I ran faster, as if I could avoid his words, and I knew he chased after me in earnest then. I couldn’t stop. The comedown was not something I wanted to face. Let me pretend nothing else existed for a little while longer.
Grae barreled into me, knocking me into a deep snowbank. I growled as I shook the powder from my fur. I met his golden eyes and finally really looked at him.
His fur was a brilliant shade of silver, tipped with black. Obsidian ears and a muzzle and tail that faded to a shade of midnight. He looked regal even in his fur. He had always been that breathtaking, even when we were young. But his lanky body had bulked out in muscle just as his human form had. He was in his prime now, his presence more dominating, his scent more alluring.
“I thought you might never look at me again.” His voice was a whisper in my head. “You are just as stunning in your furs as you are in your skin, little fox.”
“Thanks,” I breathed.
“I wish you believed it,” Grae murmured, cocking his head at me. “You can’t help but pull me in, though I know how hard you try not to.”
Reality caught up to me then. Not even my Wolf could outrun it. My sister was cursed, and a kingdom riddled with Rooks stood between us and her salvation. I was fated to the son of a greedy king and expected to take my sleeping twin’s place on her throne.
“I’m just trying to survive,” I whispered into his mind. “That’s all I can do.”
Grae hung his head. “Let’s go for a swim,” he said. “Maybe there’s a few more miracles in these waters.”
I huffed, grateful he hadn’t pushed me any further. My paws were growing cold. Even my Wolf form couldn’t comfort me forever. I trotted after him down toward the lake. Grae’s front paws entered the water. He got as far as his chest before shifting back into his human form.
My heart lurched as I gaped at his muscled back, the water lapping low around his hips. He was a perfectly sculpted warrior, better than any painting or statue. I studied the three long scars trailing down his back. They must have been brutal to not have been healed by shifting.
He waded in deeper, up to his chest, and dipped his head back, slicking the hair off his face. He glanced over his shoulder at me and I snapped shut my gaping maw. My gaze dropped to the swirling turquoise water and I took another step, wondering if any magic was left below its surface. I looked back at Grae’s muscled physique and gulped. I needed whatever magic I could get.
Twenty-Two
The water was the warmest bath that never grew cold. I swirled my arms around, mindlessly drifting around the lake with my eyes shut. The water was so buoyant, I barely needed to paddle to stay afloat.
“Your wounds look much better.” Grae’s voice made me open my eyes.
I ran my fingers along my chin, feeling for the gash, but it was smooth. It was still tender, but vastly improved. My back and chest didn’t ache from the kicks anymore. I felt lighter than I had in days. The ringing in my left ear finally gone.
I met Grae’s hooded eyes. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“I promised you I would.”
Plumes of steam whorled between us like little clouds. I wiggled my toes into the silty bottom of the hot pools, wondering if the story about the lake’s creation was true. Faery magic was a powerful thing. Vellia hadn’t torn down a mountain, but she’d raised us for twenty years. Food, clothing, shelter—it probably took even more magic over that long span of time. It didn’t look as epic as a massive crater in a mountain, but she had given us both a life, all because my mother wished it so.
Not everyone got to make a last wish. The Goddess came too swiftly for most, reclaiming them to the earth, but for those lucky souls who lingered with one foot in the afterlife, sometimes a faery would appear and grant one final wish. I wondered what my father would’ve wished for if he’d had the chance.
“Have you ever thought about what wish you’d make?” I peered from the dunes of snow back at him. “Your last wish?”
Grae’s brow furrowed. “Sometimes a person’s only wish is for it to end.”
I blinked at him, rolling his words around in my mind. It was clear he was speaking of someone, though I didn’t know who. There was a sorrow in his words that surprised me. I wanted to ask more, but he carried on.
“I suppose I’d wish for you.” His words were so low I strained to hear them. Those umber eyes drifted down my face to my lips. “I’d wish to break the mating bond and let you survive without me.”
Pain stabbed through my chest. My body responded as if our bond was being threatened, even by that confession. It felt so unsettling, so wrong. I didn’t know what it was I wanted from Grae, but I knew for certain it wasn’t that.
I could barely get the words out. “I pray you never have to make that wish.”
His hands swirled idly by his sides. “Me too.”
I stepped closer, dipping lower, even though I knew he couldn’t see my breasts beneath the cloudy water. “Do you ever wish we could go back in time? To when we were just Calla and Grae?”
“We are still just Calla and Grae.”
“No. We’re not.” My voice thickened. “Not like then.”
I squinted as the thick clouds parted, sunlight brightening the snow until it was nearly blinding.
Grae slicked a wet hand over his hair. “Who we are to each other is infinite. Our bond will only ever grow and strengthen. It will always be you and me. Always.”
“You don’t know that.”
His fingers touched my chin, lifting my gaze as water dripped from his hand. “I do.” The certainty and stillness in his words made me shudder. “I know it more than my title, or my pack, or even my name. I know I was meant to be yours.”
My hands trembled as I reached up to touch his cheek, searching his eyes. The words I wanted to say were so close to the tip of my tongue. My thumb skimmed his bottom lip and his mouth parted. It would be so easy to claim him, with my words, with my body.
I lifted up, shoulders breaching the surface of the water as my breasts brushed against Grae’s chest. His hand curled around to the back of my neck and he watched my lips with hooded eyes, waiting for me to bridge the distance between us.
A keening howl rent the air.
Our heads snapped toward the sound.
“Is it—”
“It’s not Sadie or Hector,” Grae whispered, instinctively gathering me tighter to him as we both lowered deeper into the water. The brush of my skin against his was electrifying, even as my ears strained toward the sound.
“Ice Wolves?” I whispered as another baying howl echoed across the crater.
“No,” Grae growled. “They’re Silver Wolves—Hemming, Soris, Aiden. They’re my father’s guards.”
“Shit.” I wrapped my arms around him tighter, remembering those guards from the palace in Damrienn.
He tilted his head toward the sound and we watched as five dots darted across the lip of the crater and past to the far side of the mountain.
“They’re not going to Hengreave?”