The carriage interior gleamed like a jewel box—polished wood and gilded trim catching filtered sunlight through the windows. Leather seats, soft as butter beneath expensive fabric, should have been comforting but felt suffocating instead. Every surface reflected Majesty's face back at him: angular, cold, untouchable.
He sat in perfect stillness, storm-gray eyes fixed on the countryside rolling past. Trees, fields, cottages with smoke curling from chimneys—all foreign now, like someone else's memories. The familiar landscape of his childhood felt distant, alien.
"I'm really looking forward to the ceremony," Thane said suddenly, cutting through heavy silence. His enthusiasm was almost painful in its sincerity, bright and expectant in a way that made Majesty's jaw clench.
The Neon Moon ceremony. The sacred ritual every werewolf anticipated with reverence and joy—the night when the moon goddess revealed their destined mate. To most of their kind, it was existence's pinnacle, the moment giving meaning to everything before and after.
To Majesty, it felt like a noose tightening around his throat.
He didn't respond, didn't acknowledge Thane with a glance. His gaze remained locked on passing scenery, though he saw none of it. Instead, his mind filled with prophecy fragments, whispered words that had followed him like shadows since childhood.
*The cursed one. The one who breaks sacred bonds. The mate-killer.*
"Majesty?" Thane pressed, leaning forward. "What about you? Maybe you'll finally meet your mate at the Neon Moon."
The words hung like poison gas, toxic and inescapable. Majesty's fingers tightened imperceptibly on his armrest—the only outward sign of the storm brewing beneath his controlled exterior.
Before he could respond, Elijah's dry chuckle filled the space between them.
"Thane, you're obsessed with mates," Elijah observed, his tone carrying familiar amusement tinged with exasperation. "That's why you can't wait for the Moon. Stop projecting your romantic fantasies onto us."
Thane shot him a glare, flush creeping up his neck. "It's not fantasy, it's destiny. The moon goddess doesn't make mistakes."
"Doesn't she?" Elijah's eyebrow arched knowingly. "Tell that to unmated wolves who die alone, or those whose 'destined' mates turn out completely incompatible."
"That's different," Thane insisted, voice losing confidence. "Those are exceptions, anomalies. For most wolves, the bond is perfect, sacred, eternal."
"Most wolves," Elijah repeated, his gaze sliding meaningfully toward Majesty. "But not all."
Silence followed, pregnant with unspoken knowledge, heavy with prophecies and curses that had shaped their lives. Thane shifted, suddenly aware he'd wandered into dangerous territory.
"What if you actually find her, though?" Thane asked, voice quieter but determined. "Your mate. What if she's perfect for you, everything you never knew you needed?"
Elijah sighed resignedly. "Then I'll have no choice but to accept her," he said flatly, mechanically, like reciting a learned lesson. "The bond is sacred, inviolable. But honestly?" He leaned back, expression growing distant. "I'd rather the Moon Goddess delay my fate. Perhaps forever."
Thane's eyes widened as if Elijah had committed blasphemy. "You can't mean that."
"Can't I?" Elijah's smile was blade-sharp. "Freedom is luxury, Thane. Once you're mated, bound to another soul for eternity, what freedom remains? Every choice, every decision, every breath becomes about someone else. I've seen what the bond does to strong wolves—reduces them to shadows of themselves."
"But the love—"
"Love can be a prison as easily as paradise."
Thane turned toward Majesty desperately, seeking an ally. "And you, Majesty? What would you do if you found your mate?"
The question dropped like a stone into still water, sending tension ripples through the confined space. Majesty slowly turned from the window, movements deliberate and controlled. When his gaze met Thane's, it was like looking into a winter storm's heart—beautiful, terrible, utterly without mercy.
"Do I really need to answer that?" His voice was silk over steel, deceptively soft with a glass-cutting edge.
"Yes," Thane said breathlessly, suddenly aware of the predator across from him. "Just say it. Please."
Silence stretched taut as a bowstring. Outside, the countryside rolled past, oblivious to the drama within the gilded carriage. A hawk circled overhead, its cry piercing the air like a warning.
When Majesty finally spoke, his voice was quiet, controlled, absolutely final.
"I'd reject her."
The words fell like stones into a deep well, impact reverberating through sudden silence. Thane's face went white, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
"What?" The word was barely whispered.
Elijah shook his head knowingly, a wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "He's always said that, Thane. You know the prophecy."
"But what if it changes?" Thane's voice was desperate now, clinging to hope like a drowning man clutching driftwood. "What if the Moon Goddess gives you a mate despite everything? What if she's perfect, what if she could break whatever curse—"
"Stop."
The single word cracked like a whip. Majesty's hand moved with fluid precision, tapping once against the carriage wall with authority that brooked no argument. The sound echoed sharply and final.
Wheels began slowing with grinding protest, horses snorting as they halted abruptly. The sudden stillness felt apocalyptic after a steady travel rhythm, as if time itself had paused to hold its breath.
Majesty didn't wait for propriety or the footman's ceremony. He stood fluidly, hand already on the handle, stepping into crisp air with quiet authority that could command armies without raising his voice.
Cold hit him like benediction, sharp and clean after the carriage's suffocating atmosphere. He drew it into his lungs gratefully, feeling tension ease from his shoulders as wind cut through his dark coat.
Elijah followed, adjusting his cuffs with casual precision. "Tired of Thane's love guru questions already?"
Majesty allowed himself the ghost of a smile, barely more than a muscle twitch. "He just doesn't understand."
Behind them, the carriage door slammed with enough force to rock the entire vehicle.
"All I did was ask what if the prophecy was wrong!" Thane's voice carried across the empty road, wounded and frustrated, still clinging to naive hope that was both his greatest strength and most dangerous weakness.
Majesty didn't turn around, didn't acknowledge the plea. His gaze fixed on the horizon where storm clouds gathered, dark and pregnant with rain's promise. The sight should have been ominous, but it felt like a reflection of his inner landscape—turbulent, powerful, completely beyond anyone else's control.
"The Neon Moon is in three days," he said quietly, words more for the wind than Elijah, though he knew his friend listened. "I'll do what my mother asked. Attend the ceremony, play my part in the sacred ritual."
He paused, jaw tightening imperceptibly.
"But until then, I don't want to hear another word about mates, destiny, or the Moon Goddess's grand design."
The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the wind whispering through the grass and the distant hawk's cry. In that silence, Majesty found something approaching peace—the cold, crystalline clarity of a decision made and a path chosen, regardless of the consequences that might follow.
He began walking, boots crunching against gravel, leaving the carriage and its complicated cargo of expectations behind. The storm was coming in more ways than one, and he intended to meet it on his own terms.
The road stretched ahead, empty and unforgiving, much like the future he'd chosen for himself. Behind him, he could hear Thane's muffled protests and Elijah's patient responses, but the words were lost to the wind. What mattered now was the steady rhythm of his footsteps, the bite of cold air in his lungs, and the approaching darkness that promised to test everything he thought he knew about fate, destiny, and the power of choice.
Three days. Three days until the Neon Moon ceremony would force him to confront the very thing he'd spent his entire life preparing to reject. Three days to steel himself against whatever the moon goddess had planned, whatever trap she'd laid in the guise of divine blessing.
He walked on, shoulders straight, jaw set, ready to face whatever storm awaited—whether it came from the darkening sky above or the darker prophecies that had shaped his existence from the moment of his birth.