Chapter 315: We Have Less Than Thirty-Six Hours

Around him, his office looked like a library had exploded. Books covered every surface, stacked on chairs, piled on the floor, spread open across the couch where Sebastian sat buried in one of them. Ancient texts about curses. Prophecies. Moon magic. Pack law. Supernatural bonds. Anything and everything that might give them a clue about how to break a curse that demanded a life for a life.

So far, they had found nothing.

"Anything?" Nicholas asked without looking up from the map.

Sebastian did not even raise his head from the massive tome in his lap. "No. This one’s about blood curses. Wrong type entirely."

Across the room, Lucian sat in the window seat with his head tilted back against the glass and his hand pressed over his face. He had not moved in twenty minutes. Had not spoken. Just sat there with Zev pacing restlessly beneath his skin and the incomplete conversation with Lilith hanging between them like a weight.

She had come back from the forest yesterday. Had walked through the front doors and told them she was not leaving but she was not forgiving them either. Had demanded they work together to find another way to break the curse.

And then she had locked herself in her room and refused to see any of them.

Nicholas could feel her through the bond....awake, angry, scared, alive and it was the only thing keeping him from losing his mind completely.

"We have less than thirty-six hours," Lucian said suddenly, his voice rough from disuse. "Before Victoria comes for her."

Sebastian’s head snapped up from his book. "I know."

"Do you?" Lucian dropped his hand and looked at his brother with gold bleeding into his eyes. "Because we’re sitting here reading books while Lilith is upstairs with a death curse growing inside her and we have no fucking answers."

"What do you want me to do?" Sebastian demanded. "Stop looking? Give up? Tell Victoria she wins?"

"I want you to find SOMETHING!" Lucian was on his feet now, his control slipping. "Anything! A loophole, a weakness, a way to....."

"There IS nothing!" Sebastian slammed the book shut hard enough that the sound echoed through the office. "I’ve read seventeen books in the last twelve hours. Seventeen, Lucian. Ancient curses, Moon magic, prophecies, blood bonds....all of it. And there is NOTHING about transferring a curse from a mate bond or breaking it without the required sacrifice."

"Then we’re not looking hard enough....."

"We’re out of TIME to look!" Sebastian shot back.

"Enough," Nicholas said, and his Alpha voice cut through the argument like a blade. Both his brothers went silent immediately. "Fighting each other doesn’t help Lilith. Focus!."

Lucian clenched his jaw but nodded. Sebastian picked up another book without a word.

The door opened and Callum stepped inside with Finn and Eli behind him. All three Betas looked like they had not slept either, Callum’s normally neat appearance disheveled, Finn’s eyes shadowed with exhaustion, Eli moving with the careful precision of someone running on pure willpower.

"Anything from the archives?" Nicholas asked.

"No," Callum said, and he sounded as frustrated as Nicholas felt. "We’ve gone through every record your father kept about supernatural contacts. Every witch he consulted. Every magic user he made deals with. None of them specialized in curse breaking. Most of them are dead anyway."

"There has to be someone," Nicholas said. "Someone who understands Moon magic well enough to find a loophole in the prophecy."

"The witch father consulted seven years ago," Sebastian said, looking up. "The one who gave us the original prophecy. Can you still locate her?"

Nicholas had been thinking about that for the past twenty-four hours. The witch who had come to the estate when they were nineteen, who had examined them and told their father about the curse, who had said the full prophecy was unclear but they needed to find their mate and complete the bond.

She had to know more. Had to have seen something she did not share. Had to have answers they desperately needed.

"I don’t know," Nicholas admitted. "Father never told me her name. Never wrote it down in any record I can find. I was nineteen. I wasn’t paying attention to details like that."

"Then how do we find her?" Finn asked.

Nicholas was quiet for a moment, his mind working through possibilities. Then something clicked.

"Mara," he said.

All three Betas looked at him.

"Mara was there," Nicholas continued. "She served directly under Father. She would have been the one to make the arrangements for the witch to come to the estate. She might remember a name. A location. Something."

Callum straightened. "Even if Mara can’t locate the witch herself, I can try. I have contacts in the supernatural community. Old family connections. If we have a name, I can track her down."

"Let’s ask Mara first," Finn said. "See what she remembers. If she can give us anything to work with."

Nicholas nodded and looked at Eli. "Go get Mara. Bring her here. Now."

"Yes, Alpha." Eli was out the door before Nicholas finished speaking.

The office fell back into tense silence.

Sebastian returned to his book. Lucian resumed his position at the window. Callum and Finn began sorting through the scattered texts, organizing them by topic, trying to find patterns or connections they had missed.

Nicholas looked down at the map again and felt the weight of the deadline pressing down on him.

Thirty-six hours.

Less than two days to find a witch who might not even exist anymore, to track down information that might not be available, to discover a loophole in a prophecy that Victoria insisted was absolute.

And if they failed....

"No," Kael growled inside his chest. "We don’t fail. We find another way."

But what if there was not another way?

What if the prophecy really was absolute and breaking the curse really did require Lilith’s death?

What then?

Nicholas’s hands clenched into fists on the desk.

Then they would face the choice he had been avoiding thinking about since Victoria dropped the bombshell at the border.

Let Lilith die to save themselves.

Or refuse to break the curse and go feral knowing it would kill them all eventually anyway.

There was no good option. No path forward that did not end in death and loss and absolute devastation.

But if it came down to it, if they really had to choose....

Nicholas knew exactly what choice he would make.

He would choose Lilith. Every time. Without hesitation.

Even if it meant watching himself and his brothers deteriorate into the monsters the curse wanted them to become.