Page 171 of Shifting Hearts 1
Even if it shattered me.
He didn’t turn when I stepped onto the moss-veined stone. He didn’t flinch when I whispered, “You’re still bleeding.”
“Better than dreaming,” he said. “Better than burning.”
His voice cracked, like frost snapping branches. Still raw from the bond — from me.
“I didn’t mean to call you,” I said quietly. “Not like this. Not yet.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He turned, at last, and the look in his eyes was not anger—but anguish. “The thread’s already within me. I can feel it pulling, and it’s always pulling me toward you.” His lip curled into a snarl, his wolf breaking the surface, so that the next words were almost unintelligible. “And I hate it.”
There it was. Bitter. Angry. Hate.
A knife to my ribs. Not even cruel—just the truth. He could have lied if he’d wanted to. I almost wished he had. Wolves could lie after all. Wyrd-born, less so. Fey, certainly could not. Lies were as foreign to us as breath to the dead. Ironic, given I dealt with death almost daily.
And yet, I wished for one now—just one gentle lie to wrap around the jagged truth and soften the edges.
But no, he gave me this instead.
Honesty. Brutal, and raw and final.
So, I nodded, because what else was there to say? I hated it too. Not him. Just… the inevitability of it. The way the thread tightened around my heart like a noose.
“I brought you this,” I said, unwrapping the cloth in my palm.
His tooth gleamed white in the dying light. Not just bone—this was more than that. It still pulsed faintly. As if the bond lived inside it.
“I thought if I gave it back, maybe…” I trailed off.
His nostrils flared. “Don’t.”
“I don’t want to bind you,” I said. “If the bond is wrong—if it’s a trick of the Wyrd—I’ll sever it. I swear it.”
He stared at the tooth, then at me, and for a breathless second something softened behind his gaze.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” he murmured. “The dreams, the deaths, your voice in my head?—”
“Take it,” I whispered.
I held it out to him.
He reached.
And the second his fingers brushed mine, the world ignited.
White-hot pain lanced through my hand, through him, through the air between us. The tooth screamed in some language only the dead could understand, and we both dropped it, flinching back as if branded.
Smoke curled from our palms.
Brannon swore, staggering. I clutched my hand to my chest, breath ragged.
“It won’t let us go,” I choked. “Even if we want it to.”
He didn’t answer. Not with words. He didn’t have to.
Just stared at the blackened skin of his palm. At the mark that had begun to bloom there—something ancient. A spiral laced with thorns. A binding rune I knew too well.
Because I’d seen it before.
