Page 165 of Shifting Hearts 1
Brannan, not broken this time. Standing in the woods with his eyes aglow, mouth curled in a snarl. The threads of fate glowed around him like spider silk, stretching across realms, crossing into mine.
But one ran straight through me — from my sternum to his.
A tether. A mark.
Fated.
I staggered back. “No. No, no?—”
I hadn’t asked for this. Had spent my whole life hiding from exactly this. I didn’t want to be tied to anyone, least of all to a Wyrd Wolf with death on his heels and fate in his veins.
And yet… I could still feel the fang pulsing.
Beating away like a second heartbeat.
I should’ve buried it.
Tucked it beneath the roots of the ash tree out back, where the earth stays wet and worms devour secrets. I should’ve scattered salt and bonemeal and walked away.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I carried it to the mirror.
The frame was carved from yew wood and ringed in rusted nails. Not glass—a sheet of still water held in place by spells older than I was. I’d bound it to the wellspring beneath my house, where the dead liked to whisper and time forgot it was meant to run in a straight line.
I lit the last of the tallow candles and scraped a sliver of skin from my palm, pressing it to the surface.
“Show me the Wyrd Wolf,” I said, low and sure.
At first, only mist. Then shadows. Branches. A flicker of fur.
Then him…Brannan.
He moved like he was built for war—fluid, silent, a silver-bladed knife wrapped in human skin. Tall, dark, and wild in the way feral things are. He was in a forest I didn’t recognise
, but the trees bent toward him like they knew him. Like they feared him.
He paused, turned, and stared straight at me.
I gasped, stumbling back, the mirror rippling like it did when someone disrupted a still pond.
Impossible. The looking glass was one-way. Always had been.
Unless... unless he wasn’t just fated to me. Unless the thread went both ways.
My hands shook. The room tilted, and I sank to my knees on the floorboards, still clutching the fang.
I should’ve buried it.
But it was too late now.
I had been marked.
Marked by fate. By bone. By him.
The knock came at midnight.
Three short raps — like nails on wood, like claws.
