Spellbound: Mated To The Tribrid

I packed light.

A change of clothes, the small roll of cash I kept hidden under a loose floorboard, the silver crescent pendant still warm against my skin, and the medical bag I refused to leave behind.

Everything else could be replaced. I had done this enough times to know the difference between what mattered and what only weighed me down.

The news about the Lycan King still played on a loop in my head. Peter Reeves. The man whose mouth had been on me only hours earlier. The man whose wolf had called mine mate. The most powerful Lycan in the realm now knew my face. I needed to disappear before someone connected the woman from the Black Moon to the crescent murders.

I locked the apartment, left the key under the mat for the landlord who never asked questions, and took the back stairs. The morning streets of Ashford were already busy. I kept my head down, masked my scent as tightly as I could, and headed for the southern edge of the city where the train lines still ran without too many checkpoints.

I almost made it.

Three blocks from the station a black van pulled up alongside me. The side door slid open before I could react. Two vampire soldiers in dark tactical gear stepped out with the kind of speed only their kind possessed. One of them caught my arm. The other pressed something cold against the side of my neck.

“Don’t struggle, Miss Fallon,” the first one said, voice flat. “Orders are to bring you in alive.”

I twisted hard, driving my elbow toward his throat. He barely flinched. The second soldier activated the device at my neck. A sharp, electric pain raced through my body. My wolf surged in panic, but the charge disrupted whatever control I had left. My knees buckled. They dragged me into the van before I could draw another full breath.

The door slammed. The van pulled away from the curb with smooth, silent acceleration.

I forced my eyes open. The interior was dark, the windows blacked out. One soldier sat across from me, watching with the bored expression of someone who had done this many times. The other checked a tablet.

“She’s the one,” he said. “Confirmed. Clinic physician. Present at the last crime scene. And she matches the description from the Black Moon.”

My stomach turned. They already knew about last night.

“Where are you taking me?” I managed.

“Vampire territory,” the first soldier answered.

“The acting queen wants a word.”

Richard was still away on his journey. That left his sister, Rose, in charge. I had heard enough about Rose to know that “a word” rarely ended well for anyone who interested her.

The rest of the journey passed in tense silence. I tested the restraints they had locked around my wrists—silver-lined, strong enough to hold a Lycan. My wolf snarled uselessly inside my head. The masking on my scent was slipping under the stress and the residual charge from the device. If they looked too closely, if they took a deeper breath, they would smell more than wolf.

I could not let that happen.

The van finally stopped. Doors opened onto cold stone and the sharp scent of old blood. Vampire territory. They marched me through a side entrance of what could only be the royal compound, past guards who did not bother hiding their curiosity, and down a long corridor that smelled of damp and iron.

Rose waited in a high-ceilinged chamber lined with dark wood and older portraits. She was beautiful in the way only pureblood vampires managed—pale, elegant, and utterly without warmth. She looked me over the way someone might examine a stain on expensive fabric.

“So this is the clinic doctor who keeps appearing near our dead nobles,” she said. Her voice was soft, almost pleasant. “And who spent last night in the arms of the Lycan King, if the reports are correct.”

I kept my mouth shut.

Rose smiled without showing teeth. “Search her.”

The soldiers were thorough. They found the pendant almost immediately. One of them held it up to the light. The silver crescent caught the glow from the high windows.

Rose’s expression changed. The polite curiosity vanished.

“Well,” she said quietly. “That explains rather a lot.”

She stepped closer. “The crescent bloodline was supposed to be extinct. Yet here you are, wearing their mark, appearing at every fresh corpse, and somehow catching the attention of Peter Reeves himself. Tell me, Miss Fallon—did you kill them, or are you simply the next one scheduled to die?”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Of course you didn’t.” She nodded to the soldiers. “Take her to the lower cells. I want a full interrogation. And keep the pendant. It may be useful.”

They dragged me down another set of stairs, deeper into the stone. The air grew colder. The cells were old, the bars reinforced with both silver and something that hummed faintly with residual magic. They shoved me inside one of them and locked the door with a heavy clang.

I landed hard on the stone floor. The charge from earlier still left my limbs heavy. I pushed myself up slowly and checked the damage—bruises, a shallow cut on my palm from the broken glass that morning, nothing that would kill me. My wolf paced restlessly behind my ribs, still trying to reach for the mate bond that now felt impossibly distant.

The corridor lights stayed on. Somewhere far above, Rose was already planning the questions they would ask me.

I leaned my head back against the cold stone and closed my eyes.

This was only the beginning.