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Not just my mind. It didn’t simply deepen the well we have to face hardship.
My magic turned me into a being strong enough to face the Wendigo.
And that’s exactly what I intend to do.
I leap out of my circle of men, through the non-existent roof, and into the night sky.
It’s higher than I’ve ever leapt, but that doesn’t matter. I’m tracking the scent of death and rot and ozone.
My mate and the Wendigo.
I catch it easily. The scourge isn’t trying to hide. I track it to the frozen waterfall a few miles down the mountain.
Drago lies in the snow, the Wendigo hunched over it in its most grotesque form.
Its whole face is a mouth, and it’s gorging itself on hunks of my mate’s flesh and magic.
“Get away from him, you greedy fuck!”
Willa, no.Drago’s voice is the only one to make it through the buzzing adrenaline in my head.I gave myself to him. This is my duty. My only—
NO! I refuse to accept that.
There has to be another way.
“I said, get the fuck away from him, you gluttonous abomination!” I charge forward, knocking the Wendigo on its side and away from Drago.
“You can’t have him!”
It stands slowly and screams at me with its face-mouth. A long echoing shriek that shakes the ice from the branches, but I stand my ground.
Willa. Stop. Please. This is the only way.
“It’snotthe only way,” I say and rush to stand between the creature and my dying mate. “Touch him again, and I’ll end you.”
It shrieks again, and this time my very bones rattle. But I don’t move. I can’t.
I won’t give in to this thing. I won’t let him have my mate or the rest of us.
And that, that’s the key, isn’t it?
The rest of us…
Sprouting from the bitter ground of my heart of despair, a single leaf.
A tender green seedling of that awful thing called hope.
The last time we met, the Wendigo told me I was guileless. How he’d love to taste my sweet flesh.
But he couldn’t.
He can’t take the righteous.
“You can’t have him,” I say with a smile. “We’re bonded. Claimed in the old ways. If you kill him, you kill me and all my other mates. And we’re innocent. We’re guileless. You can’t feed on the righteous, Greedy One.”
Another shriek. This time, its face-mouth opens completely, showing its putrid, rotting gums and pointed, shard-like teeth.
“Your deception is of no consequence. The Champion is mine. That you linked yourself to him is your own fault.”
