Mag-log inXAHEN.I stared at the wall in front of me as the water pelted down my entire body.I'd been in this shower long enough to prune.I couldn't bring myself to step out yet.The water was the only thing cooling the fire burning through my veins right now, the only thing keeping the anticipation of what I was about to do from climbing any higher than it already had. I was mere moments from going back to where I kept Theodosa and following through on this.Fucking her.Just thinking it now sent a full body shiver through me that I didn't entirely understand and wasn't going to examine too closely.I wouldn't lie to myself about it. I was nervous.But I was determined.I knew I needed to try this. To exercise it and see it through to the end. It was a slippery slope I was about to embark on and I was under no illusions about that. But what other choice did I have.Because looking at the way things had been occurring, I knew I was at a standstill.It wasn't a matter of wonder or coincidence
THEODOSA.I followed him nervously, keeping a few steps behind as he moved through the palace grounds ahead of me.He didn't pay me a single glance.Not a look, not a moment of his attention, nothing. And yet the pulse between us was there the same way it always was when we were anywhere close to each other. Thick and tense and chaotic, like a rubber band pulled too tight, making me scarily aware of him and myself and what we were to each other in a way I couldn't switch off no matter how much I wanted to.It was easy to forget sometimes that we were mates.That we were bound to each other by something bigger than either of us.Before all of this, I thought a mate bond was one of the most sacred things in the world.I believed in love and soulmates and true bonds with a scary sense of finality. Not just between mates either. I'd spent most of my solitude reading old human romance books alongside the more current wolf ones, losing myself in stories about people finding each other and fa
XAHEN.Every inch of me was lined with tension as I made my way through the palace hallways toward the council room.I pushed the grand doors open and all chatter around the table ceased immediately.All seven of them looked up at me at once.On any other day I wouldn't have been so peeved by it. Today my patience was especially nonexistent."Am I some sort of circus freak?" I asked. "Do I have a red nose? Paint all over my body?"Their gazes fell away from me as they mumbled amongst themselves, sensing the aggression behind the question well enough not to push it.I strode to my chair at the head of the table, pulled it out and slumped down into it."What's the status on Binny Fane?"Draven cleared his throat. "There's still been no word. Neither have we gotten even the slightest communication from the men we sent out." He glanced across the table before looking back to me. "None of our ships have returned either. Partie and Afnie haven't gotten a whiff of anything. It's almost like.
XAHEN.I balanced my weight on the thick branch and stared down at my prey.The bear hadn't noticed me.It was too focused on the triple-horned deer pinned beneath it to notice much of anything. The northern sectors magic fashioned it with six limbs, four of them front-facing, all of them currently doing the work of tearing the poor thing apart.The deer was still alive. Its eyes were already going dim. The deer knew it was over even if its body hadn't caught up yet.The bear ate without looking up once, tearing into its stomach and feasting, completely oblivious to everything above it.I was ready to attack.But I didn't. Yet.My lip curled in annoyance.Not because of the bear. The bear was the least of my concerns right now.It was my shadows.A small spark of nervousness ran through my chest at the thought of them and I resented the hell out of it. I'd had Theodosa pinned to that cabin wall, my hands around her throat, and my shadows had just vanished on me. Mid-command. Like they
THEODOSA.The forest was quiet.Not the quiet I remembered from the other times I'd been inside it. No running. No dark. No wolf hunting me through the trees.Just this.I was sitting on a root with my back against a tree trunk and Xahen's wolf was lying in front of me with its head between its paws, watching my face. It had been doing that for a while now. I had stopped being unsettled by it somewhere around the third minute.It was so big.I knew that already but knowing it and sitting three feet from it in actual daylight were completely different things. Its head alone, resting on the ground, came up past my knee.And it was looking at me like I was the most interesting thing it had encountered in some time.I reached out and put my hand on its head.It closed its eyes.The purr started immediately. That deep chest rumble that had no business coming out of something that could end a person without particularly trying. I scratched behind its ear. It pressed into my hand. The rumble
THEODOSA.I was trying very hard not to look down.Every time I did, my stomach dropped out from under me and I had to remind myself that Base knew what he was doing and the invisible floor under my feet was solid and I was not going to fall. The reminders were working about sixty percent of the time.I had both hands fisted in the back of Base's shirt. I was not apologizing for that.We were hovering near the treeline where Xahen's forest began, several feet off the ground, and the four of us had already circled the entire perimeter of the palace. No wolf. No blood. No destruction. No guards or maids or staff lingering anywhere outside, which meant whatever warning had gone out had been listened to, or at least listened to enough. The grounds were empty and quiet and the wolf was nowhere in the palace perimeter at all.Nala had decided we might as well check where I thought he might be.So here we were."Alright," Base said. "We're here." He glanced back at me and caught my expression
THEODOSA. I refused to flinch. He wanted me to cower. To stammer and blush and prove that I wasn’t serious about this. That I was just some desperate girl who’d crumble the moment he pushed back. I wasn’t going to give him that. “I want my brother released,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Se
THEODOSA.Obsidian in the daytime was a different beast entirely.The streets that had felt like a death trap my first night here were now just streets. Busy ones filled with people who looked like they had places to be and things to do. Stall vendors shouted over each other trying to attract custo
THEODOSA. I should try to escape. The thought had been circling my mind like a vulture for hours—maybe days—waiting for me to be desperate enough to actually consider it. I stared at the bars of my cell, then down at the silver chains on my wrists. The burns were worse now. Red and weeping,
THEODOSA.Ten years.I drew back from the bars, the weight of those two words crushing down on me like a boulder.Ten years locked in this cell? Ten possible years waiting for a king who believed I was his twice-over betrayer. Ten years hoping he'd shift back into a man who wanted me dead anyway?W







