Page 15

“Caitlynn.”

“The magic chose her for you.”

“The magic doesn’t always get it right.”

His sister looked up at him. The teething ring turned slowly between her fingers. “Yes, it does.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I built the ritual, Chris. I channeled it. I stood in the circle, felt every pairing draw through my body. Yours came through so strong it nearly knocked me sideways.” Her voice was steady. “The magic doesn’t make mistakes. It sees what we can’t.”

He looked away, toward the eastern path.

“She tried to destroy you,” he argued. “She aligned with Gideon. She ran a campaign against you, turned the staff, had you eating alone for weeks. I watched it happen. I couldn’t stop it. Now you’re telling me the magic handed her to me on purpose.”

Caitlynn was quiet. She turned the teething ring over, pressed her thumb against the ridged surface.

“I remember the cold eggs,” she said. “I remember the whispers when I walked through the dining hall. I remember being afraid of her because I didn’t understand why she hated me so much.”

She looked at him.

“But I don’t carry it. I processed it. Sloane pledged her loyalty. I accepted it. In the two years since, she’s been invisible. She hasn’t undermined me. She’s been alone in that cottage at the edge of the compound, and I didn’t think about what that looked like until the magic put her name next to yours.”

Chris sat down. The stone was cold beneath him.

“There are things I can’t tell you,” he said. “About last night.”

“I know.”

“She’s not what I expected.”

Caitlynn watched him, her expression open, waiting.

“The magic sees things,” she said, quieter now. “It drew Kahn and me when every logical argument said it shouldn’t. It drew Viktor and Olivia when neither of them was looking. If it drew you and Sloane, there’s a reason. You don’t have to understand it yet. You just have to not run from it.”

He rubbed his palms against his thighs. His hands were rough from gripping the wooden chair all night, the pressure marks still across his fingers.

“I’m not running from anything.”

“You’re sitting here telling me all the reasons it’s wrong instead of sitting with the possibility that it might not be.”

He looked at her. Green eyes steady, freckles against pale skin. If anyone had the right to hold Sloane’s history against her, it was Caitlynn.

She wasn’t.

“I’m not ready to hear this,” he told her.

She smiled, small, brief. “I know. That’s why I’m saying it now. So it’s there when you are.”

She squeezed his shoulder as she passed. He heard her footsteps on the stone path, heard the side door close.

He sat on the bench with his elbows on his knees. His wolf turned in his chest, pointed east, and did not settle.

Chapter 6 - Sloane

The knock came at seven in the morning.

Sloane had been awake since four, sitting on the edge of her cot with her boots already on, her hair pulled back, her hands clasped between her knees. She hadn’t slept. The bruises on her throat had deepened overnight into a mottled purple-green that her body was already working to heal, the accelerated repair of wolf physiology turning what would have been two weeks of discoloration into three or four days. She’d checked in the bathroom mirror at first light. A high collar would cover it. She owned two.