“Since this is your debut, do you have anyone you’d like to fight in the ring?”
I clenched my jaw, forcing my smile to stay in place.When will these questions end?My gaze swept the crowd, searching for a way out. My chest ached where that invisible golden stringconnected me to her, already tugging me in the direction she’d gone.
Before I could move, Antonio appeared at my side, his hand clamping down on my arm. “People, people, one at a time!” he said with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “We’ll be sitting down with Miss Rossey soon to discuss Deslen’s potential future.”
We were?That was news to me, but if it meant seeing her again, I was all for it.
Leaning toward him, I muttered under my breath, “Vamos lá. Não quero deixar meu amigo esperando.”Let’s go. I don’t want to keep my friend waiting.
He waved me off without looking. “Não seja ridículo e estrague esta oportunidade incrível.”Don’t be ridiculous and ruin this incredible opportunity.Then he turned me back toward the flashing lights, a storm of cameras erupting right in my face.
The sudden burst of light made my instincts flare. I lifted my arm to shield my eyes, muscles tensing, the predator in me uneasy with the feeling of being trapped in this bright, noisy cage of light. I didn’t want to embarrass my mate by freaking out and swiping a claw at them to get them to stop.
I could still feel the look she’d given me before she left, that icy calm masking her fierceness underneath. The silent warning,Don’t fuck this up, was heard loud and clear.
I’d already done enough to anger my mate. I didn't want to give her any more reason to stay that way.
Another reporter pushed her way through, shoving up her glasses as she sneered. “And you’re aware that Miss Rossey isa gangster for the Syndicate? Does that bother you? Having someone like that in charge of your future? Aren't you scared?”
The wordgangstermade my ears twitch. I blinked, confused. Antonio had told me she was influential, powerful, even, but not much more than that. Certainly not that she was some big crime boss who ruled from the shadows.
I thought back to the starlight locks that wildly framed her face, eyes like molten rose gold, sharp enough to cut. The way the air bent around her when she moved. Dangerous? Absolutely. But danger was beauty in its purest form, and if that was what she was, then I didn’t mind bleeding a little.
“She’s given me the opportunity of a lifetime,” I said, keeping my tone measured. “One I’ll dedicate myself to day and night to prove my worth.”
The golden thread between us pulsed weakly, a fragile thing since it hadn't been solidified. Each second she drifted further away made it fade a little more until it felt like sand slipping through my fingers.
Panic bloomed in my chest. The ache was primal. My grandmother’s words echoed again.Find your mate and keep the line alive.I couldn’t lose her. Not after all these years.
“N-no more questions,” I stammered, pushing through the reporters before they could throw another one at me.
Antonio’s voice rose behind me, barking my name, demanding that I come back, but I just lifted a hand in farewell and kept going.
He’d understand someday.
I didn’t just want a mate. Ineededher. She wasn’t simply my destiny; she was my reason for breathing.
Black jaguars had always been a proud people. The strongest of the shifter species in Faerie, we were born to be soldiers, guards, protectors of the fae courts. Serving the royals had once been an honor, a calling worth bleeding for, dying for. Our lives had meaning when our claws defended something greater than ourselves.
Then Faerie began to rot from the inside. The land warped, its magic growing sour, and the fae royalty twisted along with it. Generation after generation, they grew crueler, turning their fangs and fury on not only their enemies but on their kin. When the realm finally fractured, Faerie started to shrink, royal factions tearing into each other for what scraps of power remained.
Entire bloodlines vanished in that war, and by the time the dust settled, only a handful of jaguars had survived. My grandmother, uncle, and I were the last from our tribe.
When the fae started escaping to the human realm in droves, I begged them to come with me, to start over. My grandmother only smiled, her gnarled fingers stroking a flower that bent toward her touch like it loved her. She said she couldn’t leave, not while Faerie still needed her. It was her home—and her grave if need be. What she gained from Faerie she needed to give back in blood and bones.
My uncle, just as stubborn as his mother, stayed with her, so I did, too. For years, we lived off whatever the dying land could still offer. In Faerie, time was stretched thin; days lasted months, and years blurred. By the time I was grown, I’d acceptedthat this was my life. I would stay to protect them and fade beside them when the time had come.
But my grandmother had other plans.
One night, I woke under a strange star-filled sky, the taste of sleep-magic still thick on my tongue. Later, lucid snippets of that night came to me. My uncle had carried me across the border into the human realm. He left me there with only a folded note in my pocket and a burning talisman carved into my shoulder, the kind that only Grandmother knew. The kind that barred me from ever crossing back.
I didn’t read the note. Instead, I screamed and wanted to rebel at my grandmother's decision.
Night after night, I cursed the glowing border until my voice broke, clawing at the magic until my hands bled, demanding it open and take me home. For months, I raged, fought, starved, and wept at its edge. Only when I had nothing left, when the world had gone quiet and I laid on the cold ground in despair, did I pull out the note.
Her handwriting was shaky but clear. She’d written that Faerie had spoken to her, showing her a vision she could not ignore, a future for me beyond the veil. One filled with laughter, love, and a family that was stronger than any other, one that could weather any storm that came its way. This future meant our line's survival. She wrote I would find my mate, someone strong and fierce, someone who I would have children with, children that would thrive for a millennia and beyond.
If I stayed in Faerie, she warned, I would wither away, dying long before my time, and she couldn’t bear that thought.
