“So, you’ve been able to leave Thermia this whole time. You’re not bound to the camps the way we are.”Kai widens his eyes meaningfully, leaning toward me. “You’re mated.”
I blink in shock, trying to process what he’s saying.
It’s true that I was able to leave Thermia when I was banished to prison, but it’s not as if I was exactly free at that point. I suppose I have been living outside of Thermia for the last two years, but for some reason I never thought about what that might mean.
A cold chill slides down my back. What if I can’t leave again? What if I try to go back to Vernallis and can’t?
“I don’t know,”I mutter.“I haven’t thought about it. I suppose we won’t know until I try to leave the camp again.”
“But you’re mated,”Kai says again forcefully.“That’s got to be proof that you’re not bound like we are.”
It would be if I were actually mated…fuck.
“I don’t know,”I say again,“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well fucking think about it,” he snaps, speaking out loud for the first time. “I asked your mate about it, and?—”
“What?” I snap, whirling around. “What the fuck did you say to her?”
My heart hammers against my ribs, panic rising like bile in my throat.No, no, no!
If Kai told Aurelia about all the ways the wolves are bound to the queen, she’ll think there’s a way to fix it. If she hears that we can’t disobey, can’t form real mate bonds, can’t even fucking leave the kingdom, then she’ll have to help.
Aurelia has a bleeding heart. She’s never been able to resist a project, never seen an animal in need and not tried to save it. If she finds out there are hundreds of shifters trapped here, she’ll have to rescue all of us. I know she will. She’ll try to free me and all the others with magic and she’ll just get herself killed.
That’s why I haven’t told her about it, even though every fucking day it gets harder to keep myself from explaining why I can’t be with her for real. Why I can’t tell her, that I?—
“Calm down, I already know she does magic,” Luka says, wildly misinterpreting the source of my panic.
“Wait, what?” I snap, blinking rapidly to clear my racing thoughts. “How?”
“I can smell it.”
“I fucking told her that would happen,” I mumble, my jaw clenched tight. “Who else knows?”
“No idea. I haven’t smelled it lately, just the first day. I came to see you and I could smell it all around the tent.”
That must have been when she was using the muffling charm so we could talk. I fucking knew it.
“You don’t care, though?” I ask, and the question comes out as a growl.
“No,” Luka says. “She’s your mate, right? I assume she can’t be that dangerous.”
I clamp my teeth together, tasting blood where my canines press into my gums. Luka assumes wrong about a lot of things, but at least he keeps validating my decision. Pretending to be mates really was the best and only way to keep Aurelia alive.
Even if it’s fucking killing me.
“I just want you to think about it,”Kai says, speaking calmly again as he pulls my attention back to him.“I asked Aurelia, and she said that the curse might break if the person who cast it died. Think about how many shifters would be free.”
Oh, I’m thinking about it, and the idea sends a shiver down my spine.
I could be free. I could do whatever I wanted with Aurelia, go wherever we chose.
Except that, if Aurelia is right, the queen is likely her mother.
I stare at the frozen ground, my stomach twisting. I’m not sure she’ll care if we can be together after I’ve killed her mother right in front of her.
It’s evening when I trudge back into camp with the others. We’ve missed dinner, but at least we don’t have to stay out in the woods overnight.
