CHAPTER 6

Logan’s point of view

The moment my fingers closed around her throat, I braced for it, the welcoming scent of scorched flesh, her agonized scream, and the way her skin would blacken and peel beneath my cursed touch. But nothing happened. There was no sizzle. No pain. Just warm and unmarked skin beneath my palm.

What exactly was happening? I couldn't believe it in the slightest!

I recoiled as if I was suddenly struck, and my chest tightened with something dangerously close to hope.

No. This was Impossible.

The woman, Selene, the sharp-tongued heiress of Silverwood, scowled up at me with her defiant eyes flashing with amusement.

“What? Did you forget how to strangle someone properly?” She sneered arrogantly.

My hands flexed at my sides, and suddenly the leather of my gloves felt suffocating. Without thinking, I grabbed her wrist and I squeezed hard. Maybe I will get the results I wanted now. Maybe I'd hear that satisfying wail as flame engulf her body.

There was still nothing, and waves of disbelief washed over me as I flexed my fingers and stared at them in total shock.

Beta Gareth took a step forward.

“My Alpha…“ He started in a quiet tone.

“Quiet.” I snapped and then tore off my gloves. The scars covering my hands, which were testaments of my years of self-inflicted punishment with every failed attempt to touch without destruction, stood visibly against my skin.

Selene’s breath hitched as I seized her face with my bare palms pressing against her cheeks. Maybe she'd burn if I touched her without the gloves. Maybe the gloves were the issue, right?

Silence, and yet again, there was no smoke and no blistering flesh at all.

She was warm but alive and definitely unharmed.

Her mocking smirk returned.

“Having an existential crisis, Ash King? Or did you just realize you can’t intimidate me?” She sneered.

A growl built in my throat. I was starting to hate this annoying girl more and more! The mouth on her was getting to me already and pulling away the little sanity I had left.

“How?” I asked more to myself than to her.

She rolled her eyes.

“Maybe your curse is as dramatic as your reputation.” She hissed.

The room was deathly still, and Gareth’s shock, the council’s wide-eyed disbelief, even the Silverwood escort, including Beta Ronan, were frozen in shock at what was happening.

I dragged her closer with my fingers digging into her jaw.

“You should be burning already,” I said in frustration.

Her pulse beat loudly beneath my thumb, but she didn’t flinch.

“Pity. Seems fate has a wicked sense of humor.” She remarked with a smirk, I hated more than anything.

For the first time in a century, I touched… I mean, truly touched someone, and they lived.

But the annoying thing was that she wouldn’t stop talking!

From the moment I touched her without destruction, following shortly, I felt something inside me fracture. My hands, which were weapons of ruin for over a century, had finally found skin that did not burn. And yet, the impossibility of it lodged tightly in my chest, making it almost hard for me to breathe.

I stared down at my palms with the scars twisting across my skin. Healed? The word forced its way out of my throat as I  whispered into the heavy silence of the chamber.

Selene’s sharp voice was relentless, though, as it kept cutting through my thoughts and mocking me irreverently. But I barely registered any of that.

The room around me suddenly became unclear with Gareth’s stunned silence and the council’s gaping stare, and even the way Beta Ronan of the Silverwood Pack tensed with his hand twitching toward his weapon before thinking better of it.

None of it mattered at the moment, and only her and the fact that the curse should have taken her the moment my bare fingers met her skin.

A surge of frustration went through me, and my gaze immediately snapped to the nearest Silverwood soldier, and without hesitation, I grabbed his arm to prove I was cured.

He erupted in a burst of unnatural fire, too fast and too violent. His scream was cut short as his body collapsed into a heap of charred bone and ash before it even hit the ground.

The curse still lived in me, but not for her.

What the hell is this?

I turned back to Selene with my jaw locked at the defiance still glittering in her stupid eyes. Even now, she stood there, unshaken, as if this entire revelation was nothing more than a small inconvenience.

“Throw her in the black cells.” I snapped as I cut off whatever taunt was forming on her lips. My soldiers immediately stepped forward and dragged the girl away.

Beta Ronan stepped forward immediately with his voice tight with restrained fury.

“You can't…“

“She is mine,” I interrupted with my voice sharp, unforgiving, and merciless.

 “A gift from your pack. Which means I do as I please with it. You have ten minutes to leave my land.”

The hostility between us deepened over time, but I didn’t care. My focus was already fracturing. This anomaly, this impossibility, demanded answers.

As soon as the Silverwood delegation stormed out, I dismissed the rest of the council, silencing Gareth’s murmured protest with a sharp look. The doors closed, leaving only the two of us in the stillness of the throne room.

Gareth exhaled with his excitement barely contained.

“Alpha Logan...”

“Speak.” I bit out.

“It’s never happened before,” he said in a low voice.

“Not once in a century.”

I clenched my hands with the scars whitening over my knuckles.

“I’m aware.”

Gareth hesitated and then said the words that sent a dread through me.

“I guess it's safe to assume that she could be the one, your fated mate.”

My head snapped up, and every muscle in my body locked in place. No, this was impossible and maybe a cruel joke of the gods. Because if she were…

My jaw clenched, and my hands curled into fists at my sides. This was worse. Far, far worse.