Page 86 of Shifting Hearts

THREE

Eris

I found him again at dusk.

The bone field stretched behind me like a graveyard of forgotten kings, but Brannon Grey stood in the clearing ahead of me like a storm that refused to break. His shoulders drawn taut, eyes cast to the sky, as if daring the stars to answer.

I should have left him there, should have turned my face to the night and let the tether fray, let time and distance do what logic could not.

But I was not ruled by logic. I was my mother’s daughter—bone witch, sculptor of sorrow—and my father’s child, born of shadow and silence. When fate called, I listened.

Even if it shattered me.

He didn’t turn when I stepped onto the moss-veined stone. He didn’t flinch when I whispered, “You’re still bleeding.”

“Better than dreaming,” he said. “Better than burning.”

His voice cracked, like frost snapping branches. Still raw from the bond — from me.

“I didn’t mean to call you,” I said quietly. “Not like this. Not yet.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He turned, at last, and the look in his eyes was not anger—but anguish.

“The thread’s already within me. I can feel it pulling, and it’s always pulling me toward you.

” His lip curled into a snarl, his wolf breaking the surface, so that the next words were almost unintelligible. “And I hate it.”

There it was. Bitter. Angry. Hate.

A knife to my ribs. Not even cruel—just the truth. He could have lied if he’d wanted to. I almost wished he had. Wolves could lie after all. Wyrd-born, less so. Fey, certainly could not. Lies were as foreign to us as breath to the dead. Ironic, given I dealt with death almost daily.

And yet, I wished for one now—just one gentle lie to wrap around the jagged truth and soften the edges.

But no, he gave me this instead.

Honesty. Brutal, and raw and final.

So, I nodded, because what else was there to say? I hated it too. Not him. Just… the inevitability of it. The way the thread tightened around my heart like a noose.

“I brought you this,” I said, unwrapping the cloth in my palm.

His tooth gleamed white in the dying light. Not just bone—this was more than that. It still pulsed faintly. As if the bond lived inside it.

“I thought if I gave it back, maybe…” I trailed off.

His nostrils flared. “Don’t.”

“I don’t want to bind you,” I said. “If the bond is wrong—if it’s a trick of the Wyrd—I’ll sever it. I swear it.”

He stared at the tooth, then at me, and for a breathless second something softened behind his gaze.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” he murmured. “The dreams, the deaths, your voice in my head?—”

“Take it,” I whispered.

I held it out to him.

He reached.

And the second his fingers brushed mine, the world ignited.

White-hot pain lanced through my hand, through him, through the air between us. The tooth screamed in some language only the dead could understand, and we both dropped it, flinching back as if branded.

Smoke curled from our palms.

Brannon swore, staggering. I clutched my hand to my chest, breath ragged.

“It won’t let us go,” I choked. “Even if we want it to.”

He didn’t answer. Not with words. He didn’t have to.

Just stared at the blackened skin of his palm. At the mark that had begun to bloom there—something ancient. A spiral laced with thorns. A binding rune I knew too well.

Because I’d seen it before.

On a scroll. In the dark court. Inked in blood, years ago.

I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat. “No.”

Brannon looked up sharply. “What?”

I shook my head. “No, no, no—this isn’t fate. This isn’t a mate bond. It’s worse.”

His jaw clenched. “What are you talking about?”

My voice trembled. “You’re my mark.”

“What?”

“I made an oath,” I rasped. “Years ago, when I was just a girl. They took me into the marrow vaults, made me drink from the bone cup. I don’t remember his face, but he asked for a name. I gave one. One that echoed in my head like a curse.”

Brannon’s voice was like gravel. “What name?”

“Grey.”

The silence between us went sharp as broken glass.

I wrapped my arms around myself. “I didn’t know. I swear it. I didn’t know it meant you.”

His breath came in shallow bursts. “You gave my name to the Bone Court?”

“I thought it was a dream. I thought it was just… a test. Something to prove that I was loyal.”

“A death oath,” he spat. “You gave me a fucking death oath?”

Tears prickled behind my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. I couldn’t. “You were nothing to me then. A whisper. A phantom in the Wyrd. I didn’t even know if you were real.”

His voice dropped, venom-slick. “I am very fucking real.”

