Page 144 of Empowering the Wolf's Heart

I slowly moved my hand, pointing to my bracer. He slowly knelt, his eyes never straying from mine as he carefully undid the underside of the bracer and slid it off my arm. My heart leapt to my throat, and I feared he knew exactly what he was doing to me. The butterflies fluttering in my stomach; the warmth growing in my chest. Then his eyes went down to my wrist. He growled, low and deep. A threat. And a promise.

The Mark of Dishonor was a red and burnt-orange painting on the underside of my wrist. He kissed it tenderly. His lips spurred a shiver to race down my spine. His eyes stayed on mine as his fangs grew and scraped against my wrist until pain, sharp but muffled, burned up my arm. A thrill went through me as something deeper—something ancient yet timeless—surged from the mark. It raced up my arm and paused around the walls of my heart. It lingered there, sniffing, then it settled in and waited. Waited for me to choose.

My lip trembled. I had never let anyone get so close. Ran was an exception because we were forced together, but this? I waschoosingthis.

As the ageless and delicate spirit of the wolf slowly coiled around my soul, I released my fears and let down my walls so I could just be.

Shen

Her skin closed over as soonas I pulled back. It was the magic of the bond. Then a slow black speck began to grow where my teeth had marked. The black swirled, growing into the shape it would remain eternally. Every Mark of the Mate is unique to the specific couple.

Lycus was gone, leaving an oddly bereft part of me within. It felt as if part of my soul had departed. Technically, it had. He had gone to claim her.

I did not know what would happen when we mated. I had only known of werewolf-to-werewolf mates. What Alia and I would become would be something different. Something new. Something beautiful.

Alia’s eyes slowly closed, and I felt a tug on the mate bond as Lycus slowly prowled around the edges of her soul. Ran was there, watching us from the areas where she guarded Alia’s heart. Lycus was notwithme, but he was stillpartof me. We could never be separated, not unless one of us so chose.

I felt him as he sat before Ran, as she studied him and probed into him.

He opened his soul to allow her to see every dark and broken deed in our past, to see how shattered we were and how we had healed. How we were forgiven but still struggling with our new life. How freedom had broken through what we were and how uncertain we were of what we would become.

Something about us must have been enough, for the massive, pearlescent dragon in Alia’s soul bent her head down and touched her nose to Lycus’ forehead.

I breathed out a sigh I had not realized I had been holding. Receiving Ran’s approval was worse than speaking with Alia’s father—and yes, I had spoken with him before asking Alia, and it had been as nerve-wracking as it sounded. Who ever imagined a werewolf would ask aRedfor permission to Mark his daughter?

Alia’s face pinched as the black spread into a blanket of black on her wrist, covering the Mark of Dishonor. I wouldn’t force her to expose her soul to me. Now that Ran had allowed Lycus through, now that she was faced with the truth, Alia had to choose. It was one thing to understand that I would know her very soul. It was another to allow me tofeelit.

Alia gasped as she dropped the walls of her innermost being.

My eyes burned and my soul sang. Lycus howled as he gently placed himself where he could both protect, provide, and watch over this lovely soul who was ours to shelter and support.

Her pinched brow smoothed, and her chin fell to rest against her chest. Her eyes, so blue and so very bright, fluttered opened. Within, I saw the wildness. A hint of burning, molten silver.

As the mate bond snapped into place, fully accepted, a mark appeared on my wrist to match hers. It itched as it grew, the feeling almost like the crawling of ants on skin. Except, this was pleasant.

It would take a while for Lycus to return to me. Until such a time, I felt her. All of her.

From the way her hair always stayed up because it annoyed the heck out of her in both day-to-day life and in battle, to the way her worst fear was to be vulnerable. Yet it was alsomore.She felt so manyneedson a daily basis that she could not imagine allowing someone to care for her. She knew what it took to give, and to place that burden upon another caused her soul such pain she avoided it at all costs. But instead of running from her fear, she embraced it, became it,usedit. She used it to become the empathetic and graceful creature who met people where they were. Used it to guide bloodthirsty humans through a journey of redemption, to guide people from guilt to forgiveness, and to guide a lonely, aching werewolf to freedom and acceptance.

She took the broken, aching parts of her soul and used them to bind up others’ wounds.

“Your soul bleeds,” I whispered, my voice breaking, my heart shattering, my very being fracturing and re-mending at what I saw behind the walls of her strength. When, for the first time, she let meseeher.

She was every bit the glorious and beautiful creature I had anticipated would hide behind her walls. Of light and darkness. Of brokenness and mending. She was my starlight and my pathway home.

My Carissimus.

CHAPTER 51

The Broken But Whole

ALIA

Morning dawned sooner than any of us wished. With the rising of the sun, our enemy unfolded from the forest, slowly coming forward, their numbers designed to strike fear into the soul.

Half-man, half-beast rogues lined the forest edge, their lips peeled back to show pale teeth, many already dripping blood from their maws. Mages gathered behind them, some with balls of lightning and fire in their hands and others with eyes that glowed with an eerie power and massive, ugly vines teeming with purple bruises and red thorns snaking to them from the forest.

There were hundreds of both rogues and dark mages marching shoulder to shoulder, with more emerging behind them.

---