Chapter 6- Wildling Among the Tamed
Sahiyra POV
They led me to a wide, circular room carved into the mountainside. The ceiling soared high overhead, ribbed with bones of ancient beasts, the walls etched with the sigils of the old gods. A dozen observers stood near the perimeter, high ranking males and a few females, all powerful. All curious.
“We’re doing all three,” Kylen told the official, his voice clipped. “Aura resonance, combat proficiency, and bloodline invocation.”
The official blinked. “All three? But...”
“She’s Myrren,” Jaxen growled. “Do it.”
Whispers exploded across the room like thunder. Myrren? Impossible. They’re extinct. This is madness. The testing official swallowed hard, nodded, and motioned me forward to the center of the stone ring. The ground pulsed beneath my bare feet. I took a breath. Then another.
“First...Aura Resonance,” the official said, holding up a glowing obsidian shard. “Stand still and release your natural energy.”
I did more than that. I unleashed it. My aura poured out like a flood, thick and golden and silver and tinged with violet, the wild energy of the beasts and something older, divine. It slammed into the shard, and the stone cracked straight down the middle with a sound like the world splitting in two.
The lights in the room flickered. Candles blew out. Several of the officials hit their knees. One woman screamed. I turned toward her slowly.
“Sorry. Was that too much?”
The lead official was pale as fuck. “T-that’s… that’s not even possible. You shattered a reinforced relic. That’s never...”
Kylen just crossed his arms and smirked. “Told you.”
Next test. “Combat assessment,” Jaxen said. “We brought a volunteer.”
A hulking brute of a man stepped forward. Shirtless, scarred, smug as hell. A bear shifter, probably level three or four. He cracked his neck like this was going to be fun for him.
“Don’t worry,” he chuckled. “I’ll go easy on you, sweetheart.”
I tilted my head. “Don’t.” He charged. It wasn’t even fair.
I ducked, spun, and swept his legs with a flick of my ankle. Before he hit the ground, I was already behind him, palm pressed to his spine. A ripple of soothing power surged through him, and he dropped flat, unconscious, smiling in his sleep.
The room was dead silent. “Combat proficiency: maxed,” Jaxen muttered, visibly trying not to laugh.
Third test. This one was different. The others stepped back as a carved stone altar rose from the center of the floor. Symbols of the beast goddess and god glowed faintly along the rim. The official’s voice trembled now.
“Bloodline invocation. You place your hand on the altar. If you carry divine or mythic blood, it will respond.”
I didn’t hesitate. I walked up and pressed my palm flat to the surface. It was like touching a lightning storm. A wave of heat and light exploded from the altar, slamming into the walls and surging out in concentric ripples. The ground quaked. The room shook. The ceiling cracked.
The sigils of the Beast Goddess and the Beast God ignited in blinding light. The altar levitated. Everyone fell to the ground.
And then, clear as day, a voice echoed in my mind.
"She is ours. She is chosen. She is more than Myrren. She is balance."
The altar dropped with a final thud. Silence. Nobody moved. I stepped back, flexed my fingers, and arched a brow. “So… how’d I do?”
One of the witnesses vomited. Another started crying. The official finally stammered, “There’s no… rank. No category for this. You don’t… you don’t fit. You’re beyond classification.”
“Perfect,” I said with a shrug.
Kylen walked over, staring at me like I just rewrote the fucking scriptures. “Sahriya,” he said slowly. “Do you know what this means?”
“Nope,” I said, popping the P. “But I bet you're gonna tell me.”
The second the altar stopped glowing and the room quit shaking, the whispers started. Then shouting.
Then someone bolted from the chamber like his ass was on fire, probably to tell whoever's in charge that some unknown forest bitch just broke the system. Kylen let out a slow breath beside me, tension rolling off him like heat. “We need to go.”
Before we even made it halfway to the exit, a tall male in crimson armor intercepted us. His chest was puffed up like he thought he mattered, and he smelled like authority and desperation.
“General Kylen. The High Council requests....”
