The tallest among them stepped forward. Kira—Elsa had learned her name during the rescue, when the Saber had cut through the traitors with an efficiency that made Sylas’s violence look restrained. She stood half a head above the others, her dark fur streaked with silver at the temples, a scar bisecting her left ear from tip to base. Her amber eyes swept over Elsa with the same clinical assessment she might give a navigation system before takeoff.
“Lady Elsa.” Kira’s voice carried the same low resonance all Yzefrxyl possessed, but hers held an edge of formality that felt deliberate. Practiced. “We are here to attend you for the Luna preparations.”
Attend. Not guard. Not escort. The distinction landed somewhere in Elsa’s chest, unexpected and heavy.
“I didn’t realize I was getting so many attendants.”
“Every Luna receives them.” Kira’s gaze didn’t waver. “Tonight, you are not a prisoner. You are not a pet. You are the chosen mate of the Alpha King, and the Luna room requires witnesses to your preparation.” She bowed her face, exposing her neck. “It is our honor.”
The word scraped against everything Elsa had experienced in this fortress. Weeks of chains and collars and careful political maneuvering, of being cataloged and assessed and found wanting by court and priesthood alike. And now these warriors—these lethal, scarred, battle-hardened females—stood before her and called it an honor.
She didn’t trust it. Couldn’t afford to. But something in Kira’s expression—steady, unflinching, utterly without pretense—made the suspicion harder to hold.
“Lead the way.”
They moved through corridors Elsa hadn’t seen before, descending into the oldest parts of the fortress where the stone changed texture and color. The walls narrowed. The Lux Tear veins grew thicker, their teal veins pulsed golden light in rhythms that reminded her of breathing. The temperature climbed, warmer than any part of the mountain she’d encountered, and the air tasted different—heavy, mineral-rich, like standing inside a geode.
Two of the Sabers walked ahead, two behind, and Kira kept pace at Elsa’s side. Their formation wasn’t protective in the way the Lux Knights arranged themselves around Sylas—weaponsout, eyes scanning for threats. This was ceremonial. Deliberate. A procession.
Elsa was being delivered somewhere sacred, and the Sabers were making sure she arrived like she belonged there.
The Luna room opened before them like a wound in the mountain.
Elsa stopped in the entrance. The chamber was carved from living rock, its walls threaded with so many Lux Tear veins that the entire space glowed teal and gold. The ceiling arched high enough to swallow echoes, crystalline formations scattering light into shifting patterns across the floor. At the room’s center sat a low stone platform draped in white furs, surrounded by shallow basins filled with liquid that caught the room’s ever-changing light and held it.
The warmth hit first—immediate, enveloping, nothing like the perpetual cold above. Then the scent. Sweet, heavy, layered—something floral and ancient that coated the back of her throat and made her pulse skip. She’d smelled traces of it before, in the ceremonial oils Sylas had used when he’d bathed her, but this was the source, concentrated and overwhelming.
“Frosted Tears,” Kira said, reading Elsa’s reaction. “Harvested from the nightbloom fields during the warm months and concentrated for ritual use. The oil enhances scent-bonding between mates and allows the Alpha to track his chosen across any distance.” She gestured toward the stone platform. “Please. Remove your garments.”
Clinical. Efficient. The same tone a ship’s medic might use before cutting away clothing to reach a wound.
Elsa stripped without hesitation. She’d lost her modesty somewhere between the crash and the first time Sylas had bathed her—somewhere between survival and the quiet realization that shame was a luxury she couldn’t carry in thisworld. The thin shift pooled at her feet, and the warm air wrapped around her bare skin.
The Sabers didn’t stare. Didn’t comment on the scars from the crash, the fading bruises from her prison restraints. The very chains that’d helped her survive… and buy time for Sylas to come her. They moved around her with practiced precision, each taking a position that suggested they’d done this many times before.
Kira took a basin from the platform’s edge—a shallow stone bowl filled with oil that shimmered like liquid gold. She dipped a cloth into it, and the scent intensified, rolling through the chamber in waves.
“Hold still.”
The first touch made Elsa suck in a breath. The oil was warm—almost hot—and wherever it met skin, her nerves lit up with a tingling awareness that bordered on electric. Kira worked methodically, pressing the soaked cloth to Elsa’s pulse points first. The insides of her wrists, where the blue threads of veins showed through translucent skin. The hollow of her throat, where her heartbeat fluttered against the pressure. Behind her ears. The crooks of her elbows. The backs of her knees.
Every place where blood ran close to the surface. Every place Sylas would track.
A second Saber—younger, with russet fur and quick, deft movements—took over the broader application. She worked the oil into Elsa’s shoulders, her collarbones, the line of her spine. The touch was impersonal but thorough, and wherever the oil settled, Elsa’s skin hummed with a low-grade warmth that sank deeper than temperature.
It was doing something. Amplifying something. She could feel her own scent shifting, layering with the Frosted Tears until she barely recognized what rose from her own skin.
“You’re changing how I smell,” she said. Not a question.
“We’re making you impossible to ignore.” The russet-furred Saber—barely older than Elsa, by the look of her—spoke without pausing her work. “The Frosted Tears bind with your natural chemistry and amplify it. By the time the Alpha King enters this room, your scent will be the only thing in his universe.”
“That’s...a lot of pressure.”
A sound passed among the Sabers—not quite laughter, but something adjacent. A shared exhale that carried amusement in its edges.
“The pressure is on him,” Kira corrected, wringing a fresh cloth. “He must prove he can scent you, track you, catch you, and still retain enough control to claim you without harming you. The Frosted Tears are your weapon, Lady Elsa. You will drive the predator to its edge and trust that the male can pull it back.”
Weapon. Elsa turned the word over while the Sabers continued their work. The oil had settled into a steady warmth across her skin, no longer shocking but constant, a second pulse layered beneath her own. She could feel the bond responding—Sylas’s distant presence sharpening, his awareness of her tightening like a wire drawn taut.