Page 54 of The Cursed Wolf King

“You’re too kind.”

She shrugged. “That’s what a pack does, right? We come together when one of us is in need.”

One of us.

Raina nudged Isabelle and I could tell she thought Isabelle had gone a bit too far. I didn’t blame her.

I looked over the room again—the braided rug beneath my boots, the mismatched dishes stacked neatly on the shelf, the single flower perched in a mason jar on the windowsill. It was too much. Too kind. Too foreign.

“How is this even here?” I asked, the question slipping out. “A furnished house, just waiting for someone to fill it?”

Isabelle hesitated. Raina didn’t say anything, but something passed between the two of them. It wasn’t words. It was a current, a pull that made the air pulse. I couldn’t hear it, not exactly, but I felt it in the way Raina straightened, in the slight tilt of Isabelle’s head—their bond was strong.

It felt like I could almost understand them. It was like listening to a far-off radio muffled by the distance so I couldn’t quite pick out the words.

It reminded me too much of how it used to feel with Kenza and Anwen—how we could understand each other without having to say much. I suddenly really missed Kenza’s frank openness, her playful smile, and Anwen’sconstant, grounding presence. An ache crept up before I could shove it back down.

Raina’s voice cut through my thoughts. “This has been a complicated period for our pack,” she said. “You’ll understand more with time.”

Time.My grip tightened around the clothes in my hands, and my fingers were shaking. “Thank you again for these.” I placed them on the round wooden table in the middle of the room and leaned on a chair for balance. My head was swimming and I was worried I’d keel over in front of them.

When my hand gripped the back of the chair, my consciousness was taken over.

It wasn’t the chair under my palm anymore. It was the flash of a different place, a dark clearing shrouded in chaos. Shadows stretched long against the earth, twisting and moving with the violence of an attack.

Thrashing. Blood. Cries.

The chair toppled as I lived in two places at once, the sound of it hitting the ground like a bomb.

My breath caught as the vision snapped away. My heart pounded, and I rubbed my palms on my dress, as though I could wipe the feeling away. It lingered, crawling under my skin.

Raina took my elbow. “Eve? Are you alright?”

“Fine,” I said quickly. “Just felt a little dizzy for a second.”

I picked up the chair and pushed it toward the table, but touching it sucked me back into that dark place. The vision wasn’t done with me.

Logan.

He stood alone, his figure silhouetted against thepale glow of the moon. But he wasn’t proud, commanding, or steady as I’d seen him before. He was crumpled on the ground, his head thrown back, a howl tearing through him that fractured the night itself. Blood matted his fur. Orion wolves fought, their cries of pain echoing through the night. Logan was at the center of it all, fighting with the ferocity of a wolf who had nothing left to lose.

I snatched my hand away from the chair, the bungalow snapping back into focus. What I’d seen wasn’t some wild imagining—it was a piece of something bigger, something real.

I gasped, wrenching myself back to reality.

“You’d better sit down,” Isabelle said, leading me to the small sofa.

I forced a smile that felt paper-thin as I sat down. “It was a difficult trip,” I murmured, but it sounded hollow. “It took more out of me than I thought.”

Raina and Isabelle exchanged a look, their pack bond tangible between them. Even as I sat there, trying to ground myself in the reality of the bungalow, flashes of violence and Logan’s despair continued, haunting the edges of my vision like a storm waiting to break.

Isabelle moved to the window and pulled back the curtain while Raina went into the kitchen. “There’s a garden out back,” Isabelle said lightly. “The previous occupants loved to grow things. There are herbs, vegetables—enough to keep busy.”

I nodded and caught myself smiling at the quaint yard.

Raina returned and handed me a mug, the smell of chamomile rising with the soft curl of steam. “Drink,” she said. “It will help.”

The warmth of the cup seeped into my fingers as I raised the mug to my lips, but it didn’t reach the cold knot in my stomach. Despite the horrors of the vision, everything about this place felt too good. For the first time in years, no one was barking orders at me, shoving me aside, or demanding something impossible.

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