The next day dawned colder.
A thin layer of frost silvered the ground outside the tents, crunching under Juno’s boots as she stepped out. Her breath puffed white in the air.
Wolves moved slower this morning, shoulders hunched, hands wrapped around cups of steaming tea or coffee. The energy of the first blood moon had burned off, leaving behind a bone-deep ache.
The bond between her and Riven throbbed dully — not painful, but insistent. A reminder.
She tried to ignore the echo of her dreams.
It didn’t help that every time her thoughts brushed him, she felt his own embarrassment, his own restless arousal, tangled with exhaustion and a kind of grim humor.
*We are not talking about last night,* she told him firmly as she splashed cold water on her face at the communal basin.
*Agreed,* he said quickly. *I’d like to pretend my brain didn’t decide to go there while I was bleeding in a cage.*
Heat flushed her cheeks again.
“Gods,” she muttered to herself. “This is going to kill me faster than any demon.”
“Talking to yourself?” Ivo appeared at her elbow, steaming mug in hand. “Always the first sign you’re in too deep.”
She wiped her face with a rough towel, scowling. “Thanks for the professional assessment.”
He grinned. “Just saying. I’ve been on enough patrols to know when a wolf’s got that ‘my brain is a battlefield’ look.”
“Your timing is terrible,” she said. “Lysa wants me for something?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s at the cage. Again. Figured you’d want to be there for…whatever this is.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Already?” she said. “She doesn’t sleep, does she?”
“Pretty sure she naps standing up like a horse,” Ivo said. “Come on. She’s got a weird look in her eye. That usually means either genius or disaster. Sometimes both.”
Juno gulped down the rest of her coffee, for courage as much as wakefulness, and followed him.
***
The cage looked different this morning.
Not physically. The same iron bars. The same chain. The same battered man inside, sitting against the post, knees drawn up, arms draped casually over them.
But the air around it hummed.
Lysa stood a few feet away, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Corin beside her. Irena a few steps back, muttering under her breath. A cluster of ward-stones had been arranged in a rough circle around the cage, new ones Juno hadn't seen before — larger, darker, faintly glowing.
Riven looked…wary.
He watched Lysa the way a wild animal watches an approaching hand — ready to bite or bolt.
“You’re late,” Lysa said to Juno without turning.
“Some of us need coffee to function,” Juno said, stepping up beside her.
Riven’s gaze flicked to her, then away.
“You slept?” he asked quietly, like it mattered more than he wanted it to.
Juno nodded. “Some,” she said. “You?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Enough to dream. Not enough to rest.”
She knew that feeling.
Lysa cleared her throat. “Now that you’re here,” she said, “we can talk about this ridiculous idea.”
Juno blinked. “Idea?”
Lysa pointed at the cage. “I need someone to go in,” she said.
Juno stared. “In where?” she asked faintly, even though she knew.
Lysa gave her a look. “Don’t play dumb, Juno. It doesn’t suit you.”
Juno’s heart thudded. “You want someone to go *into the cage* with him,” she said slowly. “Why?”
“Because I can only see so much from out here,” Lysa said. “We’ve tested the wards. Strengthened them. Adjusted the spell on the chain to react faster if he tries anything. Irena’s layered a filter over the bars to dampen…foreign magic. From *her.*”
Irena nodded, fingers never stopping their subtle movements in the air. “Nothing of the…Below…passes in or out without me feeling it,” she said. “In theory.”
“In theory,” Juno repeated flatly.
“Yes,” Lysa said. “In practice, we need to see how far that theory holds when someone’s actually in there with him. Someone mated to him.”
Juno’s stomach flipped. “You want me to go in.”
Lysa’s gaze didn’t waver. “You’re the only one who can test the bond from the inside,” she said. “See how it interacts with the wards. With her pull. With…him.”
Riven went very still.
“That’s a bad idea,” he said quietly.
Juno shot him a look. “You don’t get a vote,” she said, more sharply than she intended.
He flinched, just slightly.
Guilt pricked her.
*That’s not fair,* her wolf murmured.
*Nothing about this is fair,* Juno snapped back.
Aloud, she said, “There are risks. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Corin said dryly.
“But there are also risks to leaving things as they are,” Lysa said. “Right now, your bond is…raw. Untested. We don’t know how much of you she can reach through him. If at all. You felt her last night, Juno. That tendril in your mind. If she can slip past the ward ring and into *you* any time you touch the bars, we need to know *now*, before it happens by accident when you’re around pups.”
