I rolled my shoulders, watching as my muscles bunched and flexed along my scars.
I needed to be calm, controlled, calculated. That was what everyone saw when they looked at me. I was the beta who never faltered, the one who made plans while others burned hot with fury or fear. They never saw the storm underneath my calm.
Steam curled around me, warm and thick, coaxing out tension I hadn’t realized I’d locked into my spine.
I dragged a hand through my hair. “You’ve looked better,” I muttered to the reflection.
The half-smirk tugging at my mouth lacked any real humor.
The truth was, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the scars and the quiet calculation, something else flickered. A strange, restless anticipation curled around my ribs, making it difficult to breathe. I hadn’t felt something like this since I’d survived torture as a youngling. Before the cages, the cold floors, and the sound of boots approaching with steel meant for slicing my flesh. Before I learned that survival meant staying one step ahead at all times.
But now? Standing here on the edge of the last moments of quiet before the final battle, something inside me felt awake.
I exhaled slowly as I stepped into the tub, letting the heat swallow me whole. Lowering into the steaming water,my muscles relaxed, the tension seeping from my body. But doing absolutely nothing to quiet my mind.
Because the moment I stopped moving, stopped calculating attack formations or battle strategies…Zolafilled every second of my spare thoughts.
Our unsealed bond caused a maddening itch under my skin. My panther clawed at me from inside, making me restless. Zola was deadly, mysterious, fierce in a way that made my blood heat, and my thoughts sharpen. The most captivating creature I’d ever laid eyes on in this cursed world.
I’d fought against hunters, monsters, and mages.
But Zola?
Zola was something worth fighting for.
Tonight. I’ll find you tonight,she’d told me after our training, giving me nothing else to hold on to.
No time. No place. Just a promise.
I exhaled a rough breath, dropping my head back against the tub’s rim. “What does she want?” I muttered. “What did she mean? Where—”
I stopped myself with a groan, scrubbing both hands over my face.
“Great. Now I’m spiraling and asking countless questions like Skylar.”
Silence settled heavy around me, broken only by the slosh of water as I shifted under the surface. I’d never questioned if I was worthy of Zola. What mattered to me was earning her trust.
I would fight for her. Stand beside her. Gods above, I would become anything she needed.
Whatever it took to earn her trust, her certainty… her choice to seal the bond. Then, once she was mine, oncewebelonged to each other, there wouldn’t be a force in this world capable of stopping us.
Steam curled around me as I released a caged breath. “Tonight,” I whispered, anticipation swirling like the shifting tide.
The water had gone from soothing to suffocating, the restlessness threading too tight beneath my skin. I rose from the tub, water cascading down my chest, and grabbed a towel. I wrapped it around my waist, finding another to finish drying my soaked hair when a slow, lazy knock echoed through the chamber.
I froze.
“Gods,” I muttered under my breath, “that better not be Castor.”
If the male had another last-minute strategy or some insane theory about shifter mating rituals, there would likely be a Castor-sized hole in the nearest wall.
I grumbled on my way to the door, tugging the towel securely around my hips, and yanked it open with a scowl already forming.
Open air from the walkway swirled as the door opened, and my frown died instantly.
Zolastood in the doorway.
I swallowed heavily, taking in the sight of her.
