Blake
I wake in the dead middle of the night to the feeling of being watched. The voices in my head skitter through my gray matter, whispering, tittering like they’re holding conversations with each other that they don’t want me to hear. Hushed whispers from the heavens cease abruptly as I sit up, rubbing my eyes, and look down at where Marianna is curled beside me, her head resting between the pillows. Her hand falls down my chest, settling in my lap. The moonlight paints her skin in silver. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I run my fingertips over the curve of her bare waist, waiting for the voices to return, but they stay silent, giving me this moment.
Once, I told Maeve to find the thing that turned the dial on her powers to a simmer. That thing that turned her off, kept her level, made it easier to function. For so long, I thought music was what did that for me.
All this time, it’s been her.
I didn’t anticipate how last night would go. Standing in my apartment with her, my powers lighting the space between us…. Yeah, that had been… life altering, to say the least. The last time I’d done that—let someone else into my head—it had nearly broken me. It did break me, honestly. I was never the same afterward.
Letting her in had fixed something broken. It mended a wound I had let fester. But now, another wound has taken its place.
I slide out of bed, tugging a shirt over my head. The city blinks and sizzles with light below, but it’s still several hours until morning. I have no reason to wake her this early, but I have a feeling someone else is awake, and as I pull on a pair of black sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt, I let my powers pull me back to Eastonia, back to Moonrise, feeling confident that Marianna is safe and secure in my apartment.
Soren’s sitting in the lounge on the fourth floor of the castle, tucked deep in the eastern wing of the palace away from the suites and private residences used by the family. He looks up from a notebook when I appear, then sighs deeply, leaning back in a well-loved armchair.
“What are you doing up?” I ask, stepping out of the violent swirls of mist hugging my ankles.
“What are you doing back so soon?” he asks, mimicking my bored tone.
I sit across from him, closing my eyes for a moment in preparation to dispel the voices in my head, but they remain quiet, which is happening increasingly more often. I’m not sure what I’m doing differently, but when Marianna walked back into my life, things began to feel… easier. Less loud.
“I have a question for you, and I had a feeling you were still awake.”
He arches a brow. “You have an uncanny ability for knowing where I am at any given moment. If my mate weren’t sleeping peacefully upstairs, I’d be wondering if you and I were actually mates.” He chuckles, thoroughly entertained. I make a disgusted face and settle deeper into my armchair. “What do you want, Blake?”
“Did you ever run contraband over the border into Crescent Falls?”
“Of course I did,” he says, turning his head slightly to the side. “What a stupid fucking question.”
“Magical contraband.”
He stills, then slowly straightens. “Be more specific.”
“Potions–and possibly witches who knew how to use them.”
“Tonics, potions, and healers are perfectly legal in Crescent Falls. You should know that, given that you’re the royal prince.”
I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. “Marianna was given a potion and cursed, bound to Dean, and is now slowly dying. I got a glimpse into Dean’s head. He wasn’t the type of guy who had the mental capacity to think past his next drink, let alone plot out the use of a curse to bind a woman to him against her will.”
“I was the Viper’s muscle, Blake,” Soren says, tilting his head as he scans my face. I’m not sure what he sees, but he softens, exhaling deeply while rolling out his shoulders and neck. “But yeah, she did move those kinds of things into Crescent Falls. There wasn’t a huge market for it, but I know for a fact the Alphas who ran underground auctions, breeder auctions mostly, bought in when anything like that was available.” He closes the notebook. “And don’t worry, I gave everything I knew about her operations to Evander.”
“I wasn’t worried about that.” I feel echoes of fatigue creeping through my legs. I rise, pacing to the built-in bar on the far side of the room. “I’m just trying to piece together how Dean got his hands on the potion and whether or not she was actually cursed.”
“What difference does it make? They cut out the mark. Her wolf will return once she heals–”
“If she were, in fact, cursed, she’s going to die.” I reach for a bottle of scotch but decide against it, curling my hand into a fist instead. “If she were just given potions over a long period of time… she might fully recover. I need to know for sure.”
“Look into her head. She should have memories of when she was cursed if that’s the case–”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I turn to Soren. His face is set in grim determination, and there he is, the cold-blooded killer I met all those years ago–hard, fierce, and cunning.
Sharp as a fucking blade.
“Because it’s crossing a boundary.”
“Did she set that boundary?”
“No, I did.”
“Then fucking cross it. Save her life, Blake, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s not as easy as you’re making it sound.”
He sits up straighter and methodically crosses his arms over his chest. “You’ve looked into mine. Hell, you’ve been using your powers to keep tabs on me for years now, haven’t you? You know exactly where I am, where I’ll be in the future. What’s stopping you from looking into her head and seeing exactly what went down and how?”
“Because if she were cursed with a binding spell, she wouldn’t remember. A witch couldn’t just do that and let their victim remember the details. And I–I can’t–”
“You’re terrified of her.”
“What?”
“You’re scared of Marianna–”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Soren cuts me off with a cackling laugh that continues until he’s nearly out of breath. I’m fuming, likely red in the face, when he runs a hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Have you been with anyone other than her?”
“Of course I have.”
“I’m not talking about a drunken one-night stand. Have you wanted anyone other than her, pined for someone, or has she been it?”
“It’s always been her.” My hands are curled into fists at my sides.
