Page 22 of A Sunwoven Ascent

Bite.

Again.

Again.

Each time she tore away, his body jolted beneath her, weaker than before. His hands clawed at the ground, fingers digging into the earth as though he could not decide whether to fight her or beg for mercy.

And beneath her paws—something tremored. A faint rumble, like the world itself reacting to her fury.

You need to stop, Kaldrek begged. Please, love. Stop.

But she couldn’t. She truly could not stop, not even if she wanted to.

Then Alaric choked out, “You’re hurting me.”

The words struck her like cold water. Not the demon. Not the darkness wearing his body like stolen skin, but Alaric. His voice. His pain. His eyes.

What had she done?

Blood slicked his mouth, stained the dirt, pooled beneath him, and all at once the shape beneath her teeth was no enemy at all, but someone she had loved. Her jaw slackened. She reeled back, breath tearing from her, caught between instinct and horror.

Then warmth brushed her shoulder. A snout. Evelyne turned, shaking, and found Heidara beside her, wolf eyes bright and steady in the dark. Heidara pressed her head gently into Evelyne’s side.

It was not a command or a warning, only a reminder that she could still stop before she did something she could never take back.

Chapter 12

“Iam fine. Please just leave me the fuck alone. I want to see her.” Kaldrek’s voice cut through the quiet from a nearby lodge.

Evelyne flinched. She had not answered him through the bond since the moment she had nearly ended Alaric’s life. After the chaos, after the screams and blood and cold, she had gone silent, and she had stayed that way through the long hours until morning, curled on the floor in a tight knot, rocking in the dark as though she might somehow piece the night back together if she relived it enough times.

Lorena had remained awake the entire night, moving from one body to the next, tending wounds. Cillian. Heidara. Kaldrek. But most of all, Alaric. She truly was the finest healer in the pack.

At least Heidara had not been badly hurt. Cillian would bear bruises around his throat for some time, and his voice would remain raw for days, but the healer had brewed a bitter medicinal tea that eased the pain enough to let him sleep. Evelyne had sat with her brother only briefly, just long enough to watch his chest rise and fall and hear steadiness return to his voice. Then she slipped away before the sobs broke free in front of him.

And she had sobbed. She screamed too, into her hands, into a blanket, into the thin walls of the lodge. Most of all after Cillian admitted he had been on his way to warn her about Alaric. Because of course he had seen it first. Of course her brother had noticed what she had not, while she stood beside one of her closest friends and called it nothing.

The anger inside her was molten. Not at Cillian. Not even at Alaric. But at herself for missing it. For not seeing how far Alaric was slipping until it was too late.

He is not lost, she told herself fiercely, as if force alone might make it true. Not yet. They would find a way. Now that the pack understood what had happened to him, he would be watched, guarded, protected… even from himself.

According to Lorena, Alaric had been kept under heavy tonics for hours after showing signs of losing control again. Yet all Evelyne could think of was the single moment when he had broken free, and how the memory of his panic-stricken face would haunt her for the rest of her life. He had been afraid. Of her. His closest friend, poised to tear him apart. It had happened with terrifying ease. One threat to Kaldrek, and something feral inside her had chosen for her before she ever could. The truth of it turned her stomach: how swiftly she could become monstrous, how natural violence had felt when her mate’s life hung in the balance.

And Kaldrek… Kaldrek had almost died.

She had felt it. Seen it in his stunned eyes as Alaric’s fingers sank into his throat. The slow withdrawal of that hand was burned into her now. She could not bear to look at him yet, could not bear the sight of his pain and the knowledge that she had been too late by only a few heartbeats. So she hid. Like a coward. Alone in her tiny lodge, barely more than a room, barely shelter at all, yet the best Wrenford had to offer.

It was not until pale daylight seeped through the cracks in the wood that she finally forced herself to stand and go to him. Still, she remained trembling outside the door, listening to her mate’s irritation rise under the prodding of his second.

“Holden, if you adjust the bandage on my throat one more time, I’m going to shove my boot so far up your—”

Kaldrek cut himself off mid-threat and sat up as fast as his injuries allowed the moment he spotted Evelyne in the doorway. His dark eyes swept over her thoroughly, like he was counting bones and searching for blood. Then his gaze warmed, and the smallest curve pulled at the side of his mouth.

Evelyne’s heart turned over in her chest. Bruised, stitched, exhausted, he was still devastating. The most beautiful male she had ever seen, and he was hers. Her gaze dropped to the place where his neck met his shoulder, to the mark there. Her mark. His heartbeat slowed, just slightly, as though her presence eased something tight inside him, and the thought steadied her own breathing at last.

Kaldrek cast Holden a look heavy with silent impatience, the unmistakable command of an alpha wanting privacy.

Holden did not move. And Evelyne loved him for it. His duty was to protect his alpha, and any male willing to do that could stay exactly where he was.