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The earth rumbled with a rolling quake.
Rain crashed.
Fire cracked in the sky.
And wind howled through the glade.
Four elements voiced their disapproval.
Four elements who’d lost the moment Darro had found me.
Chapter Fifty
. Darro .
I STOOD IN THE CENTRE of the cosmic web.
A web that I still didn’t fully understand but was beginning to accept was home. Somehow. Someway. In a different life and a different form.
I knew my mortal self was asleep, cradled on my wolf pelt with Runa tucked into my front and her calfskin dress thrown over us for warmth.
I’d fallen asleep, sated, worried, satisfied, concerned.
And slipped into this dream state where past, present, and future collided.
The ever-annoying moth who I’d named Pelle after the Zenasha word for pest, hovered close by, leaving its dusty wake of silver with every flutter of his wings.
Crossing my dream-given arms, I growled, “You told me that Runa would die, and I would be the cause. That her spirit would go where I could not follow.” I bared my teeth. “You lied.”
Pelle caught the updraft of a shooting star that soared bright and glittery through the web. “It will come to pass. You set that in motion tonight. She will die. That part is certain. You are both one half of a whole. That whole is now unbalanced.”
Pelle descended onto the silver-glowing tapestry, his wings deflating as if knowledge of what would come to pass weighed him down. “If you truly want to know...look into the dew. Your sight is evolving. You manipulated time during the hunt and glimpsed the future that was always yours to see.” His wings fluttered once. “So...look for yourself, Moon Master, and see what is destined.”
My eyes fell on the dewdrop it’d chosen.
A chill ran down my spine.
“I will warn you, though,” Pelle whispered in his moth-soft hum. “You cannot change this fate. Not the way you changed Runa’s death yesterday by saving her blood-bound mate.”
“How can I stop her from dying then?”
Pelle sighed, his wings flattening. “You can’t. Just like you can’t stop yourself from doing what you will do in return.”
“What will I do?” More snow scattered down my back.
“You will know heartache worse than any other.” Pelle fluttered back into the sky. “Now look...”
I stepped toward the droplet, my bare feet gliding over the intricate lace without causing a single ripple. I was the stealthiest of spiders. A spider that sat in the heart of the universe.
I crouched beside the dewdrop.
I bent to look into the prismatic glitter of its surface.
A flash of blood; a single scream—
Everything dissolved as pain ripped through my dream state.
I tumbled from sleep to awake, jerking from shadow into bone.
My eyes shot wide.
I gasped and went to leap up, but Runa pressed my chest, her hand firm and braced. “Don’t move.”
I blinked, trying to get my bearings.
Dawn had broken.
The rainstorm from last night, summoned by our coupling, had left the sky a newly washed pink and peach masterpiece. No clouds. No wind. Just the bare branches of trees as they strained toward the heavens above us.
I looked down at where Runa held me.
The tickle of something wet rolled down my chest, making me flinch. “What are you—?”
“Stay there.” Runa ducked over me, pressing her mouth to my flesh.
A sharp sting as her tongue licked me.
My belly clenched, and my body reacted, thickening with her closeness, hardening with the heat of her mouth on my skin. “Runa...”
She pulled away, sitting upward and licking her lips.
I froze.
Staining her mouth was the faintest hue of crimson-black.
Blood.
My blood.
Blood that wasn’t true red anymore. It’d become laced with midnight the more I’d fallen into my power. It glistened with a sinister shimmer—a black hue that made it look poisonous.
Sitting up, I glanced down at where she’d licked.
In her hand rested my wolf fang that must’ve fallen out of my pelt when we ripped at each other’s coverings last night. My eyes narrowed as I looked up. “You cut me.”
She nodded as she swallowed, scowling with distaste as she licked her lips again. “You drank from me...the night of the blood bind. And I thought...” She shrugged with a hopeful smile. “I woke in your arms, and I couldn’t breathe with the thought of never being with you again. I panicked at the thought of being with Aktor. Of him touching me—” She swallowed hard, hanging her head. “I can’t mate him, Darro. I can’t be with him in that way. And I...” She looked at me beneath her lashes, guilt fogging her stare. “I hoped that if I drank from you like you drank from me, that our blood would supersede the bind I share with him.” She pressed her fingertips over my heart. “I want us to be linked. So we can leave and—”
Her eyes widened.
Her gold-earthen skin flushed as white as her hair.
“Runa?” I shifted onto my knees, grabbing her shoulders. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
