ELENA
The path wound back toward the packhouse, soft and familiar beneath my boots.
The sunlight had grown sharper, more golden, but it did nothing to thaw the knot of cold sitting heavy in my chest.
I walked beside Derek, every step humming with tension I couldn’t fully name.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t crowd me. He just stayed close enough that I could feel him if I needed to–solid, steady, warm.
Part of me hated how much I noticed it. How much I wanted to lean toward him without thinking.
I could still feel the echoes of what the Priestess had told us thrumming through my body, coiling tight around my ribs.
Sealed. Soul–bound.
Forever.
I stole a glance at Derek, catching the profile of his strong jaw, the faint crease between his brows.
He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t gloating.
If anything, he looked almost…careful.
Like he knew exactly how fragile I felt and was trying not to push too hard.
And gods, wasn’t that just like him lately?
The Derek I remembered from before–proud, stalwart, too sure of himself–would’ve grabbed onto this moment with both hands. Would’ve demanded something from me. Would’ve pulled me back into him without mercy.
This Derek… He was different. Or maybe he was trying to be.
I wasn’t sure if it made things better. Or harder.
Because the truth was, things between us had been going well.
Better than I ever would have believed possible.
But no matter how much progress we made–no matter how many moments of laughter or trust or aching closeness–there was still a part of me that held back.
Still a part of me that whispered: Be careful. Remember how much it hurt last time.
And now?
Now I had to face the reality that the Moon Goddess herself had sealed
me to this man.
That our souls were woven together, indelibly, eternally.
Was it fate?
Or was it a cage?
I swallowed hard against the rising tide of panic.
I couldn’t think like that.
Not right now.
We had bigger things to worry about.
S
Chapter 218
+25 BONUS
I shook myself, forcing my feet to move faster along the winding path.
“Who would do this?” I asked, my voice a little sharper than I intended.
Derek didn’t flinch.
He slowed slightly, matching my stride.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said quietly. “The more I do, the less sense it makes for it to have been Maggie.”
I blinked, surprised. It mirrored my own thoughts exactly.
“I would have said Maggie,” he continued, voice grim. “Last night when I first heard she was nearby–I thought maybe she was here to hurt us. To finish whatever plans she’d been drawn into.”
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, tension bleeding from every line of his body.
“But the Priestess said it took sacrificial objects,” Derek said. “Blood. Things that meant something to us. To each of us.”
I stopped walking.
The implications hit me like a slap.
Maggie hadn’t been part of my life in months.
She might have known of me. Might have once stood beside me during darker times.
But she didn’t have my blood. She didn’t have something precious enough to bind a spell of this magnitude.
And she sure as hell didn’t have anything of Derek’s.
If the Priestess was right–if the spell needed pieces of us to work then the rogue faction alone couldn’t have orchestrated it.
It had to be someone closer.
Someone we trusted.
I felt my stomach turn, the world tilting slightly under my feet.
“That would mean-” I whispered.
“Someone we both know,” Derek finished grimly. “Someone who could get close to both of us.”
I stared at him.
For a long, breathless second, we didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
Names whispered through my mind–sharp and cruel as broken glass.
Friends. Loved ones.
Others who lurked in the shadows between our two packs, wolves we had once let too close to our hearts.
I barely had time to start sorting through them when my phone buzzed sharply in my pocket, slicing through the silence.
I fumbled it out with shaking fingers.
Erin’s name flashed across the screen.
I answered immediately.
“What are you doing calling me?” I asked, trying for lightness and failing miserably. “You’re supposed to be leaving for your honeymoon!”
Erin laughed, but it was a thin, strained sound.
“I know,” she said. “But… Carly just got a message. From Maggie.
I went still.
“What?”
“Maggie’s in Alpha Council Guard custody,” Erin said. “And she’s asking to see you.”
The woods seemed to close in around me, the trees leaning closer, the shadows darkening.
“Did she say why?”
“No. Just that it’s urgent.”
I pressed my free hand to my stomach, trying to keep the sickness rising in my gut at bay.
“I’ll find a way,” I said hoarsely. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Be careful,” Erin whispered, and then the call ended.
I lowered the phone slowly, staring at it like it might suddenly offer me answers.
But there were no answers.
Only more questions.
More danger.
More betrayal waiting to be uncovered.
I felt Derek step closer, his hand brushing the small of my back–just lightly enough that I could pull away if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
“What is it?” he asked.
I looked up at him.
“Maggie,” I said. “She’s asking for me.”
His jaw tightened.
Neither of us said the obvious:
We didn’t know if it was a trap.
But either way, I wasn’t about to leave it unanswered.
LOGAN
The sunlight was brutal when I stepped outside.
I squinted against it, the world spinning slightly in my vision.
My head still throbbed from the whiskey haze of the night before, but there was no time to indulge the pain.
Not now.
Not when everything was unraveling.
I zipped my duffel bag closed with a sharp, jerky movement, slinging it over one shoulder.
Inside, I’d stuffed everything I could grab in five frantic minutes–cash, ID, clothes, a burner phone I’d hidden months ago in
the back of my closet for emergencies like this.
Maggie had been captured.
I heard the whispers racing through the halls when I woke, the panic humming under every breath of the packhouse.
Captured. Alive. Talking.
If she told them what she knew-
If she told them the truth about the deals I made, the lines I crossed, the alliances I forged in the dark when I thought no one would ever find out-
I was finished.
Not just politically.
Not just socially.
But fundamentally.
Destroyed.
And maybe worse, Elena would finally see me the way I feared most.
Not as a friend.
Not as a protector.
As a traitor.
I shoved the thought aside and ducked out through the back exit, keeping my head down, my steps quick and silent.
There was a path through the woods–an old hunting trail barely used anymore.
It would take me down the ridge, out past the river, and far from Moonstone’s reach before anyone even noticed I was missing.
Maybe farther.
Maybe all the way to the roguelands.
I didn’t have a plan. Not yet.
Only one goal pulsing in my veins like a fever:
Get away.
Because if Maggie talked-
If they started pulling on that thread-
It wouldn’t just unravel me.
It would unravel everything.
And for the first time in my life, I realized with sick certainty-
I wasn’t ready to pay for what I’d done.
Maybe I never would be.
Chapter 219
