terrible consequences. There just had to be.
His eyes moved rapidly over pictures of tortured lycans dying in horrible ways, rejected by their mates. If this book intended to convince him that he should just accept his fate as a breeding sow for Rhett’s lineage, it was doing a pretty good job.
There weren’t many pages left, he realized with dread. Maybe this book wasn’t what he should be reading right now. Others had to exist in this large library. Those were just empty words he told himself because deep inside, Eli knew very well that he had just the book he needed. Fate or whatever hung upon their heads had pointed him to it. There was no other book.
Severance and Survival
The chapter titled, written in dark red, popped in front of his eyes like a final means of salvation. He started reading avidly.
Though the bond is absolute, history records a rare rite of unmaking. Known as the Severance, it may unbind wolf and mate without the death of the chosen. The cost is terrible: the bond’s power must be burned out, devoured by ritual flame. The human must willingly sacrifice life essence and memory, surrendering what was shared. The wolf will live, but the mate will be forever emptied of him, left hollow where the bond once rooted.
What was that supposed to mean? Would he… just forget about Rhett? When he was being bent over the table and forced to accept the lycan’s knot, he would’ve been so happy to get a magic pill that could make him forget everything. Only that, right now, Eli worried that he might not be able to do it.
His eyes met the illustration attached to the description of the ritual. A young beautiful man was masturbating before a large fire.
So life essence was… practically sperm? Eli watched the illustration for a while until he realized that he needed to turn the page to learn about the rest. A fallen lycan leaned on one side with his mate towering above him with empty eyes. Eli felt a frisson moving through him as he took in the scene. Albeit non-violent compared to what he had seen so far in the book on the nature of the bond, it filled his heart with unexplainable dread.
The Severance cannot be undone. It breaks the bond, but also the spirit. The lycan and his mate will both survive, but they will never be the same.
Eli’s eyes remained fixed on the last line for a while. He felt hollow inside and he couldn’t explain it.
A movement, right behind him, made him freeze.
“Don’t worry, Eli. It’s only me.”
“Rhett?” Eli jumped to his feet, closing the book abruptly.
He couldn’t see him at first. When he emerged from the darkness engulfing half the library, he could barely move. Eli hurried to him. “What happened to you?”
He bit his lips right away. Was he out of his mind to ask such a thing? He was the problem. He was the mate who rejected Rhett, and now the lycan prince was suffering.
“I found the book. We can severe the bond, Rhett,” he said, dragging the lycan prince to the desk.
“Ah, this book.” Rhett’s breath came out pained. “I came here to destroy it. But you were faster than me. Or I was too slow to understand that you wouldn’t let things as they are.”
“Destroy it? Why? It says here that you don’t have to die if we just do this ritual thing,” Eli pointed out.
“This ritual thing,” Rhett said, “will leave you scarred, Eli. I can’t allow that. Why did you have to look for it? Who told you?”
“I have half a brain,” Eli shot back. “Jack told us about how you, lycans, can’t survive without us, and I knew you studied arcane texts here, so here I am. Were you planning on dying alone only so I could have the life I wanted?”
Rhett groaned as he leaned back into the seat. He was in great pain, and Eli wished he knew what to do to alleviate his suffering. Being so close to him made Eli’s nostrils flare. Even in his bad shape, Rhett stank of desire. Unfulfilled desire, which Eli was starting to experience, as well.
“Let me destroy it,” Rhett said, moving one hand to grab the book.
Guided by instinct alone, Eli pushed the book away, close to the edge, where Rhett couldn’t reach it unless he made an effort that seemed impossible for his current state.
“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself like this. We can do it. The ritual will make sure that you’re no longer attached to me.”
Rhett let out a low, dark chuckle. “Do you believe it is what I want? What I want, Eli, is to sink my knot in you and force you to have my children. I want nothing else but to turn you into my breeding bitch, meant for one purpose.”
“You already released me,” Eli argued. “I get that you feel the need to be rude so you can push me away, but this isn’t how it works. You don’t want us to perform the ritual because… what?”
“You will be empty of me, and I of you,” Rhett explained, his breath catching a couple of times. “You will have to live with a part of you missing. I know I cannot survive anyway. Why should it happen at the expense of your sanity? Just leave, Eli. I ran away without thinking you might stumble upon this dangerous book. The only fault I find myself in this situation is that I arrived too late, and now you know of its existence.”
“Come on, man,” Eli made a lame attempt to joke, “we’ve only fucked like a dozen of times. How hard can it be--”
He didn’t finish his thought. Pain flared behind his eyes, inside his skull. It took him a moment to notice that Rhett’s eyes were flashing golden and were fixed on him.
“Stop looking at me,” Eli ordered.
“Do you understand now, Eli? How it will feel? Are you willing to live like this all your life because of a mistake I did?”
“And what mistake was that?” Eli mumbled.
“The mistake of choosing you instead of someone else.”
Eli pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. The pain was receding, but he understood it for what it was. With Rhett so close, his doubts were fading to fine dust.
“You would’ve done the same for anyone,” he said gently.
“No,” Rhett said with conviction. “It’s you I don’t want to hurt, don’t you understand?”
Eli stood and walked to the tall window. Above, the flicker of blue sky was all he wanted to see. It seemed so normal, so like what he had lived until he ended up as Rhett’s mate. It would change, but he was in charge of his desire. Or should he just insist that Rhett followed the ritual?
No, he decided. He wanted to find a solution for breaking the bond so Rhett could live. Now that he knew that Rhett would suffer anyway, that Rhett would end up forgetting him completely—
He didn’t want that. He rushed to Rhett and hugged him tightly. “Rhett,” he said, “I made up my mind. I don’t care if I’m a breeding bitch to you. I can’t live--”
“—with knowing that you killed me?” Rhett pushed him away. “That is not on you, Eli.”
“No, no, just listen to me,” Eli said, hurrying after the lycan, who was now trying to get away from him. “I can’t live without you. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“What?” Rhett moved his head abruptly to look at him.
Eli linked his hands together to offer a proper plea. “I don’t want to forget you. So no dice on that ritual. Noel may want to do it, or maybe even Micah, I don’t know. But I don’t. It’s all too clear to me now that you’re here.”
Rhett let out a low, animal-like, growl. “You are only reacting to my scent.”
“Yeah,” Eli said matter-of-factly, “the scent of your cock.”
A muscle twitched in Rhett’s jaw. Eli was counting on the wolf’s instincts to take over. “Be careful, Eli. Once you force me to go back on my word and you turn yourself to me--”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eli said quickly, before he lost his courage. “I want to be yours, so there’s that.”
He had to be insane, but after reading that book, he understood that the ritual called the Severance wasn’t an option for them.
“It’s only because I knotted you that you think this way,” Rhett insisted.
“Do you think that only because I put my ass up for you to fuck it raw, I don’t have a mind of my own? Are you truly a lycan prince wanting to establish his lineage again? Then fuck me silly.”
Rhett lunged at him so quickly, Eli yelped. Thankfully, he was on his back, his feet in the air again.
“I will knot you, bitch,” Rhett warned him. His face, so pale until now, seemed to come alive like fire.
tbc
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