Page 70 of She is the Darke

He frowned. He must’ve misunderstood. Easing back, he asked, “What?”

Her bi-colored eyes were wide. “This hurts like…a lot…and if I get superpowers, I’m all in.”

Alex snorted behind him.

He parted his lips to respond but no words came out. He tried again. “Stacia, you just burned an ancient witch alive in a car fire with your bare hands, and I’m holding you in the middle of the road without any clothes on, and you’re dying. I need you to take stock of the moment and make an intelligent decision. This is a big deal.”

“Will I age well?”

“Oh my God,” he muttered.

The pack was chuckling behind him.

“No botox ever? Because Alex looks awesome.”

Why was he even surprised right now? It was Stacia. “Okay, so your choice is being turned into a monster?”

“Ahotmonster,” she corrected him and fuck it, okay. He let a little chuckle crawl up the back of his throat.

Truth be told, he would give her anything she wanted. She could have his life. She’d just burned the witch who had ruinedhis life, and that of his pack. She’d picked up that imposter and turned her to ash.

No, bitch. He was always mine.

Oh, he’d heard what she’d said, and damn right, he was hers.

If she wanted the wolf? Callum’s face stretched into a slow, accepting grin. He would give her the wolf.

“This is going to hurt a little,” he warned her, as the points of his canines sharpened and elongated behind his lips.

Stacia’s soft smile demolished every wall he’d erected around his heart over the last three centuries.

Her eyes held nothing but utter confidence when she whispered, “I’ve always been ready.”

Chapter Ten

Once upon a time, centuries ago, a boy and a girl fell in love and that love changed the course of a town.

The man harbored a wolf inside of him and became a great leader, and the woman always stood behind him, encouraging him to reach his full potential. Together they built a pack that was more powerful than any other in the world. Only the strongest were asked to pledge, and they were run with a perfect balance of ruthlessness and fairness.

The girl was beautiful and light, named for a flower, human and open-hearted, and fragile in ways that balanced out the wolf in the man she loved. The wolf became thirsty for more and more power, and though the boy tried to control him, the animal became insatiable.

A witch was drawn to the growing power in that small but expanding town of Hollow Rock, and when she first set eyes on the Alpha of that pack, she knew no other could match her. He was capable of a great power she’d been hungry for all of her life, and she could offer him something he’d always wanted—the ability to be an eternal Alpha, unable to be dominated in any fight for his pack. He would live longer, and remain stronger. He could build an empire around the woman he loved.

But the witch didn’t care so much about love in their story. Love was only potential for power. It was a sentimental feeling that would give a dark heart like hers everything she desired. A name. A curse. A legacy. Immortality with the wolf that could continue to feed her power until the end of days.

But every curse had to have loopholes. It was the way of curses. For all the bad, there had to be one little ray of hope. Hope was the real power that made a curse work. She’d had tofeed him hope that he would find his love again and break the curse, and all she had to do was keep it from happening.

On Halloween, on the year the wolf met a reincarnation of his true love, he had to turn her into a werewolf, and only then would the curse be broken. Only then would the veil of immortality lift from him and his pack. Only then could he live the lifetime he’d been fated for. Only then could he rest. Only then could he find happiness for himself, and for his pack.

The boy learned a big lesson about the cost of power. It had cost him his love. Cost him his future with the girl who protected his heart. Cost him the adoration of his pack. Cost him the joy of living like there was no tomorrow.

This was his second chance.

This was a second chance for the entire pack.

Stacia didn’t realize how important or how cherished she was yet, but he would spend the rest of his life showing her.

Fate hadn’t left him to the wolves. He’d just had to take the long way home.

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