Page 38 of Betrayed By the Wolf

“I’ll never hurt you, Vera, no matter what you call me. No matter what curse this place has put upon this, there is no magic in this world that could compel me to be cruel to you. My mate. My love. I’m here.” He laid his hand against her cheek, and the vision broke apart around him, freeing him from the whirling world it had created in his head.

His legs buckled beneath him, and he hit the ground a few feet from where Vera lay. She shook her head back and forth as if it was to clear it, her eyes widening when they landed on him.

“Rami!” She spoke into his mind, relief evident. “It was… it was awful. I saw—“

“I know,” he interrupted, scrambling to his feet. They nuzzled each other, needing to feel the solid fur and flesh against them to believe the real world had returned. “I know. Where are the others?”

They found them scattered around the clearing in the shadow of the cabin. Adria and Spencer were standing tall, having shaken off whatever the curse had thrown at them with more ease than the others seemed to. Jonah and Moira looked shaken.

“Even with our mates, we’re vulnerable this close to the source,” Spencer sent. “Stick close together. If somethinghappens, more intense than what we all just faced, we flee. Even if that’s all we’ve accomplished, we’ve learned something.”

He glanced at Jonah, seeking agreement from the other Alpha. Jonah inclined his head in assent.

Vera leaned her weight against his side, and he felt her breathing, the frantic thump of her heart in her chest. It was still racing. If they’d gotten caught in that, he wondered, would the curse have taken them? Would they have succumbed to it then and there and left Jessa an orphan? The thought was too dark to contemplate. He needed to be brave now.

Up close, the cabin was clearly abandoned. Vines pushed through holes in the windows and moss grew up the sides. Bits of the roof had collapsed in. What had looked almost idyllic from far away was rotten and crumbling.

Spencer and Jonah led the way in, bodying the door open. Moira and Adria followed their mates and finally, Vera and Rami entered. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He shielded Vera with his body, searching the corners for anything that might be lurking.

“Empty,” Vera said to the group, her delicate nose picking up no trace of another presence. “Or this damned smell is making it impossible to suss out anything else.”

Still, Rami kept close to her side while they scouted the place, nosing aside empty buckets and dusty books. If the vision was the obstacle they’d faced just getting near the cabin, he had little doubt something worse awaited inside.

“What if we’ve got it wrong,” Vera sent to him as they ventured into a side room.

A bedroom. Musty curtains hung from the bedposts like scraps of raw flesh. A vanity sat beside the window, its brushes and mirror covered in cobwebs.

“What do you mean?” Rami replied, crouching to look under the bed.

“What if the story was true and the woman’s pain is the source of all this, like we thought,” she went on, nosing a filigreed silver box on top of the vanity. “What if this curse wasn’t her intention at all, and just a byproduct of her anguish? A pain so great it lingered beyond her years.”

He snorted dust out of his nose and sat back to look at Vera. “So you think we won’t find a witch in here at all? How will we end this then?”

It was easier to have something to fight, something solid he could destroy. If there was no witch to kill then there was no end to the threat they faced.

Chapter 17 - Vera

The hallucination had left Vera shaken. She’d seen the aftershocks in the others’ eyes and wondered what private hells they had faced. Rami looked haunted. Vera had watched Moira, Rami, and Jessa each turn away from her after they realized she was not the competent, capable woman they believed her to be but a mess, scrambling to keep herself afloat. Disappointment and contempt had colored their words and expressions.

How long would she hear the echo of Rami’s words? “You’re not my mate. Fate would never choose such a worthless woman to be my match. I never should have trusted you with my child.”

Even as the vision warped Rami, stretching his features until they were barely recognizable, his eyes black hollows in his face, she’d felt the words land. It was too easy to imagine them coming from him, like they’d been plucked out of her dreams and set into the vision’s mouth. Then she’d realized that they were exactly that—her own negative internal dialogue fed back into her brain with the curse’s filter.

She knew that Rami would never speak like that to her. Even when he’d rejected her, she’d known that he respected her as a person. It had done little at the time to soothe the ache she felt as his departure, but it was a truth not even the pain of heartbreak could warp. He wasn’t cruel. Careless, maybe. But not cruel.

That clarity had been the key to breaking out of the hallucination’s hold, and she’d come to a moment before Rami had. Watching him struggle, her legs too weak to carry her to him, was torture. When he’d finally shaken it off and come toher, she could see the weight of what he’d seen pressing down, another burden for him to carry.

But in his tender touch, when he reached her, she felt his intent to share the burden with her, to make good on his promise never to keep her on the outside again, even when he was afraid it would hurt her.

“What is it?” Rami asked, when she nosed at the silver box again.

Amidst the clutter on the vanity, the silver box was unique. It did not carry the same film of dust as the other objects, and the delicate pattern of hearts and vines was clearly the work of an artisan. That object was from a time of careful craftsmanship, not a cheap trinket picked up at a dollar store.

“Do you feel this?” She made room for him, leaving paw prints in the dust on the cabin’s floor.

Through the walls, she could hear the others moving about, and she kept one ear cocked for any sounds of alarm or distress. She wanted Moira close enough to keep an eye on but her sister had insisted she didn’t need a keeper and that if she did, Jonah would be sticking close. Rami pressed his nose against the box. His ears twitched to the side.

“Something powerful. A pull to it. Both like and unlike the scent outside. What do you think it is?” He looked to her for an answer, sensing she was on to something. “Do you think it’s an eyeball or something?”

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