"I think it's possible. Mate bonds are powerful. If someone's working old magic, they might be able to sense it. Might be using it somehow." Elias shrugged. "Or maybe it's coincidence. Either way, she deserves to know."
Corin thought about Chloe's face when he'd left Freya's shop. The confusion in her eyes. The way she'd watched him go without understanding why he was so angry, why he couldn't stay, why every instinct in his body screamed at him to tear apart whoever had hurt her. She deserved better than his silence.
"What if she doesn't want it?" The question came out small, showing his true fear. "The bond. What if I tell her and she decides it's too much?"
"Then you respect her choice." Elias's voice was gentle now. "But you give her the chance to make it. That's what Vane bears do. We don't hide. We don't manipulate. We put the truth on the table and let our mates decide."
"Kaia chose you."
"Eventually." A ghost of a smile crossed Elias's face. "It wasn't a straight path. But I was honest with her from the beginning, and that made all the difference."
Corin stood in the wreckage of the well, shivering despite Elias's jacket, and felt something shift inside him. The rage was still there, banked but not gone. The fear too. But beneath both, a new clarity was emerging.
He couldn't protect Chloe by keeping her in the dark. Couldn't solve the mystery of the poisoned land while also hiding the truth about what she meant to him. The two problems were connected, and trying to separate them was only making both worse.
"I'll tell her," he said.
Elias nodded. "Soon?"
"Today. Tonight. Before anything else happens."
"Good." Elias clapped a hand on his shoulder, careful to avoid the wound. "Now let's get you cleaned up before you bleed all over my jacket. And then we can figure out what to do about this well."
They walked back through the trees together, leaving the destruction behind. Corin's mind was already racing ahead, trying to find the right words, the right way to explain something that felt too big for language.
She was his mate. He loved her. And whoever was trying to hurt her was going to have to go through him first. But before any of that, he had to tell her the truth.
He just hoped she was ready to hear it.
21
CHLOE
The text had been three words: Come over. Urgent.
Chloe stared at it the whole drive to Corin's place, her mind spinning through possibilities. Something about the land. The well. Maybe he'd found whoever was behind all of this. Or maybe something had happened to him.
That thought made her press the accelerator a little harder.
His house sat near the orchard, a sturdy two-story cabin that looked like it had grown from the mountain itself. Smoke curled from the chimney, and his truck was parked in the gravel drive. She pulled in beside it and killed the engine, her heart beating faster than it should when she saw him waiting on the porch.
Chloe climbed out of her car and crossed the yard, studying him as she approached. He looked rough. A fresh bandage wrapped around his left shoulder, visible where his flannel shirt hung open over a thermal. His hair was damp, like he'd recently showered, and there was something in his expression she'd never seen before.
Uncertainty.
Corin Vane, steady as the mountain, looked nervous.
"You're hurt," she said, stopping at the bottom of the porch steps.
"It's nothing. Caught myself on some rocks." He stepped aside, holding the door open. "Come inside. Please."
The please was what did it. Corin didn't say please. He stated things, offered things, did things. He didn't ask.
She climbed the steps and walked past him into the house.
The interior was warm, a fire crackling in a stone hearth, the walls lined with bookshelves and old photographs. It smelled like woodsmoke and honey. She'd never been inside before but she knew that this is what it would smell like.
"Do you want something to drink? Coffee? Tea?"
