No.
I held my breath.
A voice. Female. Breathy. Muffled through the wall but unmistakable.
Nathan and Megan. In the room next to mine. Having sex while I sat on the other side of the wall with the ghost of our bond burning a hole through my chest.
My stomach lurched. I pressed my hands over my ears, but it didn't help. I should have moved. Should have gone to the bathroom and turned the shower on, or stuffed my head under the pillow, or walked out into the snow and keep walking until I couldn't hear anything but the wind. But my body wouldn't cooperate. I was pinned there, frozen, listening to the rhythmic evidence of everything I'd lost.
The thing was—and I hated myself for this, truly, deeply hated myself—Nathan had never been good in bed. Not with me. During the brief, bright weeks when we'd been together, before he'd torn it all apart, the sex had been... fine. Adequate. He'd been mechanical about it, efficient, like it was another task on his to-do list. I'd told myself it would get better. That the bond would deepen and he'd relax into it, into us. That he just needed time.
He hadn't needed time. He'd needed someone else.
I wondered if it was better with her. If she got the version of him I'd been promised—tender, passionate, present. If the sounds she was making were real or performed.
Pain lanced through me, white-hot and blinding, radiating outward from the scar like cracks spreading through glass. I pressed both hands flat against my sternum and bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. The magic in my well churned, agitated, pressing against the walls of my chest like a trapped animal. I could feel it responding to my distress, swelling and contracting in time with each horrible, rhythmic thump from the other side of the wall.
Stop it, I told myself. Stop listening. Stop caring. You don't get to care anymore.
But the bond scar didn't listen to reason. It never had. It was a stupid, animal thing, etched into the deepest part of me, and it didn't understand that Nathan had chosen someone else. It only knew that my mate was close—so close I could hear him breathing—and that he was with another woman, and that this was wrong, wrong, wrong in a way that went beyond emotion into something primal and cellular.
The thumping stopped. He never had lasted very long, even when he was with me. I remembered the feel of his arms around me, one under my leg, lifting me so he could get deeper, his eyes closed in passion. Or had he just not wanted to look at me?
Something inside me tore.
Not the bond—that was already broken. This was something else. Some last fragile hope I hadn't realized I'd been carrying. The possibility that maybe, somehow, seeing me again would make him remember. Would make him realize he'd made a mistake.
But he hadn't.
He'd taken Megan into their room and fucked her while I sat six inches of plaster away with my soul in shreds. That was his answer. That was all I needed to know.
I rolled onto my side, curled into myself, and pressed my face into the pillow. The magic churned in my chest—restless, volatile, nothing like the quiet dead weight it had been for weeks. It felt like it was responding to something, reaching for something, and I had to clamp down hard to keep it contained. The last thing I needed was to lose control of a few hundred witches' worth of borrowed power in a hotel room in Poland because my ex-mate had lousy stamina and thin walls.
The absurdity of that thought almost made me laugh. Almost.
I lay there until the silence next door settled into something permanent. Until I heard the low murmur of conversation, too quiet to make out words, just the cadence of two people talking in the dark. Intimate. Comfortable. The sounds of a life I'd been promised and never received. Then, finally, I slept.
CHAPTER 3
ELLIE
Iwoke to the rhythmic sound of the headboard against the wall again. I lay there in the grey dawn light, staring at the ceiling, and counted the thuds. Seventeen. Twenty-three. Thirty-one before the rhythm changed, quickened, peaked.
Then silence.
My chest ached and I felt like I’d been hollowed out. Scraped clean and left empty. I should have gone downstairs last night and requested a different room, but I’d felt stupid and pathetic. I'd thought I could handle this. Thought the numbness would protect me, but it hadn't.
I got up. Showered. Dressed in layers—thermal base, fleece, waterproof jacket and heavy boots. The time of year on the other side would also be early spring, and just as cold, if not colder than here. I packed my small bag with the essentials they'd listed: water bottle and protein bars. It was just for the hike to the cave. Our real supplies would already be there waiting for us. Dev had told me they were based on what explorers tookto the Arctic, or when they were climbing Everest. That hadn’t reassured me. Despite the numbness of my soul, even I was starting to get nervous now.
By the time I made it down to the lobby, Stephen and Dev were already there, drinking coffee and looking far too awake for six in the morning.
"There she is," Stephen said, grinning. "Ready to make history?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," I said.
Dev handed me a cup of coffee. Black, no sugar, exactly how I took it. He'd noticed. I managed a smile that felt more genuine than I'd expected.
"Did you sleep?" he asked.
