All Chapters of My Grief Counselor’s a Liar: Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

Three days passed without incident.Jaxon and Elijah fell into a careful routine. Mornings spent training—Elijah teaching Jaxon to recognize when his power was building, how to breathe through the pressure beneath his skin. Afternoons devoted to research. Darius had compiled everything he could find about Veilborn, though the information remained frustratingly incomplete.Evenings were quiet. Domestic. Almost normal.Almost.On the fourth day, Jaxon woke with a scream caught in his throat.Elijah was beside him instantly. "What is wrong?"Jaxon sat up, clutching his left wrist. His face was pale, his breathing ragged. "It burns.""What burns?""My wrist. Something—" Jaxon's words cut off. He stared at his arm.Elijah's wolf rose to attention. He grabbed Jaxon's wrist and turned it toward the light.A mark.Intricate lines formed a circular pattern on the inside of Jaxon's wrist. The design was geometric and organic simultaneously, like the symbols Jaxon had been drawing in his noteboo

The council meeting was brutal.Elijah stood before the assembled pack elders while they interrogated him about Jaxon. About the bond. About what it meant for the pack's future. He answered every question honestly, his voice steady even as his wolf raged at being questioned.Rafe sat in the corner, silent and smug, letting the elders do his work for him.By the time Elijah left, three hours had passed and nothing had been resolved. The elders demanded more time to deliberate. The fight with Rafe would proceed as scheduled on the full moon, but now there was an additional complication—if Elijah won, the pack would vote on whether to accept Jaxon as his mate.If the vote failed, Elijah would have to choose. The pack or Jaxon.He drove back to the loft in silence, his hands tight on the steering wheel. Jaxon had stayed behind with Darius for protection. The separation had been necessary but torturous. Every instinct screamed at Elijah to return to him.The loft was dark when he arrived.

The council meeting was postponed at the last minute.One of the elders called in sick, and pack law required full attendance for votes of this magnitude. Rafe was furious, but there was nothing he could do. The meeting was rescheduled for two days later.Two more days of borrowed time.Elijah used them to shore up support among the pack and to spend every possible moment with Jaxon. The mark appeared more frequently now, sometimes glowing for hours before fading. Jaxon's power surged unpredictably—objects moving without him touching them, lights flickering when his emotions spiked.The awakening was accelerating.On Tuesday evening, they made a decision that surprised them both."I want to go back," Jaxon said. "To the group. One last time."Elijah looked up from the pack documents he had been reviewing. "Why?""Because I need closure. With Curtis. With Sarah. With Margaret." Jaxon's hands twisted in his lap. "They were real. Their pain was real. Even if Dr. Chen used us, what we sha