Tessa is mine now. Not just in scent, not just in promise, but in every way that matters. My mate. My anchor. The one thing in this endless bloody mess that feels like it was meant to be mine.
And if Roman, or the Pact, or any other bastard lurking in the shadows wants to test just how far I’ll go to protect her… they’re going to learn that my curse has teeth.
25
TESSA
I’m curled up in the corner of the upstairs library with a blanket draped over my shoulders, a mug of tea cooling in my hands, the fire burning low in the grate. Darius and Mary’s voices have been murmuring downstairs for the better part of an hour, too low for me to catch most of the words, but I can feel the weight of whatever they’ve been talking about. It’s in the way the air in the house shifts, like a draft you can’t quite find the source of, like the whole place knows something is changing.
The door to the library opens quietly, and I look up to see Mary standing there. Her expression is hard to read. Not quite the disapproval I’ve grown used to, but not entirely softened either.
“Come with me,” she says.
I hesitate, setting my mug aside. “Is something wrong?”
Her gaze flickers briefly toward the hallway, like she’s making sure no one else is listening. “Not yet,” she says, and then adds, “but you need to see something before it becomes your problem.”
I follow her out into the hall, the old wood creaking under our feet. She leads me past the familiar rooms, down a narrowercorridor I’ve never really noticed before. At the end of it, she stops in front of what looks like nothing more than an old linen closet.
Mary pulls a key from around her neck, the chain glinting in the low light, and slips it into a nearly invisible seam in the wood. The door clicks open, and she pushes it wide to reveal a steep set of stairs leading down into darkness.
I glance at her. “I’m guessing this isn’t where you keep the spare sheets.”
Her mouth twitches—something almost like a smile– but without the warmth. “Just watch your step.”
The air grows cooler as we descend, the scent of stone and something faintly metallic curling into my senses. At the bottom, the narrow stairs open into a chamber I could never have imagined existing under this house.
The walls are carved with intricate sigils, some I half-recognize from the symbols inked into Darius’s skin, others entirely unfamiliar. At the center of the room stands a low stone altar, its surface etched with a circular seal the color of old blood, the lines so sharp they look freshly cut.
“What is this?” I whisper, stepping closer despite myself.
Mary doesn’t move from the stairs. “It’s the Crimson Seal. The altar the original Pact used for every oath, every binding, every decision that tied us together in blood. I’m not sure why I’m showing it to you. Maybe because if you’re going to be in this life, you should understand exactly what you’re walking into.”
I reach out without thinking, my fingers brushing against the seal’s cold, smooth surface. The moment I do, something shifts, like the ground tilts under my feet and the air in my lungs thickens until every breath feels like pulling against water.
And then I’m not in the chamber anymore.
I’m standing in the middle of a wide, moonlit clearing. The air is sharp with the smell of pine and frost. Figures emerge fromthe shadows one by one: tall, broad-shouldered, eyes glowing faintly in the dark. Some faces I’ve seen before in passing, in the memories Darius has let slip; others are strangers, but all of them carry the same weight, the same dangerous gravity.
And there, at the center of them all, is Darius: older, harder, but standing like a man who belongs at the head of the circle.
They’re not fighting. They’re not fractured. They’re united, the energy between them so strong it feels like the ground itself is humming. And I know without anyone telling me that this is the Pact, whole again, standing on the edge of something monumental.
The vision wavers, the faces fading back into shadow, and the cold stone under my fingertips comes rushing back into focus. My knees feel unsteady, and I have to brace myself against the altar to keep from stumbling.
When I look up, Mary is staring at me, her expression tight with something between shock and suspicion. “What did you just do?”
I shake my head, still trying to find my voice. “I don’t— I touched it, and then I saw?—”
Her eyes narrow. “A vision.”
“I guess,” I say slowly. “It felt like a… memory, but one that hasn’t happened yet.”
Mary steps closer, her gaze searching my face like she’s trying to peel it open. “That’s not shifter magic. That’s something else entirely.” She hesitates, and when she speaks again, her voice is lower. “You’ve got witch blood in you.”
The words hang between us, absurd and yet so startlingly right that my first instinct isn’t to argue, but to think back.
I think about how my life before Holden always seemed to fall into place: jobs opening up just when I needed them, people showing up at the exact right moment, doors closing on things that would have broken me before I even knew they weredangerous. I think about how I could always read a room a little too well, how I seemed to know what someone needed to hear to make them trust me or let me pass unnoticed. And then I think about the day Holden walked into my life and how all of that… stopped.
