Page 60 of The Alpha Wolf Defying Fate

She’d take one look at the book and its story and she would believe it was him. I couldn’t have her anymore distracted by this dark presence than she already was. It had already nearly claimed both our lives now. The best course was to watch her and assure her that she wasn’t filled with darkness, nor did she have a direct line to the evil being from which the darkness was born.

Another group of creatures scurried in front of us, completely unaware of any potential danger we might pose to them. A sign that they had no interaction with humankind in generations. They almost reminded me of the birds killed off in less than a hundred years ago, when humans first came to their native island. They even shared similar features with those long-gone birds, though I couldn’t quite call them bird brained, as they watched us curiously from where they stood.

“What are these birds called?” Baer asked as I opened my book.

I looked at him and nodded to the page where I found their likeness. “Cognizings. Says here they are incredibly resilient and smart birds. It says here that there had been some who claimed to have taught the birds how to speak like parrots, but they lack the bright colors of the showy birds and weren’t popular as pets because of their looks.”

“What’s it say about eating them?” Baer asked as he stared at the birds watching us.

I scowled at his question. “Didn’t we get plenty of food at the city?”

Baer laughed and nodded. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it will last us forever. We don’t know how far we are from finding Minerva, and it’s good to know what is worth hunting or not.”

I gave a sigh and flipped the page to read more about the bird. “Says here they have no real predators due to the lack of sustenance they provide. Not even the wolves bothered with hunting the birds. A feature that the dodo birds back in our realm could have used to survive.”

Baer chuckled and turned his attention away from the birds with lost interest. “Either way these birds are extinct to our world just as much as the dodo bird. Seems like our ancestors forgot them because they lacked any use to us. Can’t be food and can’t be a pet, may as well not even exist.”

I scrunched my nose at that. “All creatures have their place and uses. Just because they weren’t useful to people doesn’t mean they didn’t do something to help their environment thrive.”

Sasha and Aurora looked back at us as my voice rose higher. They both raised a brow at the two of us as we nodded their way and smiled.

“Is she doing okay?” Baer asked when they turned away from us with a hushed voice. “I’ve been trying to find the right moment to ask, but it doesn’t seem to be coming around anytime soon.”

I watched Sasha as she tried to stifle a yawn behind her hand.

“That depends on what you mean by okay,” I said.

“I mean that we could hear you both this morning. Your panic, asking her to wake up. Then her gasps of air like she just came up from the bottom of a lake. Just because you both came out of the tent looking like all was normal doesn’t mean that we didn’t notice or hear that something was wrong.”

I looked away from Sasha and her cousin to meet Baer’s gaze then. “Of course you did,” I scrubbed my hand over my face. “If I’m being completely honest, I have no idea. Even when she talks to me, I can’t help but feel she is still holding something back. I’m not even sure she’s aware that she’s not telling me everything.”

“You know you sound a little crazy saying that right?” Baer said.

I shook my head. “Yeah, maybe. But it doesn’t take away the fear.” I looked at the girls again, their eyes forward as they whispered in their own conversation. “Last night she stopped breathing in her sleep. I couldn’t reach her through the bond. I could barely feel her at all. It was like a giant wall had gone up around her and blocked me out. No matter how hard I tried to break through to her, I couldn’t reach her. I could barely reach her wolf and even that connection felt like a bad wireless connection.”

Baer frowned. “You both marked one another didn’t you?” He looked at my shoulder, where Sasha’s mark sat just beneath my clothes.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “We did. The bond is complete. It has been since before the griffin attacked.”

“Then there is nothing in the world that could stop you from reaching your mate. That connection is formed by The Fates themselves. It’s impossible to break that bond once it’s formed.”

I gave a humorless laugh. “That’s exactly why it worries me. When she finally woke up and took a breath, she told me that she didn’t feel like she had been in her body during that time. She said she was in the darkness.”

“What darkness?” Baer asked skeptically.

“The darkness where dark witches draw their power from,” I answered and lowered my voice more. “There is more, but I’m not sure what she has told Aurora and, given that your mate doesn’t keep things from you.”

Baer shook his head. “I know she has that fear of being evil, but that’s about it.”

I nodded. “Yeah there is that. There is also a voice she keeps hearing in her head. It told her what the creatures were as we encountered them and how to kill them. It told her how to use the dark magic. And she said that the voice was in the darkness when she was there in her sleep. This voice just adds more to her fears, and I’m getting more and more worried about her.”

Baer looked over at the two cousins ahead of us and frowned at the same time as me.

“What can we do to help?”

I smiled at the immediate reaction, a testament to the family bond he had developed with Sasha through his mate’s bond to her cousin.

“Just have Rory check on her for me. I think having her cousin close to her helps her more than she realizes. She is so dependent on me and our bond to block out the voice, but clearly it’s not working. I get this feeling that she needs more than just her mate to be strong.”

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