Page 53 of Cursed Wolf

Chapter 18

Tryn

Stupid. Fucking. Idiot.

It was too soon. I shouldn’t have tried to tell her everything in the same day. Poor Emmaline had been too overwhelmed already. And after seeing a man turn into a wolf, she probably thought she was going crazy.

Fucking dumbass. I’d been too impatient, too eager to come clean without thinking the ramifications all the way through. She was human, for moon’s sake.

And now I’d fucked up everything.

The odds of Emmaline still wanting to be together was the longest of long shots. My world, the very person I was, had never existed to her until last night. I was too strange for her. We were literally from two different worlds. How could we possibly make it work?

Staring at my bedroom ceiling, my hand curled in the center of my chest. My fingers dug into my own skin until it hurt. I could see the silver fate thread in my periphery, that infernal rope tying me to her, and wanted to rip it from my chest.

What was the point? All I did was disrupt her life, lie to her, hurt her, and weird her the fuck out. If I hadn’t been able to see the damn thread, I never would have met her. She would have been better off.

Fuck this so-called gift. This curse.

“Are you happy? You’ve had your fun.” The moon was millions of miles away, a cold rock in space. But I knew Her magic, knew She could hear me. “I hope it was amusing for you, watching me fall for someone I could never have. But I’m over it. Take this away. I don’t want it anymore.”

My hand cut across the silver thread. It stayed intact, like my hand had passed through a beam of light. And to my complete lack of surprise, the moon didn’t answer my request.

I heard Gran’s voice in my head instead. “It’s not our job to understand the moon. To manipulate Her into performing our whims. She sees all and loves us as a mother does. Sometimes that entails tough love and lessons to be learned.” It was something she told me as a pup a long time ago, when I asked why my parents had to be taken away from me.

My hand dropped to the bed with a heavy sigh. Before I could give much thought to what the lesson was with Emmaline, a heavy pounding came to my door.

“Pack meeting,” Ruse barked through the wood before moving on to the next door.

I rolled up with a groan and headed down to the main floor of the lodge. Pack business would keep my mind off of Emmaline, at least.

While coming down the stairs, I halted a step at the sight of Camael, leader of the angels standing in the open dining hall in the lodge. His navy blue suit was crisp, not a wrinkle or piece of lint to be seen. The angel’s brilliant white wings were tense, drawn in close to his back. His arms mirrored the same tension, crossed over his chest. Likewise, his expression was tight-lipped and eyebrows drawn down.

Sawyer and Derric always joked that the angels’ halos must have been shoved up their asses, because their faces always looked like they had some kind of obstruction in that area. Right then, Camael’s anal-halo seemed especially bothersome.

He was joined by three other angels, two males I didn’t know and a female I recognized as his sister, Laylah.

Laylah was classically beautiful with red hair, green eyes, and a pleasing symmetry to her face. But it wasn’t her looks that stopped me for a second time on my way down the stairs.

“Fuck.” I rubbed my eyes and looked again, then swore a second time. My curse was again showing me what others couldn’t see.

In faint outlines superimposed over her body like tracing paper, I saw puncture marks on Laylah’s neck and blood dripping down her throat. She turned her head to speak to one of the other angels and the opposite side of her neck showed more of the same, puncture marks and blood.

I gripped the banister hard enough for my knuckles to turn white and couldn’t stop staring. Most of the time, I only saw threads. Threads based on fate, truth, and in shifters, a thread connecting their two forms. Other times, I had visions like these. Right then, my curse was showing me clear signs of a vampire feeding off of the angel.

But when? How? The angels were especially protective of their females, almost archaically so, and they never associated with vampires.

Even more strange, I saw a thread stretching out from Laylah’s back, right between her wings. It shimmered red and gold, twinkling like a dew-covered spider’s web as it went through the lodge’s front door, stretching from east to west. The only territory strictly in that direction was Sanguine.

My eyes narrowed. Could an angel truly have a vampire for a fated mate? Was such a thing even possible?

“Tryn.” Derric’s voice pulled me from my swirling confusion and my gaze jerked to him. “Join us whenever you’re ready.” The Alpha’s tone had a bite of irritation, and I hurried the rest of the way to join my pack.

Once we were gathered around Derric’s high-backed chair at the far side of the room, the Alpha took his seat, and with it, control of the floor. “As always, Howling Death appreciates a visit from our winged neighbors to the north. What can we do for you, Camael?”

Derric’s words were hospitable, but his tone and expression were more along the lines of, “What the fuck do you want this time, assholes?”

Camael stepped forward, not sparing a glance at the hungry-eyed werewolves surrounding him on either side. “Vampires have once again been spotted on the streets of my territory. I’ve come to find out why our…dear neighbors to the south,” he said with a sneer, “have not done a thing for the protection of both of our territories. Surely, you must know that these vermin will find their way to Vargmore if they are allowed to infiltrate Helios City.”

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