Page 32

“About half a week ago,” she rasped, “they came, unannounced. Four armed wolves. Big. Trained. Led by a woman. An Omega, but not like the others.” Her jaw clenched. “Brown hair. Honey eyes. Beautiful, in that perfect, polished way.”

My blood ran cold. “Tanya.”

She nodded slowly. “They didn’t speak. Not much. Just dragged me out, beat me until I couldn’t stand. The wolves held me down. She watched. Told them where to hit.” Her voice cracked, raw with fury and shame. “I had no quarrel with the wolf girl—”

“Lexa,” I snapped. “Her name is Lexa.”

The witch flinched but gave a shaky nod. “Lexa. I liked her. One of my best customers. Regular. Polite. I didn’t agree with what she was doing to herself, but a paying customer is a paying customer. I never forced her into the runes. She came of her own will.”

She glanced down, swallowing hard.

“But these wolves… they made me do a spell. One I didn’t want to cast. Something dark. Subtle. It wouldn’t show. They wanted it to kill her. Not all at once, no, it had to look natural. Like the runes breaking was what did it.”

My breath caught.

“The runes?” I whispered.

“They were only meant to bind her wolf. Suppress it. Breaking them would hurt, yes, violently, but they wouldn’t kill her.

” She looked up at me, her face now hardening, the fear beginning to burn into anger.

“The spell they forced me to do… it tainted the release. Corrupted it. Made it look like the transformation was killing her when it was really this . That Omega’s spell. Their plan.”

The room tilted. My vision blurred red. Tanya’s scent on the last visit. Her words. Her poison.

She was going to be Luna . She thought she was destined for it. But she never cared who the Alpha was—only the power that came with the title. And Roran… that swine, that scheming fuck, had always lingered just behind me. Always smiling, always waiting for weakness.

If Lexa died… if the bond shattered and took me with it… I’d lose my claim. I’d lose my mind. He could rise.

They didn’t just want her dead. They wanted me destroyed. I rose slowly, eyes burning with a fury I didn’t bother to hide. The witch flinched again.

“Can you undo it?” I asked, voice low, deadly calm.

She hesitated, then gave a slow nod. “Yes. But I’ll need ingredients. Time. Strength. And I want retribution for what your wolves did to me. My hut. My body.”

I knelt before her again, meeting her gaze with something colder than rage.

“I’ll build you a new fucking house with my own hands if I have to. Just save her.”

The witch looked into my eyes, and whatever she saw there—it made her believe me.

She reached for my hand. “Yes.”

I shifted back once the blood cooled and the rage dulled enough for my mind to return. My muscles ached, fur gave way to skin, claws to fingers. I staggered slightly, and the witch, still bruised and limping, tossed a bundle of clothes in my direction without a word.

They smelled faintly of old herbs and ash, but they fit well enough. I dressed quickly and helped her move through the wreckage of her shattered home. Together, we sifted through the mess, broken shelves, shattered jars, singed books.

“Careful with those,” she muttered, pointing to a scattered collection of dried leaves. “Silverroot. Rare. I’ll need it.”

I gathered what I could while she worked, then broke off to collect firewood from the forest’s edge.

My hands moved quickly, stacking it in her old firepit the way I’d seen it done in her memories.

I’d seen this place through her eyes before: the cracked stone hearth, the cluttered table, the wooden beam where she once rested her head after the first rune was carved.

It felt surreal, standing here now.

As I struck flint and coaxed the flames to life, I glanced up at the witch. She was slicing herbs with precise, practices movements.

“Did you ever feel sorry?” I asked. “For hurting her?”

The blade paused for a second.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Always. But she was stubborn. Never listened.”

I smiled faintly as the fire caught and began to crackle. “Yeah. Stubborn . That’s Lexa, alright.”

The witch continued working, tossing the herbs into a cracked iron pot with dried root and old bone dust. She stirred slowly, then looked at me.

“You may not believe it, but I cared about her. More than most. Maybe more than I should have.” She hesitated, then added, “That’s why I told her about the boy.”

I turned sharply, my body going still. “ Dain ?”

She nodded. “You think she just wandered into that wreck of a house and found a child? No. I told her he was there. I had a vision of him. She was already cracked in the heart, and I knew if anything could keep her tethered to the world, it’d be him.”

My jaw clenched as pieces began to shift, aligning in ways I hadn’t seen before.

“She never told me that,” I murmured.

