Page 38 of Reclaiming His Lost Mate (Secret Legacy #3)

J ames

The mansion was unnervingly quiet as I walked through its vast corridors.

I had barely slept. My dreams had been restless and disturbing, leaving behind a lingering sense of unease and a bitter taste in my mouth.

Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember them clearly.

Just scattered fragments. I missed the time when my upon waking up came to me whole, every detail etched on my mind.

That was another symptom—both of the sickness and the curse.

The silence at this level of the mansion was deceptive. Beneath my feet, deep below the grandeur of these halls, another world thrived—a world filled with suffering, with tortured groans and the gnashing of teeth. A world that had once been my pride and was now my burden.

And yet, I had to go.

As I descended the staircase, a dull headache pressed against my temples, my mind struggling to grasp the fragments of my dream.

Someone had been there with me.

Someone young.

I hadn’t seen his face, hadn’t even caught a glimpse of their form, but I could feel them. Their essence had been so familiar, so innocent, and sweet-smelling.

The urge to protect him had overwhelmed me, something primal and deep-rooted awakening in my chest. But beyond that, the dream faded into nothingness.

Still, I knew—knew—that it mattered.

That it was a clue, a missing piece to the answer I had spent six months searching for.

Six months.

Six months of fighting a curse I did not understand, a sickness that defied all logic.

How do you battle something so insidious? Something that hollowed me out from within, stripping away everything that made me a werewolf, leaving me like chaff after the grain had been separated?

It was an invisible death, slow but relentless, and I had no weapon against it.

Two flights down, I stood before the heavy oak door, my chest tight with frustration.

I was failing them. They were relying on me, looking to me to save them, and yet, I was just as powerless as they were.

For a moment, I hesitated.

What was the point of this visit? What good was my presence if I could do nothing for them?

Then, clenching my jaw, I pushed the door open.

The stench hit me immediately—a heavy, sickly mixture of sweat, fever, and death.

No matter how many times I walked into this room, I could never get used to it.

The scent clung to the air, thick and suffocating, forcing me to swallow down the bile rising in my throat.

The scent was spreading all over the house, but I had gotten used to it up here.

Down here, however, it was so strong, so offensive, there was no ignoring or getting accustomed to it.

The grand ballroom—once a place of celebration and laughter—was now a makeshift hospital.

The beds lined the walls, each one occupied by a man slowly being eaten alive by the sickness. Some groaned in restless agony, others lay still, their shallow breathing the only sign they were still clinging to life.

I hadn’t taken more than a few steps when Harold Geradline spotted me.

“James,” he called, handing off his task to a nearby nurse before making his way over.

He looked exhausted.

Harold had been with my family since he was a boy and before Harold was his father, Dennis Geraldine. The Geraldines have held their position as the Yorke’s doctors for centuries and they took great pride in the vocation and position.

“Harold,” I greeted him. “How are you holding up?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he turned his gaze toward one of the beds—a boy, fevered and restless, his body trembling as he drifted between sleep and unconsciousness.

The fever had consumed him.

The trembling had started. I knew what came next.

He would be stripped bare, drained of every last ounce of what made him werewolf, until there was nothing left but a shell.

Then death would take him.

“We’ve only had one new intake today,” Harold said. “Maybe it’s slowing down.”

We both knew that was a lie.

This wasn’t an ordinary illness. This was a curse, and curses did not simply slow down.

Someone had marked us—targeted us. They were culling my pack, stripping away my strength, piece by piece, until I would be weak and defenseless.

And when that moment came, when I was at my lowest, they would strike.

A coward’s tactic. A clever one, but cowardly nonetheless.

“How many did we lose?” I asked.

Harold exhaled, his shoulders sagging. “Three so far.”

And it was only midday.

By nightfall, the count would rise. Four to five deaths a day. Every day. A slow but calculated massacre.

I turned to the feverish boy. “What’s his name?”

“Danny,” Harold said. “He’s a Lynca.”

I nodded, remembering now.

His father had been so proud the day I welcomed him into the pack, beaming with joy as Danny swore his allegiance. He had dreamed of becoming one of my lieutenants, had promised he would work toward it.

Now, he lay before me, burning from the inside out.

