Darius's POVWhen I entered, the grand hall seemed like a tomb, packed with drawn pack faces, their very lives contingent upon my ability to step up and lead them through the crisis. Captain Marcus was next to the head table on one side and Dr. Matthews and three senior pack members were on the other side, expressions grave as they spoke about the hunting accident that had taken three of our own.I straightened my spine and stitched firmness into my voice as I neared, but each step felt like trudging through quicksand. The defective mate bond thrummed with Lily's rage and determination, and something else I didn't recognize, something that made my wolf itching and jittery under my skin.āReport,ā I snapped, trying to sound more authoritative than I actually was.The three hunters had been chasing down a rogue bear by the eastern border, started Captain Marcus, his grizzled face pinched in distress. āThe animal came out of nowhere and attacked them. Thomas Blackwood, broken leg and gas
Lily's POVSomething fundamental had changed inside of me during my visit to the old prison cell. Where I used to wear my heartbreak like an open wound, it had turned hard and brittle ā a diamond-sharp clarity that cleaved down through years of confusion and self-doubt.Now I knew why the Luna mark had never gone away, why I'd never turned my back on Darius despite every logical reason to loathe him. The unfinished mate bond was a shackle that linked us, keeping us pinned together in hell and neither could find peace until it was fulfilled⦠or until it was severed once and for all.āHe didnāt mean to let me go,ā I thought as I scrubbed the floors at the old grain storage building. What an asshole, right? This still doesn't excuse him doing what he did, but I think he knew, even when he told me to get out of his life, even when he put me in stasis, that I needed to be bound to him forever by more than a debt so I'd be a burden rather than an ally.I should have been an eruption of rage
Darius's POVThe bottle of whiskey was empty on my desk, three other empty bottles strewn on it, evidence of its peers that I had downed over the last two days. The amber liquid had not soothed the voices in my head, nor relieved the severe weight of guilt that settled like a slab on top of my chest.I hadnāt so much as stepped outside my study in seventy-two hours. Meals were neglected, papers stacked and letters unopened, and a constant procession of servants and counselors knocked on my door, greeted with progressively violent salutations. I could not show my face to anyone at the moment, not fake being the strong, decisive Alpha they all were in need of while my emotions were barely in my grasp.The unfinished bond was eating away at me, providing me with every emotion Lily felt as though they were drops of poison seeping into an open cut. Her grief, her fury, her resolve ā all of it poured into me through our link, coursing through me and mingling with my own hatred of self to th
Lily's POVThree weeks after I was transferred out to the outer buildings, I still hadn't figured out why. One day Iād been in the main palace, choosing flowers and plumping pillows for the guest chambers and setting the tables in the feast halls, and the next I was scrubbing floors in the laundry and shoveling manure in the stables like the basest packback.āIt is for your own safety,ā Mrs. Henderson had said when she broke the news. āThe Alpha is worried about what happened to you ⦠after you were poisoned. He is of the opinion that you will be safer if you are occupied elsewhere while the main part of the palace is occupied."But her answer left me less than satisfied, especially when I considered the timing. Iād been transferred only a few days after that awful scene in Dariusās study, when he had remembered something and then pushed me away in a rush of inhumanly cruel indifference. It seemed too obvious a connection to be accidental."He's running scared from me," I grumbled to
Darius's POVThe weight of what I had remembered, now, was crushing ā and instead of making me want to confess or to redeem myself, it now made me desperate to get out. All the things I recalled now, all that cruelty by design, his efforts to torture Lily for the longest time made me want to run in the opposite direction of the truth.I couldn't face her. Not now. Not ever.āThatās more than anyone could bear,ā I muttered to myself as I strode about my study like a tiger in a cage. "This can't be real. There has to be something wrong here, some explanation that doesnāt make me a monster.āāBut as I was saying it, I knew it was a lie. They were far too clear, too specific, too uniform to be anything else but the truth. Iād terrorized an innocent woman for 2 years, kept her captive in a dungeon, and forced her to watch as she suffered for the abomination of being chosen as my mate by the Moon Goddess.I ought to go to Lily now, and ask forgiveness which I didnāt deserve. But the coward
Darius POVSitting up in bed I pulled at my hair angrily. The incomplete fragments of memory that had come back to me when I was facing Lily were incomplete, like puzzle pieces thrown out on a table, half their edges missing. I remembered refusing her, remembered the mate bond between us, but there were holesāblack, scary holes the dreams seemed determined to fill."This is crazy," I muttered, tossing the blankets and crossing over to the window. It was still hours until dawn, and I realized I wasnāt going to get back to sleep now.At this time the palace was silent, its occupants resided in peaceful sleep, a gift I could nevermore take for myself. I prowled aimlessly through secret corridors with my feet bare on the cold stones of the floor. Something kept pulling me further in the palace, to places I didnāt often frequent, to things that held shadows and secrets that I couldnāt quite recall."Where are you leading me?" I inquired of the deserted hallway, feeling ridiculous talking t