Page 115 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

"Rhys? What's happening?"

He clutched his head, the vein at his temple pulsing beneath his fingers. "The bond lifted a fucking shroud, all right—and it’s not just your heart I feel beating in me anymore."

"What do you mean?" A jolt of terror spiked through me. "Is something wrong with the bond?"

"No. Not the bond." He stood abruptly, stumbling toward the window. His whole body had gone rigid. "The curse. For the first time in ages, I can feel—" His voice cracked. "I can really feel?—."

Tears streamed down his face.

"Wyatt," he choked out.

His brother. His lost brother. The one I’d seen in the auction hall those years ago when he’d taken the wrong side of history.

"Rhys, that's not?—"

"He's here." Rhys pressed his palms to the glass, staring down at the city below as his shoulders shook. "Right now. Out there. I can feel him. He's standingright fucking there."

39

EPILOGUE

Wyatt

The bar door nearly took me out as I stumbled through, my hand slamming against the wall just in time to keep from eating floor. The blur of Dallas’s fucking flashing neon finally started to sharpen as I blinked that shit out of my eyes.

What the hell had just happened? Something had hit me hard out there, but I couldn’t get a grip on it.

I made it to a stool before my legs gave out. The cracked leather groaned as I dropped like a sack of bricks.

“There you go, buddy.” The bartender, patchy ’stache and cheap pity in place, slid me a glass of amber mercy. Whiskey. I should have known his name by now, but didn’t.

I grunted something that passed for thanks and threw it back. The burn cut clean through the fog—then the shadows rushed back in.

“Rough night?” he asked, elbows sinking into the bar top that hadn’t seen a rag since Bush was in office. “Wanna talk about it?”

Not a chance in hell. I tapped the empty glass.

The second pour came fast. I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth, but the images still clawed at me.

So much green it hurt my eyes. A forest that went on forever. Pine, rain, freedom.

I raked my fingers through my hair, like I could physically claw the memory away. But it stuck tight, burrowing in deep, an itch I couldn't scratch.

So I just sat there, glaring at the drink sweating all over the bar, my jaw clenched so tight I'm surprised my teeth didn't crack.

The black space in my head was an old friend. My whole damn past—wiped clean. I’d learned to ignore it, keep my eyes forward. But this new thing, this violent flash, pressed on my lungs, twisted the world sideways. Like I’d woken up in someone else’s life.

The whiskey disappeared faster than sense, but that feeling stayed like a splinter under skin.

My fingers closed around the glass.

Hours blurred, the whiskey disappearing faster than rational thought. But that nagging wrongness hung on like a dog with a bone.

"We'll add it to your tab," the bartender hollered as I wrestled my arms into my jacket.

I hit the street, and the night air damn near took my face off—cold as a witch's tit and twice as nasty. A freak snap of cold that didn’t belong in Dallas, even in January. I sucked in a breath and the sensation from earlier slammed into me like a freight train all over again. The colors, the smells, all of it swirling together until I couldn't tell up from down.

My guts heaved, and I lurched for the wall, puking whiskey and bile onto the pavement.