Page 26 of The Girl in the Forest

I’d felt him in a way I’d never felt anyone. As if the world had waited to breathe.

A low wooden wall blocked my path, but this time, what I saw wasn’t a challenge. I saw a reflection of my life—always facing a new wall, no matter what I did. How hard I worked. Mace said it was the arrogance in failing, and maybe it was. Or maybe failing was just easy for me. A habit I’d had all my life.

I curled both palms over the wooden edge. Let the anger run free. The bitterness. The night after the rite, when I’d asked Grayson why he held so tightly to hope.

He could have told me the truth. Told me who he was, and what I could be. But he let me walk away. Stood there silently while I chose easy.

The one way out that would cost me the most.

Not my life—although my life had changed. The cost was in forgetting about the lives of those I loved.

Because the wrinkle offered the biggest trap of all. A place where I’d find comfort in the familiar. My memories, the lake that soothed with an easy rhythm. The house Grayson offered me. I’d never have to decide anything. The magic would do it for me.

But I’d gradually sink into a numbing tedium. I’d go fracky and not know it. Be perfectly happy. While the people I loved drifted from my thoughts. While they went on with their lives on the outside, and died without me being there, holding a hand, whispering a last, “I love you.”

I’d repeat a pattern without realizing it.

Losing Leo. Hattie. Oscar. So many others.

Without realizing it.

I’d be like my mother, lost in her mind. Worse, I’d be like the queens, lacking compassion, and the weight of that sorrow was a stone that crushed me. In a perfect world, people were honest with each other. They ended up making the right decisions when the time came, even when those choices were hard—because they’d been told the truth.

“I told you the truth, Noa.”

Grayson’s voice stabbed through my mental ranting. He stood beyond the wall, his face a sharp blade in the moonlight, and I wanted to throw up. How had I not known he was there? Was I still so numb?

I’d been oblivious to his energy, while he’d been in my head, listening to my thoughts the way he always did. “Does privacy mean nothing to you?”

“Not with you.” His tone reminded me of the day in Leo’s destroyed house, when he’d faced me. A lethal alpha. Unforgiving. Breathtaking.

His beauty was destructive; I would never get over the impact. His hair was nearly black, his features compelling. Both blue and green flashed in his eyes—eyes that could see the truth I tried to hide. The grace and strength in his body meant love and war, dominated by mystery. No other man could reach the hidden parts of me, touch the way he did, where I was most vulnerable.

Even now, I leaned into the tug in my chest. The hook he’d anchored so deeply that I’d never get it out.

For a heartbeat, I struggled against who I was now. Tied to him through his sigil. At risk, if he asked for mine in return.

But I would always see his shadows, fight against easing his pain.

So when a thousand emotions crossed his face, the one that hit the hardest was his anger when he said, “You should have stayed away.”

A truth I already knew, that he didn’t want me here. But I was done with blindly trusting him.

“You could have told me about your sigil before you inked it.”

“I could have.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “But then you would have refused, and I needed the ritual to protect you from Metis.”

He was blaming this on Metis? “You lured her with that blade,” I pointed out. “You wanted her involved.”

“Because your mother’s book was too important to leave to the nymphs.”

Only the Lady of the Lake could approve our request to search the pool and sacred cave, hidden behind the waterfall, halfway up the cliff.

And only a relic like the Blade of Nereus—the blade Aine had stolen from her sister centuries ago—was a persuasive enough lure.

I remembered how Metis tried to crush me, and the fear in her eyes when she couldn’t—fear from a queen descended from an ocean god. A woman worshiped by every nymph in the world. A legend the Alpha of Sentinel Falls did not want as an enemy.

When she’d held my gaze, the ice in my spine had become something endless, the glacial cold of a distant star. Deadly.

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