“I didn’t know!”

He turned from me then, shoulders heaving. Rage rolled off him in waves. Magic, too—twisting the air, tugging at the tether between us.

I felt it in my sternum. A tightness. A pull. A plea.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I said, quieter now. “Any of it.”

He turned towards me, and the look he gave me was not fury—but grief. Pure, unadulterated grief.

“Neither did I.”

I wanted to run to him. I wanted to scream.

I wanted to unmake the vow with blood and ash and scream to the Wyrd to choose again, but all I did was watch him go.

And as he turned and walked away; one hand still curled around his scorched palm, cradling it.

The tooth lay between us, smoking faintly, and as it slipped from my palm like a hot coal, I saw the way his gaze tracked it—a predator’s eyes, locked on prey.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned, my voice trembling in that humiliating way I hadn’t managed to beat out of myself yet. I hated it. The weakness. The tremor. But how could I be still when fate itself was stitching us together with invisible thread?

“I don’t want it,” he growled, as if trying to prove something to himself — to me — only his eyes said otherwise. They lingered on the fang as if it were calling to him. “I don’t want you.”

And there it was. The rejection.

He said it like a weapon—one he knew would cut bone-deep.

Something inside me cracked wide open. Not heartbreak. Not pain. Something older. More dangerous. Something that had been waiting under my skin like a splinter.

“You think I want this?” I snapped. “You think I chose to be dragged into this tangle of eyes magic? You think I wanted to dream of your death for a year straight, only to find you alive and snarling like a damned beast on my doorstep?”

He said nothing.

I saw the twitch in his jaw. The way his hands clenched and unclenched. He didn’t know what to do with me—with us. But fate did. And it was tightening the knot. Trying to strangle us both if we let it.

“I tried to throw it away,” I whispered. “The tooth. I buried it, burned it, drowned it. I stitched it into the belly of a crow and set it loose. Still, it came back to me.”

Brannon shook his head, took a step back. “This isn’t real. It can’t be. I lost that tooth in a dream. It was nothing.”

“Then why does it burn you?”

We both looked at the fang on the forest floor, glowing faintly like a piece of coal banked under ash. I didn’t dare touch it again. Afraid I’d get burned again — or worse wind up dead for my trouble.

Instead, I turned my focus inward. My dreambone necklace lay heavy against my throat, and the fang now hung from its centre, fused somehow with my own milk teeth. As if it belonged there. As if it had always been there.

The magic inside me stirred. Old, bone-bound, and blood-sworn. And that was when I felt it — not just the mate-thread thrumming between us, but something darker. Deeper. A memory surfaced, slick and unwelcome, from my time in the dark court.

An oath made in blood and bone.

“I swore to kill you,” I breathed, stunned. “Years ago.”

Brannon froze. “What?”

“I didn’t know it was you then. I didn’t even know your name. Just a face in the bone-fire. The fey made me bind it. A death-oath. You were just… a future. A possibility. And now you’re standing in front of me.”

“You’re saying you were sent to kill me?” His voice was a low growl, more beast than man.

“No,” I said. “Worse. I was trained to. They prepared me for it. I dreamt of your death, countless times. The dark court doesn’t waste their magic on soft endings.”

His hands rose, claws not quite formed but itching beneath his skin. I could feel the Wyrd crawling across his bones like lightning before a storm.

“I should end this now,” he said.

“Then do it,” I spat. “Spare us both.”

He didn’t move, and neither did I.

Instead, we stared at each other—two predators caught in the same trap, fangs bared, hearts pounding, the Wyrd unravelling around us like a broken spool of thread.

“Why haven’t you already?” I whispered.

He blinked.

That single second—that flicker of hesitation—was everything.

It told me he wasn’t sure. That something in him didn’t want to hurt me, not yet.

Not now. The mate bond might have sickened him, might have filled him with dread and rage, but it still worked.

Still curled its fingers into our spines and whispered, mine, mine, mine.

“I can’t,” he said finally, and the fury dropped from his shoulders like a weight he could no longer carry anymore.

Neither one of us moved toward the other. We couldn’t. The magic made sure of that.

But the Wyrd howled between us, louder than any words, and that howl would follow us both into the dark.

So, I turned away from him first, and he didn’t try to stop me.