Page 39 of War of Her Heart

I listened to her footsteps as she ran back to the castle and then to her room, which seemed to be the only place she wanted to be anymore.

And now I knew why.

I could feel the anger and darkness building up inside of me at the thought of what her confession meant.

But it made sense.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she tried so hard to stay away from me. I knew she felt the pull, even if her side was suppressed from those stupid pills she’d been taking.

I may be the bad guy in every story she’d heard, but that shouldn’t have been enough for her to fight her feelings so adamantly. But another male, one she’d been attached to for almost two decades, would do it.

If it was just for a fuck, which was all it should’ve been on his side given the rules of the Sovereigns, I could have handled it a lot better.

But a relationship? A relationship that had lasted for so long? All I wanted to do was go to Calum’s room and rip his head off.

He was here preparing to wed my sister and yet he was still with Violet. He should have broken it off the moment he left to come to the Night Realm. She didn’t deserve the life of a Sovereign’s mistress.

As if I didn’t have enough to deal with already, now I had this too.

Something was taking my power from me. It felt like there was a leak through which my powers were slowly draining, and I was not generating any more power to replace what I was losing. I was trying to conserve my power until I could find the object or person who was behind it.

My shadows once roamed the entire Night Realm. They were my eyes and ears to ensure nothing happened in my realm without me knowing. Once I felt myself losing my powers, I brought them in to watch over just within the castle walls. I felt Calum place a ward on Violet’s room, but I thought it was to give his Commander peace of mind. Even though I wanted to know what she was doing at all times, I felt like breaking through the ward wasn’t a necessary use of my dwindling power because I knew she was safe and that’s all that mattered.

Idiot.

I now only used my touch of death, something I once used without giving it a second thought, when absolutely necessary. The disgusting fae that touchedmyViolet was an easy kill without any power, but with the paramic, I had to use my power. The only other way to kill a paramic was with a silver dagger, which I didn’t just keep on me, and nothing mattered in that moment other than killing the thing that she was afraid of.

I had always kept a force field around the castle, only allowing who I wanted to enter and exit, and that was something I knew I couldn’t let go of easily. It was the only thing keeping the monsters of the night away.

I was growing weaker by the day, and somehow this paramic was able to push its way through my force field and creep through the castle without me knowing. I only knew it was here because of Violet’s little scream. Nothing could keep me from hearing her.

Violet couldn’t have come into my life at a worse time. All I could think about was being with her—protecting her—but now I was at my weakest, and I had yet to find a way to stop it.

The next issue had to do with those bloody pills Violet took.

She had haunted my dreams for almost a century. I should have been able to picture her, but I couldn’t because something was suppressing the connection.

Instead of seeing her face, I saw damn flowers in my dreams. Violets.

Even if I couldn’t see her, I knew what the obsessive dreams meant. I had a mate.

Violets consumed every thought I had. The castle garden that once was nothing but a few tall hedges was now covered in violets.

Dreaming of violets took me to the Flower Realm. I spent every free moment I had searching for her. I thought the violets in my dreams meant she was in the Flower Realm. It never once crossed my mind that it was her damn name.

Nothing seemed to bring me closer to finding her. I had almost given up hope. I thought it was some type of punishment for everything that I’d done. I had a mate but could never find her.

Then one night, while I was staring at the violets in my garden, like I did every night, it hit me.

Well, she hit me.

I knew from the moment our eyes met that the search was over. I looked into her big brown eyes, eyes that made me forget to breathe in that moment, eyes that made everything around me fade away.

I had found my mate.

The pull I felt made me want to fall to my knees and never let go of her.

But I could tell she didn’t feel what I felt. By the way she looked back at me, I could feel her fear.

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