Page 6 of Unforgivable Fate

It was rare for a basic everyday vision telling her that the boy down the street would fall off his bike or that they were going to get rain could overtake her and she was thankful for the control that had come with age and understanding of her gift.

When she’d been a child, Nova had been carefree and careless with her visions. She had proudly told anyone who would listen about what she saw. Back then she hadn’t understood that knowing the future could have consequences.

She’d predicted her oldest sister would mate with an Alpha outside their family’s Crescent Pack and though Luna hadn’t given her foresight much credit at the time, someone else had. Maddox Clary had been a power-hungry and crazed Alpha who wanted Luna and the Crescent Pack for himself. Hearing of Nova’s vision, knowing his time was running out to claim Luna, he’d staged a coup that had ripped the DeLuca family apart and nearly destroyed them all.

Nova’s mother and father had been killed in the attack. Her brother, Leo, had been driven from their lands and forced to go to the neighboring Moirae Pack for help because the traitors had also kidnapped Luna, Maya and Nova. It was a chain of events that Nova’s visions hadn’t foreseen until it was too late because they had also caused it.

It had taken her a while to come to terms with that and even now, knowing all the damage that would be done because of her vision, she couldn’t honestly say that she would have kept it to herself if she’d known.

Fate was what it was. It was destiny. It was powerful. It had a way of always being right and fighting it did zero, zip, zilch. In the wake of Maddox Clary’s attack, fate had gotten her way and Nova had never been able to see a path to where they all were now without it.

Luna had mated with the Pack Alpha of the neighboring Moirae wolves. She and Michael Hudson were happy. They ruled their pack and were beloved by all. Their sons were wild and bold, the future of the pack ensured with their birth and they were the beating heart of the Hudson and DeLuca family alike.

Fate certainly worked in mysterious ways, but it also worked when it slapped you in the face with the worst days of your life, threatened to destroy you, and then sent you down a path you never would have taken otherwise.

Nobody believed in fate more than Nova. She felt it as though it was a part of her. Her visions were a gift from fate herself to help guide them all. And even if she couldn’t see visions of her own future, she had always trusted in the greater power to put her right where she needed to be.

It was ironic really, that she was just thinking of how fate always had a plan, when she rounded the corner of a building onto the main square at the center of Crescent Pack territory and ran smack into something hard and broad and warm.

“Shit.” A deep voice growled as she all but bounced off of him, stumbling backwards, and then two big hands were latching onto her arms to keep her from falling. “Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

One of Nova’s earbuds had fallen out at the moment of impact and she winced as the low voice invaded her head, overtaking the sound of Lizzo still belting it out against her other eardrum. It took her brain a moment to process that she had run into someone, not something.

Even as it did, her body reacted so viscerally that her breath caught and heat flushed through her, sparking at the point where those big hands held her arms and racing through every nerve ending in her body. She felt light-headed, weak in the knees, and a familiar sense of knowing settled in her chest before she even regained her footing enough to look up and find the man she had run into.

The man that fate had put directly in her path.

“No, I’m sorry, I…” Nova raised her head to look up and the heat that had raced through her flash froze the blood in her veins. Panic. Sheer, utter, terror and panic clawed its way up her throat and she shoved at the hands that were holding her, desperate to get away, to run, to fight, to do something. “No. No. No!”

She could hear the one word being screamed over and over but it didn’t sound like it was coming from her throat. That couldn’t be her voice. Shrill and horrified, a whine so keening that her wolf shuddered inside of her and shrank back to the farthest, darkest corner of her soul.

Maddox Clary was alive. He wasn’t dead like they all thought. Darius hadn’t killed him by ripping his head off all those years ago. He was here. Now. Standing right in front of her, gripping her arms even as she struggled to get away from him, and just like when she was a little girl and he was a grown man, so much bigger and meaner and scarier than her, he wouldn’t let her go.

“Nova?” Somewhere through her terrified screams she heard her name being uttered by her brother’s worried voice. “Nova, what the… oh, fuck.”

“Son of a bitch.” Darius was there now too though Nova’s gaze was snagged on the devilishly handsome face of the man in front of her so she couldn’t see him.

That face. She would know it anywhere. Dark skin. Full lips. Chiseled cheekbones. So handsome it hurt to look at him but it was a mask. Beneath the good looks he wasn’t a man or even a wolf. He was a monster.

“Let her go.” Darius ordered.

“I…. can’t.” The man’s honey brown eyes didn’t leave Nova’s face and his grip on her didn’t loosen even though he lowered his voice to a soft whisper, “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not him. I swear to you that I am not him and I would never hurt you. Do you hear me? Never.”

“But you’re… you’re… supposed to be dead?” she whimpered as the heat in her heart warred with the cold lead taking up residence in her stomach.

“No.” The man shook his head again, “Maddox was my brother. He’s dead but I am not here to hurt you. I promise. I would never hurt you.”

“Nova, sweetheart… He’s not Maddox. He’s the reason we wanted to talk to you. He’s his brother.” Darius was saying from somewhere behind her, his voice soothing and then, quieter, “Dammit Leo, do something. She looks like she’s going to pass out. Make him let go of her.”

“I can’t.” Leo hissed.

“Why the hell not?” Darius demanded.

“Because I can’t interrupt a mate bond.” Leo sounded horrified and Nova’s legs gave out when the truth of what she was feeling hit her ears in the voice of the man she trusted more than anyone.

No, it couldn’t be. She shivered when strong arms caught her and swept her up before she could hit the ground. He looked like Maddox but Maddox was dead.

She met those honey-colored eyes again and they were so soft, so warm, that her brain finally began to believe that this wasn’t the demon from all of her nightmares. He couldn’t be. Unless this was a nightmare and she was asleep right now. She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up but instead that deep voice sank inside of her again as the man holding her spoke.

---