Page 27 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

I could still see the way she’d looked in the auction hall—barefoot, her arms chained, her dark eyes burning with the last embers of defiance as they led her to the platform.

I’d been so close. I’d almost gotten her out. I’d almost ripped her away from that nightmare.

But I’d hesitated.

That damn shifter had reached for me—Wyatt Orion—just a brush of his fingers when I’d nearly tripped trying to follow her. At his touch, I froze. In him, I’d seen nothing but blackness.Hisblackness. A hole so deep I was worried I’d fall in. My abilities saw into the very heart of him…

And saw nothing.

It was an emptiness so deep it swallowed every instinct, every thought. I’d never felt anything like it before.

Wyatt Orion, close to being feral but still powerful, with piercing eyes that birthed a fear I didn’t know I had in me. I’d found myself again and ripped my arm away from him.

And in that moment where I was sucked into the nothingness of the Orion soul, the deal had shifted. Dahlia wasn’t in the line anymore. She was gone.

I clenched my jaw, forcing the memory back into the shadows where it belonged.

“I need to get out of here,” I muttered, turning from the window and sitting beside Astrid on the sofa. “I need to find Dahlia. She’s still out there, Astrid.”

“I know,” she said, sitting up, her expression serious. “But you barely made it out of that mess alive. What do you think is going to happen if you go after her now? You think they’re just going to let you waltz in wherever she is and take her?”

My hands curled into fists. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“Of course you do. You’re smarter than that. Which is why I owe you my life.” She scoffed. “And it’s also why you aren’t going anywhere now.”

I exhaled sharply, rubbing my eyes so hard I saw stars.

Astrid was right. I couldn’t just run off, not with every Orion wolf watching me like I was a grenade with a loose pin. I also couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. Dahlia had already spent too long in the hands of monsters.

If I had to play along with this ridiculous fate-damned situation for a little while, fine.

But I wasn’t staying. And I sure wasn’t going to let some cruel joke of a fated bond shackle me here. I would find a way out.

I just had to get a particular shifter off my back.

Even in that moment, I felt him. A beat of a pulse reaching me from beyond, and I knew it was his. I had to find a way to turn that to my advantage.

I had to play the game. A little game of fated mate, one that ended with me taking off and him having turned on me such that he’d never want me again.

I had to get him to reject the bond.

When the thought crystallized, the world tilted sideways.

I gasped, hands flying to my chest as his emotions crashed into mine. His wolf was snarling, demanding, and my own wolf responded instantly with a hunger that made my knees buckle.

Pain ripped through me like lightning. My pain, his pain. I didn’t know anymore.

Frustration. Raw, clawing frustration.

“Sable?” Astrid’s voice sounded like it was underwater.

Another wave slammed into me. Desire so desperate I nearly cried out.

Mine, his wolf snarled through the connection.Find her. Claim her. Now.

“No,” I whispered. The cabin spun, walls blurring as his hunger became mine.

I could feel him moving. His pulse hammered against my ribs like a caged animal, and beneath it all was a possessiveness so absolute it made my silver magic recoil.