Dark Love

Part 87

Wind whooshed by her ruffling her hair to fall across her brow. There is no pathways for wind in a closed off dungeon. "Sign the contract, Saera." Darr whispered into her ear. She flinched. He'd been over by the thick metal restraints chained to the wall and now he lingered behind breathing over her shoulder.

But it wasn't Darr who captured her attention with an unexpected sting piercing into her heart. "Cade," she breathed out. Her one true mate. The only one of the three genuinely meant for her. "Cade?" Her voice wobbled with her uncertainty.

He stepped out from around the corner, making his presence visible to all. Her heart thudded in her chest. He was there but he did not seem inclined towards attacking the others. He did not appear to side with her over this.

"Sign the contract, Saera," his voice rumbled out, echoing the clear chants of the rest.

Betrayal sang loud and clear in her blood. Her hand trembling as she lifted it palms up in invitation. She eyed them each. Meeting their gaze head on one at a time, her spine stiffening at the irrefutable determination she saw in them. They would accept nothing else. Nothing but her signature in blood on the contract forbidding her to mate with another. Binding her irrevocably to the four of them.

"Bring it," she said, this time her voice coated over with steel. The paper appeared in a flash on her palm. Darr reached out to take her other hand in hers then. She turned to stare back at him, her gaze lightening with sudden hope to find an alley in him. But then his incisors lengthened and he lifted her thumb to his teeth, dragging it's sharp edge against her tender skin, slicing into its depth until her blood bubbled over.

Tugging her hand free, Saera gritted her teeth baring them back in a menacing grin that meant pure business. They wanted her name on this paper, so she would put it on the paper. But the terms will be her own.

Closing her eyes in concentration, she searched her memory for a chant that could work. And an old passage off a long forgotten book winked startlingly into her awareness. Her eyes flew open then with renewed determination and then looking down at the paper, she smeared her blood across its surface in a time as old as time. The rune of the betrayed wife... barring her mates from her bed for all iternity. There was only one cure to heal the breach caused by this rune. True love. True love won. True love given.

Her fingers pressed against each other smearing the blood across each finger as they flew nimbly over the parchment of paper inking in the binding of her soul against another. Adding the four to list proved no difficulty. While her soul was already bound to them, her body still belonged to herself. And this rune prevented her soul bound mates from ever touching her again.

She finished off with her name smeared with a flourish across the now blood covered parchment. A muttered chant later and the blood turned invisible, sealing the deed as done.

Darr hissed in sudden pain, jerking away from her. She turned to catch him lifting up his scalded hand to his scrutiny.

"What the fuck did you do?" He hissed at her, his tone turning dark with sudden anxiety.

"Saera," said Svennett, reaching out to touch her next. His yell of pain was music to her ears.

"Fuck! What the hell?" Svennett looked down at his open palm covered in blisters.

"Exactly." Nodded Saera, looking at each and every one of the men who had bound her soul to themselves. "What the fucking hell."

"What did you do, Saera?" The anxious question drew her eyes over to the wolf who now had the nerve to look betrayed himself.

"What I did was what I should have done from the start," said Saera, before turning to push Svennett aside with the open palm of her hand. Her hand connected with the fabric of his expensive silk covered chest but he still yelped out at the burn from the contact, stumbling out of her way as he did so.

"What did you do?" Cade rumbled out in a low growl, his wolf rising to the surface in his anxiety, his silver eyes aglow with the change that was coming upon him.

"I did as you asked, Cade. I put my name on the paper," Saera said, sweetly.

"You did a lot more than that, luv." Nick refuted, a frown playing heavily across his features.

Saera merely shook her head as she boldly walked past her mates, knowing none of them could touch her now.

Darr muttered a spell to stop her in her tracks, but aside from the little jolt to her step, it bounced off without impact. He tried again with another muttered chant, to same effect. Svennett joined him with his own array of whispers but Saera merely marched on unaffected by her mates efforts to hold onto her. She was slipping out of their fingers in more ways then one.

Saera took another step forward, making her way towards the set of stairs that would lead her out of the dungeons. Her pace growing more hurried and determined with each step she took. She was claiming her freedom back, with every step away, she was claiming her life back from her mates.

It was going to be a long solitary existence without the touch of her mates. Painful, even, knowing they could, and likely would, take on other spouses of their own. But it was only expected that her freedom would come at a price. A price most witches could never make. The price of lost hope...of ever knowing... true love.