The thought of that made Juno’s blood run cold.
She imagined herself picking up a child, laughing — then freezing as something slid into her mind. Using her body. Her hands.
Her jaw clenched.
“Couldn’t we…” she started. “I don’t know. Test it with…someone else. Someone the Maw isn’t interested in.”
“No one else has your bond,” Lysa said. “She targeted you. Or at least took advantage of you being…open. We can’t pretend otherwise.”
Juno swallowed.
Riven’s hands curled into fists.
“This is insane,” he ground out. “You’re going to put her in a box with me and hope your rocks and old woman’s muttering are enough to keep the Maw out?”
Irena bristled. “Watch your tongue, boy,” she snapped. “These ‘mutterings’ are older than your mountains.”
Riven didn’t apologize.
He stared at Lysa. “If she gets in,” he said, low and deadly, “she won’t just take a nibble. She’ll crawl into Juno’s bones. Wear her like a coat. You want *that* on your conscience?”
Lysa’s eyes flashed. “You think I haven’t considered that?” she snapped. “You think I’d risk *my wolf* if I wasn’t damn sure the alternative is worse?”
Her voice cracked on *my*, just a little.
Juno’s chest clenched.
“She’s already interested in Juno,” Lysa went on, more tightly controlled. “That ship sailed the second the bond snapped. Keeping Juno twenty feet away from your cage won’t change that. It’ll just mean we’re blind when she decides to reach again.”
She turned to Juno, gaze steady. “You are not a sacrificial lamb,” she said. “If at any point you feel something wrong, you get out. Immediately. You say the word, and I drag you out myself. Understood?”
The seriousness in her tone stole Juno’s breath.
She swallowed hard.
“Understood,” she said, voice rough.
Riven exhaled slowly. “I don’t like this,” he muttered. “At all.”
“Noted,” Lysa said. “Your comfort is, unfortunately, not my priority.”
He huffed a humorless little breath. “Story of my life,” he said.
Juno’s mind raced.
Going into the cage was insane.
It was also…inevitable.
If she didn’t, the bond would remain this raw, untested thing. A liability. A ticking bomb.
Better to poke it now, with elders and alphas and wards on hand, than ignore it until it exploded at the worst possible time.
She took a breath.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Riven’s head snapped toward her.
“No,” he said sharply.
She arched an eyebrow. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, remember?”
“This isn’t about control,” he snarled. “It’s about not handing your heart to a fucking pit and asking it to play nice.”
“My heart is already in this,” she shot back. “Whether I like it or not. I’m not letting her toy with it in the dark. If she wants it, she’s going to have to come through stone and steel and Lysa and me.”
The fierceness in her own voice surprised her.
Riven’s eyes darkened.
Something like reluctant admiration flickered.
“Your funeral,” he muttered. “Again.”
Corin cleared her throat. “Romantic bickering later,” she said. “Magic testing now.”
Irena stepped closer, eyes going unfocused for a second as she touched one of the ward-stones with her fingertips.
“The circle is ready,” she said. “The bars will…sting…if anything from Below tries to pass. You’ll feel it, girl.”
“Great,” Juno said faintly. “I love stinging.”
Lysa’s mouth twitched.
She laid a hand on Juno’s shoulder. “Last chance to back out,” she said quietly, so only Juno could hear. “I won’t think less of you.”
Juno’s throat tightened.
She knew that wasn’t true.
Lysa would understand. Respect the fear. But she *would* see Juno differently.
Some fragile piece of Juno — the one that had been nine and orphaned, looking up at Lysa like she’d hung the moon — couldn’t bear that.
“I’m in,” she said.
Lysa nodded once. “Alright,” she said, louder now. “Ivo, open the cage. Corin, you’re on Juno’s shoulder. If she twitches wrong, you haul her out. Irena, watch the wards. Juno, you step in. You do *not* touch him. Yet. You stand in the middle and breathe. We see what happens.”
“Stand in the middle and breathe,” Juno muttered. “Got it.”
Riven pushed himself to his feet as Ivo approached the cage door, keys jangling.
“Last chance,” Riven said quietly. “Please.”
The please snagged in her.
She looked at him.
He looked…really afraid.
Not for himself.
For her.
“We’re doing this,” she said softly. “Together. Remember?”