I reached for his hand.

Cold.

Too cold. Harold’s eyes met mine, and I knew. Danny wouldn’t last the night.

Goddamn it.

The rage clawed at my throat, desperate to break free, to lash out, to do something. But there was no one to fight, no enemy to strike down—only this sickness, this curse that devoured my people while I stood helpless.

Six months ago, when the first werewolf fell ill, I had dismissed it as nothing more than a seasonal flu.

But it had spread—fast and merciless.

Strong and weak alike collapsed under its weight, each one showing the same symptoms: their bodies slowed, their claws refused to emerge, their essence faded.

That was when I had called Harold in.

Even then, we had clung to hope. Maybe it was bad meat, maybe contaminated water. Something that could be fixed.

It wasn’t. Six months later, over two hundred werewolf were dead.

Fifty more were sick. Half of those knocking on death’s door.

I turned away, deciding not to finish my rounds—what was the point? I had nothing to offer them. No reassurance. No solution.

Harold stepped in my way.

“You have to do it,” he told me.

I met his gaze, my voice low. “How can I?”

He didn’t speak, only gestured toward the room—toward the men, all of them looking at me, waiting.

Waiting for hope. For answers.

For something I could not give them.

“Look at them, Harold,” I whispered. “They’re looking at me like I can save them.” My throat tightened. “And I can’t.”

“They don’t need to know that. They just need to know you’re here. Okay? Just show them you are here.”

The headache returned, this time with renewed fervor, pulsing behind my eyes like a drumbeat of agony.

An image flickered at the edge of my mind, elusive and blurred.

There was someone there with me—young, innocent, radiating a sweetness that stirred something deep in me.

A protective instinct clawed its way to the surface, raw and primal.

The dream felt important, like a puzzle piece I had been searching for, a key to unraveling the curse that had haunted my people for the past six months. But like everything else lately, it slipped away before I could fully comprehend it.

I nodded at Harold and continued walking, stopping at each bedside to clasp the hands of my ailing pack members, murmuring reassurances I wasn’t sure I believed myself.

Many asked if I was close to finding a cure, if there was any hope.

I promised them their suffering would end soon, that they would be free from this torment and would stand beside me once again, celebrating our survival.

I didn’t know if they believed me. But it was enough for them to let me go.

“Show me the new intake,” I said to Harold, who led me down the hall until we came to a bed where a young boy who still had some fire in his eyes sat straight up when he saw me.

“What’s your name, boy?” I asked him, looking at his hands to find the unretracted claws in his fingers, one of the very early signs of the sickness.

The claws seemed to grow a mind of their own, extending without the werewolf controlling them.

Then they became unable to retract them.

There was also the flu-like fever that, for some people, came before the claw issue.

It was always followed by a general weakness of the body.

The curse stole the supernatural strength of the werewolves who came down with it.

In later stages, the sense of smell faded, the weakness deepened, and the fever became more pronounced, causing delirium in a lot of cases.

I gazed away from the boy and to the top of the hallway, where the Lynca boy was already showing signs of the late stages. The unbearable agony, the unending feverish fits, the screams, the thrashing around and cold extremities.

“Kevin!” the boy answered, pulling my attention back to him. He was trying his best to appear strong to me, but I could see the way his eyes darted around the room to look at the others who had been there longer than him. Their sorry state of hopelessness clearly weighed down his faith.

This sickness, this curse, it couldn’t be contracted. There was no scientific logic to how it spread, but it had only affected werewolves within my clan so far.

“Be strong,” I said to him. “All this will be over soon.”

I walked away from him and turned to Harold. “What did he present with?”

“The fever. It’s the first stage. It comes with occasional delirium, but in his case, nothing yet.”

“Weakness?”

“Yes. Like the others, it is more pronounced in the evenings.”

Outside the makeshift infirmary, Harold kept stride beside me, his expression heavy with exhaustion.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Hopefully. I’m waiting for Rebecca and Pascal. We’ll see what they have.”

I glanced at him, noticing the deep lines around his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Then again, none of us had.

“You look like hell,” he observed. “You need rest, James. You can’t keep running on fumes.”

I scoffed, shaking my head. “I don’t deserve sleep. Not while my men are dying.”