Page 90 of Rejected By the Winter Wolf

A pattern forms.

Gage has a gift from the vampire-witch hybrid that he bestows upon me: metal cuffs that block me from my magic. They attach together and connect to a chain around my waist. His lackey, the big guy, escorts me outside every few days. I sit in the sunshine, my magic so depleted that it takes an eternity for the earth to replenish it. I can’t even help it along by pulling the energy into myself. It’s the worst sort of helplessness. I barely have the strength to make it out of the cells.

Spots of dead grass appear around the house in the field, a record of where they drop me. It isn’t willing on my part, but I can’t stop it.

After, he takes me back down to my cell, where Sonia waits for me with a small smile.

What she does with my power, so infused with it by the time one of Gage’s shifters drags her out that she’s glowing with it, I have no idea.

The thin mattress in my cell is my only respite, where I lie as darkness flickers over my vision and sweeps me away.

But my dreams don’t let me off so easily.

Kian visits me there. Not the man, but the wolf. In his shadow form, much like how he came to me through the scrying glass, he slips through the forest ahead of me. I give chase, calling after him until my voice is hoarse.

And only when I fall does he return, his deep-blue eyes seeming to spear into a part of me I’m starting to forget.

When I wake, that piece falls away like it was never there.

Pleading with Sonia doesn’t work. Cutting myself open and making an offering to the earth, dripping it through the cracks in the concrete, doesn’t work. Calling for the other witches… doesn’t work.

And finally, the day comes when I’m hauled out onto the lawn behind the house and there’s no amount of nature that can replenish what I’ve lost. There’s a layer of snow on the ground, the grass going dormant, and my connection to the earth is gone.

A shadow looms over me, but I don’t have the energy to even open my eyes. I don’t remember the journey through the house, although my heels ache from bumping against the steps as I was dragged backward up the stairs.

I know I’m going to die. I gave up thinking Kian would rescue me weeks ago, around the same time I began to doubt that I could save myself.

And now? I’m not of use anymore.

The shadow crouches beside me, two fingers pressing into my neck. Near the bite that never has a chance to heal. A finger under my nose checks my breathing.

I wait for death and darkness.

Instead, the cuffs that I’ve worn since my first time outside fall away from my wrists.

Chapter 24

Kian

The mate bond explodes back into existence.

I stop what I’m doing and drop to my knees, covering my head with my hands. Not my chest, where the source of the feeling is. But my head, where the pain is.

It’s blinding hot, a sizzling pain that rips through my whole body. It’s worse than when the covens tried to rip the bond from Astra. It’s worse than anything I’ve felt before.

I fall forward, my forehead touching the snow, and anger spikes through me.

It’s not my anger, but Astra’s. And hers only stokes mine, cracking me open.

My white-hot rage gives way to the fur and teeth of my wolf.

He’s of similar mind, fury and fear for her blending until I can hardly separate them.

She’s alive and she’s upset and she’s in so much pain, I don’t know how she’s still breathing. It feels like she’s being flayed open by a thousand knives.

“Alpha.”

I whirl, my wolf in control, and his teeth snap millimeters from my sister’s face.