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“Indeed.”
Olyvia slowly dropped her hand and took a healthy step back. With her hand smoothing out her braid, she eyed him skeptically. Before he could question, she asked, “Can you call on your wolf for me?”
Kai did. From one breath to the next, he brought his wolf forward, just enough that his eyes and lumerosi burned, canines and claws threatening but contained.
She placed her hand on his chest again. “Do you feel abnormal?”
“I became alpha less than a year ago, and I’m newly mated. Nothing feels normal.” Olyvia breathed a laugh, continuing whatever assessment this was. Kai braced himself before finally inquiring, “Would you be able to tell if it was magic?”
Olyvia’s hand seized, her uptilted eyes wide as she scanned his face. Seeing its sincerity, its uncertainty.
Maybe he had been too trusting. Maybe he should’ve kept that in. Died with it, perhaps. Others may have assumed he had somegiftsafter the way the challenge had ended, but beinggiftedand havingmagicwere different beasts.
Olyvia’s features softened, and she stepped back again, half-sitting on the work table. “I don’t know much about magic. How does it feel to Isla? Mate bonds are powerful entities. Sometimes, they tell us more about us and our wolves than we could ever glean about ourselves in our lifetime.”
Kai pursed his lips, running his hand over his jaw. “When it gets bad, when I lose control, she can’t feel me through the bond. Yesterday, she thought I was dying.”
“And you were shifted?”
“Completely wolf.”
She fiddled with her braid again, a nervous habit she’d never gotten rid of. “What doyouremember?”
Kai lowered his gaze, feeling his insides twist and a dark cloud cast over his thoughts. A part of him didn’t want to recall any of it. “Once I shifted, it becomes hazy, but I remember feeling myself losing control,”remember the door into Rhydian’s mind,“and I got this horrible headache, like my head was splitting, and my senses went into hyperdrive. There was too much of the world to take in. It was overwhelming.”
Olyvia tapped on the table, thinking. “And that’s unusual?”
“Unusual compared to how I was before. Typical now.”
“How you were before as a common wolf or as an alpha?”
“Alpha.”
The healer narrowed her eyes like she’d struck something. “Did it start becoming unusual after you were mated?”
Kai thought back. He’d admit to always feeling somethingoffabout himself. There was a piece he hadn’t quite understood that hid for most of his life, but all of this “sense” nonsense—it wasn’t since the challenge; it was from the moment he met Isla, from the moment those fragments of them wove together, something inside him had changed. That piece became exposed and began to flourish.
“Maybe even a little before it. When we met.” Kai rested his elbows on his knees, brows drawn. “But she…she makes it stop, or at least calms it. She makes it bearable. I don’t know why—but I try to think of her when it gets to be too much.” It was her who’d freed him from the fog last night…after this piece of him had nearly hurt her.
Olyvia smiled softly, a twinkle briefly coming to her eye. “Well, you are a part of each other, and because of that, she has a connection to you, your wolf, and your power that no one else in the world does or ever will. You use her to temper it, but she may be the key to understanding it, too. Rather than trying to lull it, has she ever embraced it, tried to feel and figure out what it is?”
For all they’d done intimately, Isla had never trulydug intohis power. Though…
Kai had opened his mouth to sayno, but then he gave it more thought. “During the coronation ceremony, that’s probably the closest she’s ever gotten to that part of me.”
“I heard it was quite the spectacle,” Olyvia mused.
“It was.” Kai gnawed on the inside of his lip, trying to remember how he’d felt when the fire erupted. It was a rush like no other; it was dizzying, intoxicating, and world-shattering like he’d been broken and reforged, and then there was only her and him at the beginning and end of all things. But then, there was a moment last night when she’d kissed him, when he felt himself unravel for her, and something inside him had pushed her away, not wanting her close.
He sighed. “Any ideas about what this is?”
Olyvia echoed his heavy breath with one through her nose. “Nothing that would have any merit. I’ll do some research and speak with my friend who’s a priestess—being discreet, of course. She’ll know more about mating bonds than I would, in a spiritual sense, at least.” She ran her finger along the top of the wooden box. “I feel for most, it’s just about romance and sex. Then for alphas and lunas, you get into talk about power, but there’s so much more to it when you try to think of it in a divine way. Why the goddesses gave usmatesin the first place, it has to mean more. Otherwise, why is it becoming so rare? Because they want us unhappy, or we’re misguided? Are deities truly that petty?” Her eyes had been becoming distant as she spoke, stare looming on statues of the three goddesses by the window before it was as if she’d snapped back into her body. Milky cheeks reddening as she shook her hand. “I apologize. I’m rambling.”
Kai offered a smile. “Don’t worry about it. It’s interesting to think about. I’ll admit I was on team ‘mates are great for romance and sex’ until this started happening. Now, I want to know what the deities’ intent is with all of this.” He rose to his feet. “Whatever you find out, if me and Isla aren’t available, which I imagine will be common for the next few days, you can talk to Jonah…just don’t mention the bane or the power.”
He’d have to tell him eventually—all of them eventually—but not yet.
“Jonah,” Olyvia breathed a laugh. “I haven’t seen him in years. Rhydian, even you haven’t been around until late. And, um, Ameera.” Another fidget with that braid, and the red tinting her cheeks deepened. “How is she doing after Beta Ezekiel…or I guess, just Ezekiel…you—well, obviously, you know.”
