Shaking her head, a brow rose as she said, “That confidence is part of the problem.”
“And yet you continue holding my hand.”
Myanin looked down, apparently only just now realizing she still was.Her eyes widened slightly before narrowing again with immediate suspicion, as though he had somehow orchestrated her own fingers betraying her.
Shade wisely said nothing.
She glared at him anyway.
Then, muttering something deeply insulting beneath her breath, she yanked her hand free and stalked farther down the corridor.
Shade watched her go.Watched the tension in her shoulders.The confusion.The fear.The hope she clearly wanted to strangle with her bare hands before it grew dangerous.
And despite the ache still tearing through his chest ...Shade smiled.
Not because he had won.This was not victory.Not yet.Maybe not ever.But for the first time in longer than he cared to count, Myanin had stopped running before he touched her.
Behind them,somewhere deep within the shifting pages of the Nushtonia, laughter echoed softly through the corridors.
Not cruel.
Knowing.
Shade glanced toward the moving parchment walls and sighed.“You are an incredibly invasive magical artifact.”
The book rustled smugly around him.
Ahead of him, Myanin barked out a reluctant laugh she clearly hadn’t meant to let him hear.
And Shade followed the sound like a starving man finding his way home.
CHAPTER20
“Love is not proven by how tightly you hold on, but by what you are willing to release when holding on becomes harmful.”~Gerick
Gerick had spentcenturies learning the discipline required to stand still while everything inside him wanted war.It had served him well.Until now.
He stood alone at the edge of the draheim clearing, boots planted in the soft moss, the Nushtonia resting on the flat stone before him like an ordinary book pretending it had not swallowed the female he loved.Moonlight slid across its cover in pale, uneven streaks, catching nothing, reflecting nothing, as though even the light could not decide whether the thing was solid.
The forested mountains of the Draheim Realm rose around him in dark, jagged silhouettes beneath a sky crowded with stars.Mist threaded between the trees, silver beneath the moonlight, curling over roots and moss and ancient stone as though the realm itself exhaled slowly in its sleep.
Except the realm was not sleeping.It watched.
Gerick felt it in the ground beneath his boots, in the stillness of the draheim scattered through the surrounding forest, in the careful distance Serapha had demanded they all keep from the book.Even Perizada, who treated danger like a mildly inconvenient party guest, had given the Nushtonia space.
That alone should have terrified him.
Instead, all he could feel was Myanin.
Not clearly.Not through the bond as wolves felt their mates, not with thought or words or the warm, living pulse of shared emotion.Their connection had never been like that.His bond with her was different, blessed by the Great Luna, yes, but not the same magic that tied Canis lupus mates together, soul to soul.He could not speak to her.He could not calm her.He could not reach across the distance and tell her to hold on.
But something had begun leaking through the book.
Not enough.Never enough.Just fragments.
Heat.Fear.Defiance.The sharp silver edge of her sarcasm, so familiar it made his chest ache in a way no battlefield wound ever had.And beneath it, something else now.
A pull.Not toward him.
