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I won’t give up my loves. My pack. My men.
I scraped by with barely enough love for too long. I won’t give it up. I won’t givethemup.
“Out of curiosity,” I start, keeping my tone light. “What would happen if I died before you got your magic out of me?”
Emilia scoffs at me. “Why? Are you planning to die on me?”
I laugh at her joke, but every one of my guys has their eyes on me. They can tell something’s up. “Not planning on it, no.”
“Good. Let’s do our best to keep her alive, gentlemen. We don’t need the biggest coven on the Eastern Seaboard to lose access to their ancestral storehouse.”
“Right, about that…” Rafe stands to get another stack of pancakes from the kitchen. “Is your coven going to be OK without it for so long? It’s already been—”
“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” Emilia’s lip curls ever so slightly on the last syllable. “If your mate hadn’t tried to use it—”
Jonah clears his throat. “OK, that’s enough. There’s no need to rehash it. Willa didn’t know, and if she had—”
“I would have done the same,” I say with my head held high. “I will always do everything in my power to keep my mates safe.”
Except for now.
I don’t think I can escape this one.
There’s no thinking around it. No half shifting into an alpha beast and convincing the Wendigo not to take Drago.
We’d already faced it once. We only got out alive because it allowed us to.
I glance down at my mostly uneaten breakfast and excuse myself. “Sorry. I’m suddenly not feeling very well,” I say and head down the hall to my bedroom.
I stay there the rest of the day, cocooned in a nest of blankets that smells like my four guys.
They pop in throughout the day, and each time, I feign sleep.
The only one who doesn’t believe the act is Drago. But he’s kind enough not to say anything out loud.
I’m here when you’re ready, he says as he closes the door behind him.
I just need time to accept our fate and to figure out how to tell the rest that we’re all basically on a suicide mission.
I won’t give them up.
I won’t sever our bonds.
Which means I’m sentencing us all to death.
It’s selfish.
The epitome of self-serving, but I know I wouldn’t survive without them, and I won’t force them to do the same. I won’t cut our bond and make them live without me.
And then there’s Rook. We haven’t claimed one another yet. Who knows if we even can? A mage and a wolf?
I force my mind to stop skittering, quiet my thoughts, and eventually, I drift off.
That night, I dream about running wild through the trails with my mates. We chase each other into a large snowy clearing. Icicles coat every tree limb, and a thick sheet of ice covers the snow, making the whole clearing glitter in the moonlight.
I’ve never seen this clearing before. In the distance, movement catches my eye. I sprint to it, furred paws gripping the snow and ice, propelling me onward.
Beneath the bowing branches of a snow-laden spruce sits a merle-coated pup with one blue eye and one green, like the sky and forest, and white fur mottled with black and sable.
