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She wasn’t angry.

She was broken.

Because now, she was doubting everything that had happened between us, questioning if it was real, or merely a product of our bond.

I knew in my bones that I loved her. But there was nothing I could say to prove that to her. Not if she was convinced my feelings weren’t real.

“You developed feelings for me before you even knew about the bond,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

Her eyes closed. “Yes. But I did feel a strange pull to you, Alaric. I still feel it now. Something unexplainable. Something I can’t control. And… and now I don’t know if that’s because of the strength of my feelings, or because of this Soulbound thing between us. I’ll never know if these feelings are genuine or not.”

My hands curled into fists on my lap. “Do they feel genuine?” They certainly did for me.

“I don’t know!” She made a frustrated sound, tilting her face toward the ceiling. “Storms, is nothing my own?” She impatiently wiped away the moisture on her face. “I am so sick of other people choosing my life for me. Elvira forced me to suppress my wolf, you forced me to come to the Oracle, my wolf forced me to shift, and now your goddess is forcing me to love you? It—it’s too much, Alaric.”

“Lunaria isn’t forcing you⁠—”

“Just stop,” she hissed, raising a hand to silence me. I clamped my mouth shut, taking in the rage etched into her features. Was she in danger of rupturing? Was it possible that any intense emotion could trigger a rupture, even if it had nothing to do with her wolf?

“I—I can’t be someone else’s pawn anymore,” she said. “I need freedom, I need the power to make my own damn choices.”

Hot tears filled my eyes, and I cleared my throat, struggling to contain the grief burrowing inside of me. “So, what then? Just because we’re Soulbound, you want to pretend our feelings don’t exist? You want to turn away from this, just because we were nudged together by divine forces?”

“I don’t know, Alaric.” Her voice trembled. “I just… need time.” Her face crumpled, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Cerise.” I leaned forward, desperate to hold her.

She flinched away from me, angling her body toward the door. “I think you should leave. Please.”

Despair ripped into me, tearing at my chest from the inside out. My insides hollowed, and my organs seemed to collapse in on themselves. For a long moment, I couldn’t move. I feared I’d lost the ability.

But Cerise refused to look at me. She was weeping into her blanket as she sat there, waiting for me to leave.

Numbly, I rose to my feet. I wasn’t sure how my limbs were moving; I had lost all feeling in them. But somehow, I made it to the door and eased it open.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at her as I left the room.

Thirty-Six

THE WOLF

“Alaric? Alaric, did you hear me?”

I blinked, suddenly realizing Reid was speaking. He sat across from me in my chambers and held a stack of scrolls in his hands. Things had been strained between us since my coronation, but I had opened up and explained everything to him—the Soulbound link, my feelings for Cerise, and everything we had learned in the fae lands. His shocked silence upon learning all this had lasted several minutes. But after he’d processed it, he’d agreed to help me research the chiefs’ bloodlines and histories to see if there were any clues as to who had been working with Elvira.

My sluggish mind struggled to keep up. What had we been speaking about? It was difficult to concentrate on anything when the yawning, empty chasm in my chest kept growing wider and wider.

“Is everything all right?” Reid asked. “Is it Cerise?”

I hadn’t told him about my conversation with Cerise, but he knew me too well. I also wasn’t making any effort to hide my devastation—not around him. It took too much effort to put on a mask around everyone else. Chief Cartier had stopped by to discuss land disputes among his tribe, and just that half-hour conversation drained me so much I wanted to crawl in a hole and sleep for days.

I cleared my throat, not wanting to talk about Cerise in the slightest. All it would do was reopen the wounds that were still festering inside me. And I feared the canyon of despair in my chest would only worsen. “Forgive me,” I muttered, gesturing to the scrolls. “Please continue.”

“You need to fight for her, Alaric,” Tavik chastised, not for the first time. Ever since Cerise had told me to leave yesterday, he’d been reprimanding me for not doing more for her. “She needs proof that your feelings are real.”

“We’ve been through this. She needs time and space from me. I’m not going to push her right now.”

Tavik began to protest, but I ignored him to focus on what Reid was saying.