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Kian
A dead treecracks beneath my back paws as I use it for a launching pad to scale a large, round boulder the size of an SUV. For a split second, I’m weightless, inside and out. Just me and gravity. Free from the weight of the earth and the constant hum of pain inside me. Free from bad decisions. From intrusive thoughts.
But then I come back down to earth. I slam down onto the boulder, and it shakes beneath my bulk. My brothers land behind me, Frost with sinuous grace, but Malix with a loud skittering of his shadowy claws. I snatch at his smoky form with my teeth, nabbing him before he can slide right off the dusty stone of the mountain ledge into the open expanse beyond—which looks like a painful fucking fall, even for a shadow wolf.
When I release him, all three of us come to a stop, panting lightly from our exertions. Malix sits on his haunches, his tongue lolling out. In his normal wolf shifter form, the look is ridiculous. Makes him look like some kind of deranged hyena. In his shadow wolf form, he just looks terrifying. More massive than a horse, more shadow than fur, and ice-blue eyes that glow like fire.
Not terrifying to me. To other people. I still think he’s a fucking idiot sometimes, but he’s my brother, or the closest thing I’ll ever have to one. I love him for it.
Thanks, Malix says in mind speak, amusement in his tone. I think I got too excited. He pauses, then adds, That’s what she said.
I huff a breath through my nose. You can’t ‘that’s what she said’ yourself.
Sure I can. Malix leaps forward and snaps lightly at my front paws. I bat him in the head. Not hard. Just enough to make him dance away, shaking out his smoky fur.
I growl at him, jerking my head toward the path we’ve been following as we make our way down the mountain. We need to keep moving. We’re too close to her.
Both of my brothers go still. A pang of emotion slides through the bond we share. The connection isn’t a physical thing, but a metaphysical one—a bond that transcends our physical forms and connects us through the shadow magic that exists inside each of us. It allows us to communicate, to stay on the same wavelength. As if the shadows inside us are all parts of one whole. As if we are all parts of the same being.
I can’t pinpoint where the wave of emotion comes from, Malix or Frost, but I know it’s not from me.
We did the right thing. Any lingering doubts I may have about our actions need to fuck right off.
There was no other choice.
But still, the emotion remains, and it’s like a goddamn blinking red light warning me away from danger.
I take off again, leaping into motion as my paws pound against the rocky dirt. Maybe I can outrun the feeling if I just go fast enough.
Weaving my way down a stair step of boulders, I focus on where I’m putting my paws so my thoughts won’t keep returning to Amora’s face. She isn’t far from my mind, every memory I have of her hovering right below the surface of my conscious thoughts.
But it’s fine. We just walked away from her. Just broke the mate bond. Some distance and some time will erase the image of her in my head. Erase her strength, her skill, the way she constantly impressed me.
Erase the night we shared.
Fuck. No, I’m not going there.
I miss the next rock and tumble off the uneven path, rolling twice before I manage to get my paws beneath me again. A little banged up, I scramble back onto more even terrain and break into a run again. My brothers are smart enough to ignore my fall without giving me shit for it. They know me well enough to understand that now is not the time to poke the monster.
The whole point of breaking the mate bond was to leave Amora behind and end this damn thing between us all so that my brothers and I can do what we’ve been tasked to do: find an opening to the shadow realm and bring that dark magic to earth.
So why the hell can’t I leave her behind like I should?
Physically, I am. Every step I take leads me farther away from her.
Mentally…
Dammit, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling. My head is a fucking mess.
The ground levels out as we reach a plateau on the mountainside, and I fall into a flat-out sprint. The faster I run, the harder my blood pumps, the more I can focus on my own body and less on Amora.
Malix puts on a burst of speed to join me, pulling up alongside me as his shadowy fur ripples in the wind. We’re going back to that place, yeah?Where we felt the rift?
Yes, I tell him shortly.
We pound through the brush into a heavily wooded area, and I come to a halt, sliding across the leaf-strewn forest floor. I drop my head a little, pricking my ears and glancing around us—not just to make sure there was no sign of Amora, but to try to pinpoint the rift.
I think it’s close, I say. Frost?
He tends to be the one most in tune to the energy around rift areas. These are areas where the veil between the shadow realm and the earthly realm are thin, and where we could possibly create a tear in the fabric between worlds to bring the shadows over to this plane of existence. We came across this particular rift on the way to the Tree of Life, where we retrieved the sap we needed to complete the potion that saved Frost’s life.
We saved Amora’s, too, and then moments later, used a second potion to magically break our mate bond.
Fuck. Stop thinking about her.
I need to stop looking back. The one thing I’ve learned in our years of searching for the shadows is that you can’t live your life going backward. Forward momentum only. She’ll be fine. And we’ll be better off without her.
It’s close, Frost says stiffly. I wait for him to elaborate, but he just stares at me enigmatically with his pale blue eyes.
I sigh. You want to lead the way there, brother?
