Page 123 of Chaos At Second Sight

I wasn’t becoming someone else. I was becoming more of who I’d always been.

But the thing was nobody truly changed. Cinderella was always Cinderella, just in a better gown; the Ugly Duckling had always been a swan; the prince turned frog was still a royal underneath green skin even when he ate flies instead of ribs.

Evolution didn’t replace you; it revealed more of you.

My vision carried a bluish tint, every sound closer, every scent richer. Everything was just more to me.

A spasm of loud laughter burst out of me, the echo lingering among the trees.

Now I was the Big Bad Wolf hunting for my human.

And somewhere above the canopy, I imagined the Moon Goddess smiling, because I had never felt more alive.

LOGAN

The image of my mate lying motionless in that hospital bed still burned behind my eyes, as vivid as when I’d first seen her. I wanted to wedge my head in the security room door and slam it shut for a whole day, then throw myself off a cliff a few times. It wouldn’t kill me—most things wouldn’t—but everything would hurt like hell.

I hated that she was in pain, I hated that someone had hurt her, but none of it compared to how much I hated myself. This was all my fault. My lycan’s fault.

He—we—had done this to her.

And still, after everything, all I wanted was to go to her.

Three endless weeks had passed since Lucien had marked that perfect neck. Three weeks since she’d become a sleeping beauty. Two weeks since Zelda, the hyper little wolf who’d stolen my heart almost as thoroughly as her human, had died. Lachlan had updated me.

Early morning seeped through the single barred window, casting a cold blue haze over the sterile walls. Outside, life carried on, indifferent to the stillness and the man rotting inside this room, rage and guilt feeding on each other inside his chest. Garbage trucks groaned down the road, metal screeching, the dull crash of waste tumbling into compactors. I was under a dumping site. Fitting.

Every bruise covering Bunny Doc’s face had branded itself into my memory. Every cut, every swollen patch of skin, whispered the same thing: You failed to protect her.

I’d sat beside her bed for days, watching doctors shine lights into her eyes that refused to open. Watching machines breathe certainty while my own hope suffocated. Watching her lie still, ready for her own funeral.

Yvaine will wake up, they’d told me, back at the Comet pack. We just need to wait.

So I waited, never leaving her side, staring at my beautiful mate for any sign of movement or change.

And hell had we gotten a change—the death of her wolf.

Zelda had been swallowed into Yvaine as though she’d never existed, as though Yvaine had been human all her life.

Her family kicked me out before I could process it, forbade me from ever stepping into Comet’s territory again. My first reaction? Grab her, run, disappear into the mountains—follow my lycan’s instincts for once.

Dad had stopped me, locking me down here, in this high-security bunker he’d built the day I was born covered in black fur and claws instead of pink skin. Protecting the pack was and always would be his responsibility, even if it meant locking his monster son up, but I understood him.

With my hair brushing the ceiling, I felt like I was living in the shoe box of a giant. They had injected me with all sorts of drugs, stuff that would kill a human or two, to shut down my fucking beast.

Part of me would always be grateful to him. Without Lucien, we’d never have found her. Lucien hadn’t needed a scent or tracks; he simply knew where his mate was. And thanks to him, Amaia had been saved.

The monstrous bite Lucien gave Yvaine, though, was hideous. Savage. But he hadn’t been thinking, no reason left inside him.

Only instinct.

Only terror.

Only the unbearable certainty that his mate was dying.

Nothing on this earth would have stopped him from marking her. Not chains, not me, not even her refusal. Because in that moment, the only thing left inside my beast was the desperate need to make sure she could never disappear again.

I’d agreed with Lucien. Marking our mate was the only way to protect her, among my own selfish reasons…until she had passed out for good. Until Zelda had died. I kept telling myself it was Lucien’s fault. But it was mine, and the Moon Goddess’s, for pairing someone like her with this thing. Me. Us.