“Get away from her,” he bellows.
But I can’t. I’ve loved her for longer than I can remember. I’ve waited through too many winters.
Even now, bleeding, dying, and broken—I can’t let her go.
“Lumi, please. Look at me.Reallylook at me.”
Lumi POV-
My blood runs cold, the warmth of the bond-sealing turns to ice in the drop of a hat. Someone’s at the edge of the mating circle.
It’s him. But he looks even worse than before—a walking corpse held together by nothing but sheer will.
The illusion is failing. It flickers between Andrik’s face and a blur of someone else’s.
Andrik doesn’t even glance at me. With one heavy, fluid sweep of his arm, he catches me across the waist and tucks me behind him. His fur bristles along his nape, his claws extending longer than I’ve ever seen them. Tremors rack his frame, and I know he’s a whisper away from leaping forward to rip out the stranger’s throat.
“Lumi. Please,” the man rasps. Look at me.Reallylook at me.”
Andrik takes a threatening step forward, and a warning growl rings through the air, but the man doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even flinch. He just keeps stumbling forward, dragging his ruined body toward the fire.
The illusion blinks one last time, a final shudder of magic before it fails completely. And for the first time, I see his face. I really see it, like he asked me to.
And in that heartbeat, the world stops spinning. The air in my lungs turns to lead.
“Mark?” I choke on a terrified whisper.
My brain screams in protest. It’s impossible. I saw him decomposing in the woods.I saw him!
“I’m not Mark,” he rasps. “I’m Micah. I’ve always been Micah.”
My chest tightens under an invisible pressure.
“You—” I can’t breathe. It feels like thousands of hands are wrapped around my throat. “You’ve been?—”
“I was protecting you.” He takes another swaying step, and Andrik snarls loud enough to rumble the moss beneath my feet. “I saw you in the snow, Lumi. All those years ago. And I knew. I knew you were supposed to be mine.Not his.”
“You’re delusional.” Andrik spits, his bones along his spine starting to shift.
“No!” Micah’s voice breaks, a wet, rattling sound. “I loved her first. I watched over her. I kept her safe before you even knew she existed!”
“You terrorized her,” Andrik roars, the fire lapping higher in response to his fury.
“I saved her!” A fresh spray of blood spills from Micah’s mouth. “From falling?—”
He collapses to his knees, his hands digging into the frozen earth, in an attempt to anchor his soul to this world.
Andrik steps toward him, claws raised, the blue flames gleaming off the lethal points.
“Wait!” The word tears out of me before I even know why I’m saying it.
“Lumi—” Andrik’s voice is sharp with disbelief.
“Just—give me a second. I need to know.”
I move around the shield of Andrik’s body, stepping slowly until I’m standing directly in front of Mark’s double. He looks up at me, his eyes bloodshot with agony and a heartbreaking thread of hope.
“Why?” I ask quietly, my voice trembling. “Why me? Why go through all of this... for me?”
