Page 35 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

I felt his pain.

My wolf stirred in quiet discontent, wanting to soothe him even as my magic wanted to punish.

“You should’ve stayed away,” I muttered, fingers glowing faintly. The silver shavings hummed as I coaxed them from his skin, though some were stubborn and wouldn’t lift. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know enough.” His voice became softer. “I know you feel it.”

I didn’t answer. Because I did.

The bond was quiet, low and slow like a river winding around stone. An insistent invitation, one I’d been pushing against since the moment he pinned me in the forest.

“I don’t want this,” I said, more to myself than him.

“But it wants us.”

I leaned closer, hand resting at the base of his ribs to work another shard loose. His breath hitched.

The air shifted. Boots hit the ground, voices sounded in the distance. Likely the rest of them coming to back up their beta. Logan, Eve, and from the number of feet, the whole Orion inner circle.

All I could hear was the sound of Rhys’s heart stuttering under my palm.

One beat. Another.

“You think this is about fate?” I said, bitterness slipping out. “You think the Goddess chose me for you? That this is divine intervention?”

He didn’t answer. I heard his thoughts, just like in the cabin.

The Goddess wants to make things right. To fix what was broken. You and me. Them. All of it.His words came through a damned bond we shouldn’t have had.

His words reached me again, as if I were in his mind.

We’ve been bonded because she can bring me to the twins through you. We are meant to be for that greater purpose. I can’t fight it, but I can use it.

A flicker of something painful cracked through me. The pain of his loss. He thought I was the way back to them.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “I won’t lead you to them.”

“You’re the one who showed me they’re still alive.” He coughed. “That has to be what all this shit is about, why you’ve appeared now, why I can’t help but?—”

I silenced him with a press of my hand to his chest, fingers splayed wide over his wounds, magic pulsing warm through his skin. He winced, the breath knocked out of him.

I was sure my touch would close the wounds, but the silver magic pulsing through my fingertips didn’t have any effect. The wounds didn’t heal. If I’d ever needed a sign that this bond was false—and I didn’t need it, though it helped—this was it. We weren’t meant to be. Never. And I needed him to see thatnow.

“Look at me,” I said.

He did.

I leaned down, close enough that his breath ghosted across my cheek. My mouth hovered near his ear, and his heartbeat stuttered beneath my hand.

“Let go of the fairy tale,” I whispered. “You’ll never see them again.”

He tried to lift his head, but he was too weak. “You can’t know that. You don’t know that.”

I brushed the back of my fingers down his jaw as footsteps outside came closer. His stubble scraped my skin.

He looked at me like he still believed I could be something good, and that was the last straw. With a cruel smile I found somewhere deep within me, I leaned in close to his ear. This was my chance. He was vulnerable. I could rely on the dark side of my soul to lie and make him believe me, the part that was not wolf, the part able to fool him.

“Oh, I know.” My lips grazed his ear before I spoke the lie that would bring this sham to an end. “I know becauseI killed them.”