Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 49459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
“He needed time,” she said. “Time to heal without the wolf tearing him apart from the inside out. Time to find you.”
My heart was thundering. I knew she could hear it. “Why me?” I whispered.
Her eyes lit with something too vast for this world. “Because you’re his fated mate, Aisling. You are the catalyst. The one thing powerful enough to draw his wolf back from the dark. Without you, the bond stays dormant. Broken.”
I swayed where I stood.
“You’re not just a spark in his life—you’re the flame. The one who can anchor him when the wolf returns. The one who can balance what he’s becoming with what he used to be. Your presence will either stabilize him…”
She stepped closer, her voice lowering to a whisper.
“…or consume him.”
An icy shiver ran down my spine.
“His wolf hasn’t recognized me as his mate… and mine hasn’t, either,” I whispered. “But the way we ache for each other, the way desire coils tight like instinct—it feels like everything I’ve heard about the bond, just without the confirmation our wolves are supposed to give.”
Magdalena stilled, her expression unreadable for a moment before something ancient flickered in her eyes.
“Because the bond has already rooted itself in your souls,” she said softly. “Long before your wolves were ready.”
I blinked, stunned.
Her voice lowered with gravity. “The body knows, Aisling. The heart knows. But sometimes the wolf is tied to instinct and survival and must be coaxed into remembering what fate already carved. Especially when one wolf is wounded—or silenced.” She looked toward the shadows where Lennox had disappeared. “Your wolves aren’t rejecting the bond. They’re simply waiting—held back by trauma. By fear. By wounds you cannot see.”
Her gaze returned to mine, and I felt like crying, like thanking the gods that I was given some kind of explanation as to the why of it all.
“But when the silence breaks, when his wolf rises again… the recognition will explode like a storm.”
“Does he kno’?” I whispered. “That ye did this?”
She exhaled slowly. “Not yet. But he will. I want him to know. He needs to understand what was done and why—so he doesn’t run from what’s waking inside him. So he doesn’t run from you.”
I nodded, though I didn’t feel steady. I felt like the ground beneath me was shifting.
“But be warned, Aisling,” she added, her voice sharpening. “When his wolf returns, it won’t come back docile or tamed. It will return knowing. With a hunger only you can sate.”
She reached out and took my hand, her skin papery and warm yet pulsing with a strange, thrumming energy. For a heartbeat, I swore I saw a younger woman behind her aged face—feral and beautiful, full of moonlight and power.
Then she was just a woman again. Wrinkled. Wise. Knowing.
“Some males,” she said softly, “must lose the loudest part of themselves to truly hear–and see–what matters. What’s been right in front of them all along. To understand what they’ve been given... and what they might lose forever.”
And with that, she turned and walked away, her dress trailing behind her small body.
I stood frozen. The hearth crackled, the shadows stretching long and endless across the floor. I didn’t know what scared me more.
The idea of Lennox’s wolf returning...
Or the idea of what he’d become once it did—and once he knew I was the one thing that had the power to either tame or unravel him completely.
14
LENNOX
My father’s office was thick with tension, the kind that clung to your skin and soaked into your marrow.
A map of the property and its surrounding land was spread across the long table. Cian stood to my left, eyes sharp and calculating.
Caelan lounged in a leather chair with forced ease, one boot resting on the edge of the coffee table. But he was tense. I could tell by the way his fingers twitched near the hilt of a blade he always carried.
My father stood at the head of the map, arms crossed like a statue carved from old fury and hard-earned war.
I tried to focus. Gods, I did. But all I could think about was Aisling.
I listened to Cian and what had transpired while I was with Aisling at her cottage.
The Guard had recovered a body from the eastern perimeter—mangled… tortured. It was torn in a way that roared of dark intent and brute force. There was also the heavy air of magic that had clung to it, the kind only an Otherworld could sense.
The body was a Lycan soldier, and he hadn’t just been killed. He’d been targeted because of what he was and who he served.
Us.
My father’s voice cut through the indistinct murmur. “It was the Therabus.”
The room stilled.
My father tossed a parchment down onto the table. The markings on the material were old style—ancient. It was roughly drawn and crude in design and reeked of blood.