“No.” Kylen didn’t even blink. “She just completed all three tests back to back and blew the damn ceiling open. She’s not a fucking prize on display.”
The soldier looked like he wanted to argue, but Kylen stepped forward and growled. Not just a regular little warning rumble either. This was a goddamn command from a beast king. The air shuddered.
The guy backed up instantly. “Of course. I’ll… inform them she needs time.”
Kylen turned to me. “What do you want, Sahriya?”
I blinked, lips twitching into a smirk. “Honestly? A nap sounds great.”
Jaxen chuckled low beside me. “Spoken like a true queen.”
We started walking again, back toward the main registration center, and I let my body relax for the first time since stepping foot in the city. I could feel eyes on me, whispers trailing behind like fog.
As we approached the doors, a woman sprinted toward us, completely out of breath, her clipboard clutched to her chest like it was the last lifeline she had.
“Miss Sahriya!” she gasped, eyes wide with awe. “I..um...just wanted to inform you that the second your results were uploaded into the system… you began receiving bond applications. Hundreds, actually. Possibly thousands by now. You can access your queue and review them when you have time!”
I stared at her. “I’m sorry. The fuck?”
Kylen inhaled sharply through his nose and muttered, “Shit. Right. I should’ve warned you.” He gave the woman a tight nod, then gently guided me outside, away from the gawking masses.
“Walk with me. I’ll explain.”
So I did. The city was fucking huge, all stone and steel grown into the bones of the mountain, vines trailing down the sides of ancient buildings. Beasts moved everywhere, mostly males. A few females. None like me.
“Okay,” I said finally. “What in the actual hell is a bond application?”
Kylen’s jaw tightened. “We’re in a crisis. You’ve probably noticed the ratio already. For every ten males born… one female, if we’re lucky. It’s getting worse. Something’s wrong with our people. The Beast God and Goddess cursed us, or maybe we did it to ourselves.”
“Because the females are treating males like shit?” I guessed.
He nodded. “They treat them like property. Toys. Half the bonded males are barely more than broken pets. Some never get bonded at all… and without a true mate, without that connection, most males eventually go feral. And when they snap, they either get caged, or...”
“Or put down,” Jaxen finished, voice quiet.
I stared at them both. “That’s fucked.”
“Yeah,” Kylen said. “It is. That’s why the bond system was created. It lets females claim and soothe. But even that’s been corrupted. Now, it’s more like hoarding. Power grabs. Abuse.”
We turned a corner, headed down a quieter path lined with massive stone columns and glowing lanterns. Kylen led us toward a thick wooden door guarded by two males who immediately bowed.
“This is my place,” he said. “Secured, reinforced, quiet. You’ll be safe here.”
Inside was a sprawling open room with a sunken firepit, floor pillows, high ceilings, and smooth stone walls. A living space worthy of a fucking king.
“You didn’t have to bring me to your place,” I said, raising a brow.
Kylen just smirked. “Did you want me to leave you somewhere less secure? Surrounded by horny strangers who want to ‘submit their bond application’ like it’s a fucking raffle?”
Fair. He gestured for me to sit, then dropped onto the cushion beside me. “You’re different, Sahriya. You’re not just female. You’re a shifter. The only one. And your power level is off the charts. You could bond as many males as you wanted and keep every single one of them stable.”
I blinked. “Wait, wait, wait. As in… more than one mate?”
Jaxen chuckled, sitting across from me.
“Not just ‘more than one’. You could have a harem. Entire fucking squads if you wanted. Your aura alone could balance them. Hell, it just soothed our entire patrol without a touch.”
“You could save us,” Kylen said, voice low and rough.
I exhaled slowly. “Okay… damn. That’s… a lot.”
Kylen nodded once. "Yeah. It is.”
But I wasn’t panicked. I wasn’t trembling. I was just sitting there, in a lion shifter general’s home, flanked by two of the most powerful males I’d ever met, who looked at me like I was made of fire and stars and maybe salvation. And I was finally starting to wonder...
What the fuck was I really born for?