All Chapters of Wolves Can't Play: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

OLIVIA"Why does it always have to be Simone?" The words left my mouth sharp enough to cut, anger serving as its own kind of appetizer before the grief I knew was coming right behind it.This couldn't be happening again. Not the way it had the first time.She hadn't been joking with that smirk of hers, standing in the wreckage of everything I'd built. She hadn't been bluffing when she threatened to bring Sylvester into whatever war this had become between us.Why did she always get to keep the things that were rightfully mine?The memory sliced into me before I could stop it, pulling me under the way it always did when I let my guard down for even a moment.*"So, Leo. No more Simone." My voice trailed after him, thick with something I'd mistaken for triumph at the time. "I guess it's just you and your fated mate now." Blood still dripped from my claws, warm and slick, Simone's blood, though I hadn't let myself think of it that way yet.**"There was never a you and me, Olivia." He di

SYLVESTER "Are you okay, Flora?" I asked, watching her face.My fingers hovered near the place where she had bled. The bandage was wrapped tight now, exactly over the wound."Yeah." She sucked in a breath. "I'm okay.""Good." I stood from the bed too quickly, because her earlier words were still ringing in my ears.*Simone had been reborn.*In my first life, I never got to tell her how I felt. I wasn't going to miss that chance again. Not even for the end of the world.I sat back down in the chair. Flora looked at me as if she was waiting for something.An answer, maybe."So Simone really was reborn," I said quietly."Whaaaat?" She said it far too loudly, and I knew she was lying. "I never said that." A sarcastic smile crept across her face."You did. You said I was reborn just like her.""Okay, fine." She sighed, caught in her own words. "She was reborn because Leo betrayed her in the first life."Leo.His name sent a cold shiver through me.He had told me to stay out of his bus

SIMONE "Simone. Took you long enough." Flora's voice carried across the room as I slipped in quietly, trying not to disturb whatever rest she'd managed. Her head was bandaged, and still her voice came out fierce, feisty, like she hadn't just taken a hit meant to put her down for good. Like her body hadn't even registered that it was supposed to be hurting. Of course she could survive Olivia. Of course she'd done exactly what she always did, thrown herself in front of danger without a second thought. "I'm so sorry. It took me longer than I meant it to." "Wait." She paused, studying my face. "Has he marked you already?" I lowered my eyes. "No. It wasn't a success." I kept turning the night over in my head, looking for the seam in it. Why would Leo, resilient, decisive, a man who built an entire pack strategy around controlling the narrative, fold so completely the moment Damon spoke? None of it added up cleanly. And Matilda, who'd seemed so careful, so burdened by conscie

SIMONE I opened my eyes to white morning light, sharp enough to sting. For a moment I didn't know where I was, then the room resolved into my own, and the memory of last night came with it, whole and unwelcome. It had been real. I reached inward, listening for her. Nothing answered. Just silence, and a body that felt hollowed out, lighter than it should have been. She was actually gone. "Must I lose everything just to get what I actually want?" I whispered it to no one, and turned, and found him. "Leo." I clapped a hand over my mouth the instant his name left it. He was asleep in the chair beside my bed, his usual sharpness softened by sleep, his jaw still impossibly defined even at rest. I hadn't let myself notice it before, not properly how handsome he actually was, underneath all that performed coldness. *Ten days until the ceremony. Don't you dare leave me.* Had he meant that? Did he actually care, even a little? I reached toward him, hand trembling, t

SIMONE "Simone, are you okay?" Flora barged in before I'd even lifted my head from the pillow. "Yeah, just..." I sighed and sank back against the bed. "Just thinking about Leo." That was when I noticed her properly, her arms and head wrapped in bandages, worse than mine by far. "You're really hurt, Flora." I sat up, alarmed. "Far worse than me." "Actually, no." She shook her head, leaving the words hanging just long enough to worry me. "I can still sense my wolf, Simone." That didn't make sense. "How is that possible?" No wolf should have survived that water untouched unless there'd been poison in their blood for it to burn through first instead. "Were you poisoned?" I asked, though I already doubted it. She'd come straight home with me afterward. There hadn't been time. "That's the strange part. I wasn't." She didn't look like she was joking. "Watch." She held out her hand, and it shifted, fingers lengthening into claws, fast and real. "Simone." Her voice dropped to a whisp