“Why aren’t you–”
“Fighting for her?”
Soren takes a deep breath, resting his palms against his knees, like he’s ready for a fight. Tension crackles between us, reminding me that this man is, shockingly, one of the few people I trust.
I trust Soren more than anyone, honestly. He has morals aligned with mine. He understands what this is like for me, what it’s been like having to push the person I love away to try to save her, to give her a shot at a better life even if it means I’m not in it.
I really don’t want to fight him tonight. I just need someone right now, someone to talk to who might understand…
“She didn’t know what I could do. She had no idea I had powers. I fell in love with her. It’s as simple as that. I willed a future with her into existence but didn’t account for what I am when I made those plans. And when… when I looked into her timeline, our timeline? I saw I would lose her, and I… it was because of me. Somewhere along the line, I’d make a misstep, a miscalculation, that would result in her death. I’ve spent the last eight years trying to stop it from happening, manipulating every timeline her thread crosses, trying to pick out the frays. It hasn’t worked. I was convinced until recently that Hannibal had a hand in her demise. Most, if not all, of his marks were connected to her in some way. Fans of her work, people she crossed in the street, neighbors… people Dean knew, people he worked with, people his Alpha was connected with…. Now I know Hannibal’s hand is in this because there is no way Dean could have gotten those potions if it hadn’t been for Hannibal’s den bringing them into Crescent Falls, and I feel like I’ve wasted so much time.”
“Does she know what you’ve done for her?”
“No, and she doesn’t need to.”
“You’ve spent nearly a decade of your life dedicated to keeping her alive–”
“And I’ll spend another decade doing so if I have to. There’s no question of that.”
“What do you want, Blake? Are you happy continuing on like this, with her in the background, tucked in your shadow while she tries to raise that kid on her own?”
“I’m used to being alone. I’ve made peace with it.”
“But is it really what you want?”
“It’s what has to happen for their safety.” I edge toward him, holding out a hand in surrender. He has to understand, doesn’t he? This ache, this constant knowledge that everything, and everyone, is a threat? “You have Maeve and Fallon now. You know firsthand how dangerous things are for them, both of them, but especially Fallon. If she were to fall into the wrong hands, it would be disastrous. Skye is the same. Maeve and I are similar, you know. Our powers are intense, insanely valuable, and hard to control. Hannibal wanted something from me and was digging through my head to find what I coveted the most, what I was willing to die to protect, and he nearly found them. Putting them beside me… out in the open… it’s out of the question until that man–that thing–is dealt with.”
“That could be years from now.”
“So be it.”
“You need to tell her all of this.”
“It wouldn’t fix anything.” I sink into the armchair across from him and hang my head for a moment.
“Is she your mate, Blake?”
My exhale is deep and restorative. For once in my life, holding back a secret, shielding myself from whispers… doesn’t feel right. “I’m different from you. I’m a shifter but also something else. I can’t feel the bond like you can, but… I wondered. That’s why I looked all those years ago. I looked for our bond, found it, and found her death. She could be my mate but–”
“But what?”
Silence hugs the room for several seconds, broken only by the ticking of a clock on the wall. “But it feels unfair. She’s all music, light, and sound. I’m the opposite. I suck light from any room. I need sound to block out the voices in my head. I can’t just be in the quiet with her. I’ll never be able to do that. I’m not–not good with words, Soren. I can’t write her fucking sonnets and tell her how much I love her because just saying the words doesn’t feel like enough. When I found out she got married and had a mate, I was… happy for her and devastated for me. I thought what I’d seen had been a fluke, that we weren’t mates, and I was thankful for it. Thankful for her, not for myself. And I let myself fall into the darkness, let it twist and fester like an infection until I’d sucked all the light out of the world around me, and I have no idea how to go back.”
“I don’t think she cares about those things,” he replies, his voice a low, rumbling whisper in the space between us. “I think she’s been trying to reach you since your… your what, threads? Since those crossed again. She has to know at this point that you’re mates. She has to feel something.”
“With the curse–”
“You’re different now. You seem less stuck in your head.” Soren shifts his weight, glancing down at his watch. “Maeve has commented on the change a few times. She thinks it’s because you’re finally letting the family see who you are.”
“They would hate me if they could really see it. Marianna, too.”
“What about Skye? She’s the same. Is that how you want her to feel? Like she can’t be herself, like she has to hide this part of herself?” He rises, moving toward the door. “Fallon’s awake. I’m letting Maeve get some rest tonight before I have to go back to Veiled Valley to meet with Ryatt. Go back to your mate, Blake. I think you already know how to fix this, how to save her, but it means being honest about who, and what, you are.”
I remain in the armchair until he leaves, soaking in the silence. The voices in my head remain quiet, even when I move through the aether and arrive back in my apartment just as the sun is starting to push back the darkness, and Crescent Falls erupts in shining glass and twinkling, golden light.
Marianna is still in bed, fast asleep, when I take off my sweatshirt and slide in beside her. I curl my body around hers, tugging her close, and for the first time since I bought this penthouse to escape the rest of the world… I lie there and listen to the sounds of the city waking up for the day.
“Good morning,” she says sleepily, rolling over and burying her face in my shirt.
“Good morning,” I echo, resting my cheek against her forehead, my eyes on the fading stars beyond the bed.