“She wouldn’t,” the witch said. “She didn't want it to mean something. But it did. She didn’t just take him in out of pity. Even if she fought her wolf instincts, she felt the bond . That child was always meant to find her.”

I stared into the fire, that aching bond between Lexa and Dain glowing sharper in my memory. “I never understood it,” I muttered. “Why she bonded with a human child and didn’t claim him. Change him. Make him hers.”

The witch stirred the pot, her voice low. “Because he’s not hers to claim.”

I turned to her, brows furrowed. “Lexa said the same thing once.”

She smiled, a slow, knowing thing.

“That’s something her daughter will decide.”

The breath caught in my throat. I turned fully to face her, the fire casting flickering light between us.She looked me up and down, eyes dark, but gleaming with something new— certainty .

“Your daughter ,” she said softly.

The words slammed into me. I stared at her, my voice suddenly trapped deep in my throat. I tried to speak, managed only a choked stutter.

“I—what did you just—”

She shook her head lightly, half-smiling, something almost gentle in her bruised expression.

“Relax. It won’t happen yet. Not for another two years at least.” She returned her attention to the pot, stirring calmly as though she hadn’t just shattered my understanding of the world.

“But tell me, Alpha, am I wrong to think you’ve felt the pull too? ”

My heart pounded violently, memories flooding back unbidden: Dain’s tiny hand clutching mine, his dark eyes wide and trusting, that first night he’d cried quietly in the darkness, looking for Lexa.

How quickly the boy had slipped past all my walls, how easily he’d settled into the spaces I’d forgotten I had inside me.

How I’d guarded him, protected him—not simply out of duty or pity, but because something deep within me had demanded it. Something primal. Something stronger than instinct.

Not for him alone, but for something greater—for a future that had quietly nestled itself into my very bones without my even realizing it.

“Yes,” I finally whispered, barely audible. “I felt it.”

The witch smiled knowingly, her eyes warm in the firelight. “Then trust in what’s coming. It’s a path you’re already walking, even if you can’t yet see its end.”

I stared into the flames, my chest tightening.

Two years. Lexa. Me. A daughter. And a future that had somehow, against all odds, found its way to us through a human boy with too-wide eyes and a heart that refused to let go.

I exhaled slowly, the weight of it sinking in. I glanced at the witch again, my voice steadying. “Then we save Lexa. No matter the cost.”

And as I watched her stir, as the firelight danced across her lined face, something new took root within me: Hope .

The potion bubbled, steam rising in thick, pungent curls. Just as the witch began carefully pouring it into a vial, my vision lurched suddenly, violently. The room tilted, blurred. The world narrowed, darkening around the edges.

I stumbled, gasping.

Then, her voice— Lexa .

Weak, shaking, desperate, but alive . She was awake, reaching through the bond with the strength she had left, pulling me toward her, forcing her visions into my mind.

Blurry lines, muffled, distorted images. Voices harsh, distant, yet painfully clear—

“The fucking kid is gone too!” a familiar voice snarled in fury.

My heart seized violently. Roran.

“I told you to keep a fucking eye on him!” he roared.

Then another voice, cold and familiar. Tanya. “Andros put his stupid Beta on my tail. Trying to exile me. I couldn’t move freely in the citadel—not until your men showed up and gutted him. Left him to bleed out behind the stables.”

My breath stopped.

Garrick. Gutted. Left for dead.

Lexa's panic rippled sharply through the bond, a wave of terror, rage, desperation. Everything she'd shown me, every blurred vision, real. They were trapped in the citadel, surrounded by traitors, hunted.

My blood roared in my ears. Rage ignited again, fierce and savage. Lexa, Garrick, everyone loyal to me, they were all in grave danger.

I turned sharply to the witch, eyes wild, frantic. “The citadel. Now. We have to go back.”

She looked at me, mouth thin, eyes blazing with dark determination. “A day's ride won't cut it, Alpha.”

“Then do something. Anything .”

Her lips curled into a bitter, exhausted smile. “That fucking house you build me better have one hell of an herb garden.”

Before I could question her, she reached out, fingers slicing through the air with the last dregs of her strength. Energy crackled, splitting the room open, tearing reality itself apart. A shimmering portal spiralled before us, wild and volatile, filled with dark energy and raw magic.

The witch held out her hand, shaking but fierce, eyes locked on mine.

“After you, my Lord,” she rasped.