Page 41 of Collar Me Crazy
The table fell silent as everyone processed this possibility.
"That would explain why the disturbances started small and have been building," Emmett said slowly. "It's been feeding gradually, growing stronger with each couple that completed their bond."
"And now it's strong enough to actively attack the protective barriers," Cora added. "Instead of just feeding off the ambient energy."
"But if that's true," Moira said, "then completing more bonds would just give it more power to work with."
"Unless we find a way to cut off its food supply," Sonya said. "Or redirect that energy toward something else." Her hope was evident to everyone, but she didn’t care.
"Like what?" Callum asked.
Before Sonya could answer, a clear vision overtook her.
Threads. Seven of them, bright as comet tails, weaving from each couple into the outer fabric. Not fraying. Not rotten. Strong. The strain lay not inside the threads but at the edges, where a dark lattice pressed in like a web, siphoning luminescence. It drank at every bright junction, not to break the threads but to gorge on the spillover.
Darkness pouring through cracks in reality, but not random cracks. Deliberate ones, carved by something that understood exactly how to exploit the weaknesses in Hollow Oak's defenses. The Void wasn't just feeding on the magical energy from the mate bonds—it was using that energy like a scalpel, precisely cutting through the barriers that kept it contained.
Sonya gasped as the vision faded, finding herself gripping the edge of the table while concerned faces stared at her.
"What did you see?" Moira asked urgently.
"That we have been blaming the wrong thing." Sonya turned so the whole circle could hear her. "The bonds are not the fuse. They are the fuel The Void is hoarding until the Veil is too thin to hold. It is not love that breaks us. It's hunger."
"Hunger for what?" Freya asked.
"Our power. Our connections. Everything that makes us strong." Sonya's voice grew steadier as understanding crystallized. "Whatever this thing is, it's not random. It's intelligent, and it's been planning this for a long time."
"So what do we do?" Kieran demanded.
"We stop giving it what it wants," Emmett said grimly. "Cut off its food supply."
"How? By breaking our bonds?" Katniss's voice carried disbelief. "That's not exactly reversible."
"No," Sonya said quickly. "Breaking the bonds would probably make things worse. The energy has to go somewhere, and a severed connection would create exactly the kind of magical chaos this thing feeds on."
"Then what?" Cora asked.
Sonya looked around the table at the seven people who'd found love despite impossible odds, then out the window toward the sanctuary where Ryker was probably still building walls—both literal and metaphorical.
"We figure out how to use our connections as weapons instead of just power sources," she said finally. "And we do it fast, because I don't think we have much time left."
24
RYKER
The protective ward at the sanctuary's eastern boundary was cold when Ryker pressed his palm against it. Not just cool from the November air, but wrong—like touching metal in winter. His wolf whined, hackles rising as it sensed something fundamentally off about the magical signature.
"This one's compromised," he called to Emmett, who was checking the neighboring marker fifty yards away. "Whatever's been feeding on the wards, it's gotten stronger."
"Same here." Emmett's voice carried across the frost-covered meadow. "The ward's still active, but barely. Feels like it's being drained from the inside."
Ryker pulled his hand away from the stone, flexing his fingers to work feeling back into them. Three days since he'd woken up with Sonya's scent on his skin and the certainty that his world had shifted forever. Three days of increasingly frequent patrol calls as Hollow Oak's defenses continued to fail in ways that defied explanation.
They worked their way through the remaining boundary markers in grim silence, documenting the deterioration withmethodical precision. Each ward stone told the same story—steady drainage, weakening connections, and an underlying wrongness that made Ryker's wolf pace restlessly beneath his skin.
The animal had been agitated since yesterday, when reports started coming in from other couples about nightmares and unsettling dreams. Cora mentioned shadows that moved independently in her peripheral vision. Freya's apothecary had been overwhelmed with requests for protection charms and calming teas. Even Twyla's usual cheerful demeanor had developed cracks of worry.
"Last one," Emmett said, approaching the final marker on their route. "And this one's..."
