Page 17 of The Fated Hunter Wolf
“Easy, brother.” I kept my voice low, steady. “Let them explain before you demolish the building.”
For a heartbeat, I thought he might take a swing at me. His wolf was right there, pressing against his skin, demanding action when there was no clear target. Instead, he spun and drove his fist through the wall with enough force to send splinters flying.
Anwen jumped backward, her hands flying to her chest. Raina just sighed—she’d seen alpha meltdowns before.
“Outstanding.” I surveyed the fresh hole in the drywall. “Add renovation to our ever-growing list of responsibilities. At this rate, we should just build the new settlement out of reinforced steel.”
Through our bond, I pushed what little calm I could scrape together into the chaos of his emotions.You’re losing it, and that’s not helping Eve. She needs her alpha in control, not having a breakdown in a hospital waiting room. Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out. You and me. Like we always do.
His shoulders dropped fractionally, the immediate violence ebbing.I hate when you’re the voice of reason.
Yeah, well, someone has to keep you from punching your way through the entire hospital. Save some walls for the rest of us to destroy.
That earned me a grunt that almost qualified as amusement.
“My apologies,” Logan said to the elders, though his voice was gravelly enough to pave a road. “Anwen, you’ve been nothing but helpful since joining us, and I’m acting like a rabid animal. That’s not who I usually am.”
“You’re acting like a terrified mate,” Anwen corrected gently, her weathered face creasing with understanding. “Which, given what we’ve discovered, seems entirely appropriate.”
The tension in the room eased fromimminent violenceto merelysimmering disaster. Progress, of sorts.
“There’s magic at work in Eve,” Anwen continued. “Something that reaches deeper than flesh, deeper than pack bonds. Ancient magic I’ve only read about in texts that predate the Great Separation.”
“Define ancient,” Logan demanded.
The look that passed between Anwen and Raina made my wolf pace restlessly in my chest. Whatever they’d discovered had rattled them—two of the most experienced healers in our territory—and that was saying something.
“Oracle magic,” Anwen said finally. “Not the diluted version we’ve seen in recent generations. This connects directly to the first wolves, the bloodlines that existed before the Great Separation fractured everything.”
My blood turned to ice water. There was only one bloodline that old, only one pack that predated the others under the Shadow Moon.
“You’re talking about Crux.”
“Crux wolves died out centuries ago,” Logan said, but the words carried about as much conviction as a prayer in a hurricane.
“Did they?” Anwen’s eyes glittered with a knowledge that made my skin crawl. “Or did they simply learn survival meant invisibility?”
I felt the exact moment understanding hit Logan. His face went white.
The pieces slammed together with the subtlety of a freight train. Eve’s impossible visions that came true with terrifying accuracy. Her connection to magic that defied every rule we knew. The way she’d always seemed slightlyother, even when we’d believed she was nothing more than Grayson’s oracle.
“She’s Crux,” I repeated.
“The ancient Crux magic awakened when she bonded with you,” Raina confirmed to Logan. “Her blood recognizes an alpha powerful enough to be trusted with its secrets.” She paused, glancing at Anwen before continuing. “When I touched her during the examination, the magic threw me against the wall hard enough to crack the stone.”
So that was the crash we’d heard earlier.
Logan went statue-still, and through our bond, I felt his world reorganizing itself around this new reality. “And the curse Mariyah spoke of, the one on Orion?”
“… is fighting her,” Anwen finished. “Her body wanted to conceive, but something is actively preventing Orion bloodlines from continuing. The curse recognized the threat a Crux-Orion child would represent and struck back.”
The room seemed to contract around us, squeezing the air from my lungs. Six years of failed pregnancies in the pack suddenly made horrifying sense. We weren’t just unlucky—we were under deliberate attack.
“How do we break it?” Logan’s question came out flat, deadly.
“The same way all curses are broken,” Raina said quietly. “By confronting the source.”
I watched understanding dawn across Logan’s face like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, and my wolf began to howl before my conscious mind caught up.
