Page 99 of Mated Exile

"I know. I need to heal the land and close our borders—"

"No." Motioning with a slim, glowing hand, she points more towards the tree-line instead. "That way."

Then she disappears.

I follow the glowing path she made. On my way there, I step past Roarke, who gives me a big hug and comes to walk alongside me, then Lance, who squeezes my shoulder. His eyes are full of worry. It becomes obvious why when I come to the end of the path.

Every werewolf, save Finn and Bastian—still on the bottom of the pit, still alive, as my awareness tells me—is gathered around a crumpled form on the ground.

"Kieran." Falling to his side, I dig my fingers into his fur, then look up at the figures around me. He's not breathing. "Did anyone see what happened?"

Niall steps forward. "He went down right before you made it to the Mating Circle and somehow slipped out of those bastards' grip."

"It's a soul-severing." The helpful comment comes from an unlikely source: John deLance. Shouldering through the Glass Pack wolves, he ignores their glares and mutters. "The mate bonds have been severed and snapped back inside him, corrupting his soul. My pack has suffered under it for the past two years."

My sympathy goes out to his wolves, even though I can't imagine letting the Glass Pack be subsumed to try to fix the issue. "Is there any cure?"

"None that I know of."

I refuse to just give in, though. Staring down at him, I reach out my awareness and let it sink beneath his fur, even as my fingers curl against his side. My eyes flutter closed as I probe along his spirit and body, feeling the edges of the dark pit, and the place in his chest where his heart weakly beats. His lungs barely rise and fall, the movement so slight I'm not even sure I feel it.

There isn't much time.

At first I'm not sure what to do. Then I dig my toes into the earth, and feel its magic spring up at my touch. Something cracked inside me when Kieran pulled me into his mind and showed me what happened at the Mating Circle. Consumed by his pain, I fought my way out—and found a stronger version of myself on the other side. That's when I drew the magic of the land into my chest, and it fixed the wound Demetri gave me.

Maybe this is similar. Bastian's voice rises in my mind:Most of these small bits of earth magic are instinctual. You don't really think. You just do.

I follow that exact concept as I drag on the power of the land around us, pull at the air, and tug at the water. The grass beneath my legs surges and grows, springing up all around me. A cricket sings in the night air, and the wind brushes through my dyed magenta hair.

All of that strength and energy flows into me. It follows a path down my fingertips. Then surges into Kieran's beaten, broken body, his soul cracked and his mind fled, all because he wanted to free me.

I let the power of the land itself pour into the black pit inside him. It takes ages to fill up, drinking greedily. Long seconds pass. The blackness seems to go on forever, drawing on more and more power and magic, demanding so much to quench its thirst.

Then, finally, it's full. Brimming with powerful magic, it pauses in its hunger for a moment—then shimmers at the edges, and falls apart.

In its wake, nothing is left. Not a scar, not a wound, not a single pinprick of darkness.

The rot is gone.

And the wolf beneath my fingers shudders, rippling and changing.

Parting my lips, I jerk my hands back, expecting Kieran to turn back into his human form like Bastian once did in the arena.

Instead something entirely different happens.

The grey fur along his length tufts out and falls away. I brush it with my hands, feeling new fur grow beneath my fingertips. His body lengthens, grows, and stretches with muscle as I do so. The fresh, brand new fur that shivers out of him is a new color—instead of colorless grey, his wolf is now a sleek reddish-black with dark black tips that catch the silver light of the moon.

His chest rises sharply beneath my hands. I brush the old fur away, and gasp as Kieran raises his muzzle to look at me.

The eyes that were once bright yellow are now a deep, miraculous golden hue.

Again his body shudders, but this time hedoesshift. It happens quickly and effortlessly. This isn't the groaning, difficult shift I've seen him do before, or an out-of-control shift that Roarke warned me happened to him sometimes. He's simply a wolf one moment, and a man the next.

A man with clear honey brown eyes and a bright smile. Reaching out, he takes my hand to squeeze it. "You found me in the darkness."

"You found me first."

Kieran leans forward to kiss me, his smile sweet on my lips. My heart leaps at the touch of his mouth on mine. We stand up together, hands clasped—and it's only then that I remember all the witnesses around us.

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