Page 81 of Fated to the Lone Shifter
Maybe their love failed them.
And now he has Sera.
My fated mate.
My bond.
If he turns her…if he breaks her...
My wolf snarls inside me.
I can’t wait anymore. I can’t sit here, helpless, while history repeats itself. I have to do something. Anything.
I pick up my phone with shaking fingers.
No more hesitation.
No more lone wolf.
It’s time to burn everything down.
I make the call.
Chapter twenty-five
Playing With Fire
SERA
The chains fall with a dull clatter.
My wrists throb as the iron links hit the stone floor, red welts blooming where the silver burned into skin. But I don’t flinch. I don’t rub them. I lift my chin.
Because prey doesn’t lift its chin.
Only predators do.
Bode watches me like he’s deciphering a language he half-remembers—his dark eyes narrowed, mouth parted slightly, his breathing slower than before. Controlled. But barely. He doesn’t seem entirely sure why he is releasing me. I rub the crystal in my left hand again to seal the deal.
“You’ve stopped fighting,” he says.
I tilt my head. “Have I?”
He steps closer, boots echoing in the stone room like war drums. I resist the urge to step back. To shiver. To scream.
Instead, I let my breath hitch—subtle, but enough. Enough to feed the fire in his ego.
“You’re not stupid. You’re not like Noah’s mother,” he continues, reaching up to brush a strand of hair from my face. “You feel it, don’t you? The pull. The bond. You were never meant to run from me, Sera. You were meant to stand beside me.”
His fingers linger at my jaw, the touch oddly gentle for a man who had me shackled for hours. His magic pulses just beneath the surface, slick and seething like oil over flame.
I force myself to meet his gaze. I let my lips part, eyes soften. A breath away from a sigh. “Maybe I just needed to see who you really are.”
His expression twitches—uncertainty, quickly swallowed by pride. “And what do you see now?”
I take a calculated pause. Let it stretch between us, thick with implication.
“A leader,” I whisper. “An alpha who doesn’t take orders. One who shapes fate.”
