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A cool hand rubs my back. Eden.
Another squeezes my knee. Sunny.
“Just hold on, I almost have it tracked, Willa.”
Tears fall to my lap, and I shake my head. “I can’t do this,” I whisper.
“I’ve almost got it.”
“No.” The word hardly sounds like a word at all.
“Almost.”
“No,” I say again, drawing strength from the beast within me. “I can’t let you do this.”
“Oooooh. I get it now!” Lily hops up, slapping her hands together. “The Werebeast is simple transference magic.”
I glance from her to Rafe, who seems to know what she’s talking about.
“What does that mean, exactly?” I say through too-sharp teeth.
“Willa, put your puppy away, dear. She’s quite unsettling,” Sunny says next to me.
I glance down at my hands, sigh, and push the beast away once more. “Sorry,” I murmur.
“It’s pretty impressive,” Lily says and paces the length of the living room. “From what I can see, the claiming bonds are a kind of magical highway connecting you. I’m guessing you think of it as a connection to each other’s thoughts, but it’s more like a connection to each other’s power and magic. And every time you turn into that awesome Were creature, you’re pulling raw shifter magic from your mates. With each new mate bond, your alternate form likely grew more powerful, more deadly?”
I nod. Yeah. That’s exactly how it happened.
“Well, that likely means,” Lily continues, “that if I sever the link between you and your Champion, you’ll likely lose a good portion of the magic fueling the Were creature.”
I don’t even have to think about it.
“I don’t care about losing the Werebitch. But I’m not living a single moment without my guys. Any of them. Don’t you touch the bond, you hear me?”
“Willa.” Drago’s pained voice slices clean through me as he enters the living room. “You cannot sacrifice yourself and so many others for just me.”
“Yeah,” Rook chimes in from behind. Like Rafe, both only wear jeans, like it’s some hot guy dress code rule or something. “The math ain’t mathin’.”
I stand, eyeing Rook. “You only think that because you’ll be left behind. But if I claim you right here and now, will that change your mind?”
Rook steps back, brow furrowing. “I—”
“Be honest,” I say. “If you knew you wouldn’t be left here to suffer without your mate, would that change your mind?”
Rook draws in a slow breath as everyone in the room turns their gaze to him. The tension hangs in the air like fog, clouding over judgment, reason.
Because none of this is reasonable.
No one should have to make these choices.
No one should have to live without the love of their life.
But we all do.
Humans, witches, wolves, all of us watch loved ones die and we’re somehow expected to keep going.
To keep living without them.
