Page 65 of Wolf Cursed
His eyes narrowed. “You lied.”
His voice was hard, but underneath the stone-like quality, I heard a trace of hurt.
“I didn’t lie,” I said firmly. “You didn’t exactly volunteer your secrets, so neither did I.”
“Ash…” He trailed off, and his eyes flashed with something I couldn’t read. It felt like distance, and the idea that this could end, whatever we were heading toward wasn’t something I could handle.
Quickly, I reached down and pulled the waistline of my pants back into place, covering the image of the wolf on my skin that was very clearly an exact match to the Lone Wolf pack symbol.
“Fine, I’ve had it my whole life,” I said, the truth tumbling out. “My dad says I was born with it. I don’t know how that’s possible, but he refused to explain. In fact, there wasn’t much he would say except that I should never stay in one place too long or people would hunt us down and hurt us. I have no idea who or what he meant. Maybe he meant shifters. Maybe I’ve just walked right into the den of monsters he spent his whole life running from. I don’t know. But it’s just a birthmark. And I’m just a girl.”
Kai looked at me with an expression that stirred me in places I’d never known I could feel. “Ash, you are never going to be just a girl. Not for me.”
But just as quickly as the heat had come, it vanished. He looked sad. And that terrified me most of all.
“Why do you sound like I just ran over your dog?” I tried to joke.
His hand cupped my cheek, and my skin tingled from the contact. It was everything I could do not to lean into his touch.
“You have no idea what you are,” he said, his nose brushing my jawline as he inhaled deeply against my throat.
“Tell me,” I whispered, willing to plead and beg if it meant Kai admitting what he really felt.
But he pulled away and dropped his hand, the longing in his expression freezing into something colder. More aloof.
“I believe you,” he said.
“About what?”
“That you have no idea what the mark means. Your dad was clearly protecting you.” He took a breath and said, “Twenty years ago, a witch cursed our pack. No alpha can ascend and no wolf can mate. Without either of those to ground us, our wolves are restless. Untethered. Wild. It’s why we’re so full of violence and chaos.”
“Hence the name Lone Wolf Pack,” I realized, stunned by the story until confusion took over. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“I can’t—” He started to shake his head, but then his eyes cleared and stared at me in shock.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I think … I can say the words.”
“What words?” I asked, but then I remembered the way Isaac and Idrissa had been bound somehow to keep them from explaining things to me. “The magic isn’t stopping you?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair and started to pace. “My throat usually closes up if I so much as think about uttering the story.” He stopped and pinned me with a look. “What did you do?”
“Me? Nothing. Why the hell would you think it was me?”
“Because.” He jutted his chin toward my hip. “That wolf is the mark of the curse breaker. The one who’ll come to free the pack from the magic that binds us.”
“You think I unbound you or whatever?”
“No idea, but I couldn’t even say that much ten minutes ago. All I know is the symbol of our wolf is on your skin, and now I can tell you whatever you want to know about it, apparently.”
“Okay,” I said, “Let’s just say there is a curse breaker—whether that’s me or not—what’s the rest of it? How is the curse supposed to be broken?”
He shrugged. “There are only legends and rumors. Stories. Tall tales. No one knows for sure. But the marked one will come, or so they say. And free us.”
The marked one.
I took a step toward him, caught up in the story now. “But if it’s true, and I can break the curse, that’s good, right? I mean, wouldn’t the pack want that?”