His jaw clenched. He nodded once, short, like it hurt.
Ivo slid the key into the padlock.
There was a click as it opened.
The door squealed on its hinges as it swung inward.
Juno swallowed.
Her heart pounded, loud enough she was sure everyone could hear it.
Corin’s hand landed firmly on her shoulder, a grounding weight.
“We’ve got you,” she murmured.
Juno stepped forward.
One foot crossed the threshold.
Nothing happened.
No lightning. No sudden voice in her head.
Her wolf bristled.
*We go all the way,* she said stubbornly.
Juno lifted her other foot and stepped fully inside.
The cage smelled like him.
Under the iron and old blood and earth, it was all Riven.
Her head swam for a second.
She stood very still.
The wards hummed faintly, like bees.
Her skin prickled. Not painful. Not yet.
She exhaled slowly.
“Status?” Lysa asked Irena.
The old woman’s eyes were half-lidded, fingers hovering over the stones. “Stable,” she murmured. “Circle holds. No…influx.”
Juno took another breath.
The bond pulsed in time with her heart.
Riven stayed where he was, pressed against the opposite bars, chain tight.
He kept his hands visible, fingers wrapped around the metal, away from her.
He was giving her space.
She appreciated it.
And resented that she appreciated *that*.
“How do you feel?” Lysa asked Juno.
“Like I’m standing in a cage with a stranger I’m supposed to fuck someday,” Juno said bluntly.
Ivo choked on a laugh.
Corin’s fingers tightened on her shoulder, warning.
Lysa’s mouth twitched. “Aside from that,” she said.
Juno closed her eyes for a second, reaching inward.
She felt the bond. Stronger, yes, with no bars between them. But not crushing.
She felt Riven’s presence more sharply — the throb of his ankle, the tightness in his chest, the way his shoulders ached from tension.
She did not feel *her.*
Yet.
“No different than before,” Juno said slowly. “Just…louder.”
Irena hummed. “Wards hold,” she repeated. “No…sliding.”
Lysa exhaled. “Alright,” she said. “Step toward him. Slowly. Stop when you feel…anything wrong.”
Wrong.
Juno wasn’t entirely sure how to define that anymore.
She took a step.
The chain rattled softly as Riven instinctively shifted back, even though there was nowhere else for him to go.
Another step.
She was close enough now to see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the faint stubble on his throat, the rise and fall of his chest.
Heat curled low in her belly.
*Not that kind of wrong,* she told herself firmly.
Another step.
They were an arm’s length apart.
His scent wrapped around her.
Her head swam.
The wards hummed louder.
Her skin prickled more.
Still no…intrusion.
“Anything?” Lysa asked.
Juno shook her head. “Feels…like it did last night when I touched the bars,” she said. “Hot. Close. But no…snake in my brain.”
Riven’s throat moved as he swallowed.
He was breathing faster now.
So was she.
Her palms itched.
“You said not to touch him,” she said through gritted teeth.
Lysa considered.
“We need to know what happens when you do,” she said. “Eventually. Better now, with Irena on full alert, than later when you lose your temper and grab him through the bars without thinking.”
“I don’t lose my temper,” Juno protested automatically.
Corin snorted. “Lies,” she muttered.
Juno huffed.
Riven’s fingers flexed on the bars.
“I can control myself,” he said quietly. “I won’t…grab. Or…pull.”
Juno wanted to believe him.
Her wolf already did.
*He wouldn’t hurt us,* her wolf said firmly.
*He literally ripped three wolves’ throats out last week,* Juno snapped.
*Not us,* her wolf insisted.
The certainty in that unnerved her.
Lysa’s gaze flicked between them.
“Okay,” she said finally. “One hand. Brief contact. If anything feels off, you break it immediately. Irena, you see the slightest change in the wards, you shout. Corin—”
“I’ll yank her,” Corin said.
“Riven—” Lysa’s eyes speared him. “You so much as *flinch* in a way I don’t like, I will drop you with a spell that’ll make last week feel like a nap.”
He bared his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Understood.”
Juno’s heart pounded.
She slowly lifted her hand.
His breath hitched.
She reached forward.
Every inch felt like a mile.
Her palm hovered an inch from his forearm.
His skin looked warm.
Rough.
Her fingers trembled.
She could see scars up close now — thin white lines, puckered puckered circles where claws or teeth had pierce—