I stare into my coffee. “How did you do it? When Wyn forced you into marriage, how did you get past the anger?”
Raegan rests her chin in her palm and asks, “Who says I’m past it?”
I look up.
She smiles, but there’s something wry in it. “I’m serious. Some days, I’m still furious with him for taking my choice away. But I had to figure out what I was really angry about. Was it the marriage itself, or was it that I wanted him and hated myself for it?”
“Both?”
“Exactly.” She takes a sip of her own coffee. “Fighting what I wanted only made me miserable. And yeah, accepting him felt like weakness at first. Like I was giving in. But it turned out accepting the bond didn’t make me weak—it gave me access to strength I didn’t know I had.”
I turn the mug in my hands. “What if I don’t want that strength? What if I’m fine the way I am?”
“Are you?”
I open my mouth to say yes, of course I am. But the words don’t come.
Raegan watches me with those knowing eyes. “You’ve spent your whole life proud of how controlled you are. How independent. How you don’t need anyone. And now you’re terrified because maybe you do need someone, and that feels like losing yourself.”
My throat goes tight, and I swallow against it. “I hate that you’re right.”
“I know.” She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “But here’s the thing, Sera. That control you’re so proud of? The curse gave you that. It’s not really yours. It’s something that was done to you three hundred years before you were born.”
I pull my hand back. “So what am I without it? Just another omega who falls apart over feelings?”
“You’re a woman who gets to choose what she feels instead of having it chosen for her. And yeah, that’s scary. Feeling everything without that magical buffer between you and the world is going to be overwhelming at first. But it’s also freedom.”
"I spoke with my mother yesterday," I say quietly. "Before I came here."
Raegan sets down her mug. "How did that go?"
"She told me I was being manipulated. That the visions were probably planted by Grayhide wolves to destabilize our pack. That I should come home immediately and submit to examination by the elders."
"Submit to examination?"
"To make sure I haven't been compromised.” I bark out a laugh before I add, “She said the fact that I'm even considering marrying a Grayhide wolf proves something is wrong with me. That the Sera she raised would never abandon her pack's values for a man she barely knows."
Raegan's hand finds mine again. "That must have hurt."
"The worst part is how she said it. Not angry. Not even disappointed, really. Just... certain. Like she was reciting facts from a textbook instead of talking to her daughter about her future. I kept waiting for her to show some emotion. Any emotion. Fear for my safety. Anger at my choices. Even disgustwould have been something. But she just looked at me with those empty eyes and told me I was making a mistake, and I realized—she can't feel it. She can't feel how terrified she is of losing me because the curse won't let her."
My voice cracks on the last words. Raegan moves around the table and wraps her arms around me, and I let myself lean into the comfort.
"The things she said," I continue against Raegan's shoulder. "They sounded like her. Used her voice. Her words. But it wasn't really her talking. It was three hundred years of curse conditioning speaking through her, using her love for me as a weapon to keep me trapped."
"The vision warned you that someone in Llewelyn would try to stop you."
"I thought it meant an enemy. Someone working against me. I never imagined it would be my own mother, genuinely believing she was protecting me while the curse pulled her strings."
I pull back and wipe my eyes. "If I'd told her about the vision before I left Llewelyn, before I had evidence and allies, she would have had me confined. For my own good. Out of love. And I would have spent the rest of my life in that gilded cage, never knowing what I'd lost."
"But you didn't tell her. You trusted the vision."
"I trusted you." I meet her eyes. "The vision said not to tell anyone in Llewelyn. It didn't say anything about my best friend from Grayhide."
Raegan smiles, watery but real. "That's the curse's blind spot, isn't it? It never accounted for connections that cross pack lines."
I think about my mother. About Caelan. About every woman in Llewelyn territory who has lived and died without ever feeling the full weight of love or grief or rage. The curse didn’t just steal their emotions—it stole their choices. They never got to decide if they wanted a mate or solitude, passion or peace. The decision was made for them before they were born.
