Page 75 of WitchBorn
“Huh?”
“You ever play video games?”
“No. Seb does, and some of the others in the wolf pack.”
“The game always ends with a final boss, then shifts to a movie cut scene that wraps up the storyline. Defeat the boss, save the princess.” He gave me a sad smile. “But the final boss is me.”
“The final boss is Winter. She’s been unraveling the control of you and your wolf for a long time.”
He shook his head. “I had a glimpse of the power. The wolves were part of it. But there’s something in me that I was born with, a rage that can be terrifying and monstrous. The wolf took that half, the nightmare, even though it wasn’t his to control. It’s insane.”
“When provoked,” I agreed. “We can all be chaos when provoked.” He had no idea of the beast I could be. “Witchborn comes with a lot of curses.”
“And power.”
I bit my tongue to keep from voicing the adage that power corrupted as obviously that madness had taken the wolf a long time ago. Could his other half be saved at all, or would re-uniting his soul destroy them both? I’d seen power rip apart realms.
“I have to face them all, right?” Finn asked, his gaze following the path of memories to be unlocked. “Remember who I was to figure out who I am?”
“Yes,” I said while fearing his sweet subtle strength would be lost under the weight of his traumatic past.
“I hope you don’t hate me when this is over,” Finn whispered, not looking back my way. He headed down the path to a statuewithout a barrier. “I hate that you’re mated to me and don’t have a choice. What if all this is meant to make me lose control?”
“I’m your anchor, remember?”
He glanced up, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. The dark blotch of the curse slowly crept across his skin, making him ghoulish-looking, but he nodded. “You’re safe in there, right?”
I shrugged, looking around. “It’s not a five-star hotel with room service, but I’ve had worse.”
“You’re saying you’re high maintenance.”
“What was your first clue?”
He laughed, and the sound loosened some of the lingering sense of doom inside me. “I wish I could kiss you again.”
“Incentive,” I said.
“Thanks,” he replied.
“For what?”
“For being you. Which is sometimes a prickly asshole, but always exactly what I need.”
“Sap.”
He laughed again, then sobered as he reached for the statue. “Be safe. I’ll understand if you need to call Summer to pull you out again while I’m gone. Just be safe please.” Finn set his hand on the statue before I could respond, and for the first time I saw it from inside the sanctuary. He turned into a solid thing as though carved to the statue, and as I closed my eyes, I could sense him opening his to another piece of the puzzle fitting together his past.
“You too,” I whispered. “Be safe, Finn, and remember, no matter what you see, you made it through.”
Fifty
FINN
A dark forest opened around me with a heavy memory of Odion finding a mate and leaving the pack to pursue a family of his own. The weight of the loss sent me away from the pack. My wolf snarled at the separation, but my heart ached in a way I could only recall from losing my mother. The decades of friendship had given me an anchor and his strength at my side kept me focused on the pack, now one of the largest on the entire continent.
Without him, I hated how much they demanded from me. My wolf pointed out potential mates for us, citing benefits that he thought worked well for my witchborn heart too, and yet, none of them appealed to me. I handed the wolves over to the mothers of the pack, to guide them, and help steer them in the right direction. Wolves didn’t kill people, or anything unnecessarily. We’d built a community entirely of wolves, their mates, and their young. And I never felt so alone.
I wandered south and east, months passing with four paws to the ground rather than human flesh. Occasionally we’d join a pack, not to lead, rather to fulfill the need of my wolf for pack. My wolf chose a mate for us among the humans, I think because he knew we were lonely and thought it would help me find stability again. And for a time, they gave me focus, until age began to eat away at them. The short lifespans of mortals leaving me to watchthem fade before my eyes. Twice it happened, a passing of years in seconds as the memories flipped from page to page on high speed, stopping when I woke curled around the third mate, chosen by me this time at the insistence of the wolf, from among the humans born within the wolf pack.