Page 73 of The Cursed Wolf King

That hit me harder than anything else she’d said. “What did you say?” I could barely get the words out.

“Your mother, girl. The great alpha of the Crux pack. She knew what you were, what you’d bring down on her people. So she gave you up. Sacrificed you to save the rest of her kind.”

Images of my mother flooded my mind—the softness of her voice as she hummed to me, the strength in her arms as she carried me through the night, the love and sorrow that rolled off her the day she left.

“I was just a little kid.”

“She knew the truth about you.” Mariyah nodded. “You’re not just cursed, Evensong. Youarethe curse.” Mariyah stepped back, pulling her cloak tighter around her. “You can fight it all you want,” she said. “The truth doesn’t care whether you believe it.”

My thoughts cascaded in a thousand directions at once and I tried to grab ahold of any of them, to start to put the pieces together.

Something else caught my attention.

The old woman’s heart.

Her pulse was faint, but not faint in the way a weak heart would be. It was deliberate, like each beat was carefully measured, slower than any heartbeat should be. It was wrong, unnatural, and yet…

Something wasn’t right.

“What do you want?” I asked with a calmness that came from the Shadow Moon Goddess herself, because there was no way I had any idea how I was so collected.

“What do I want?”

“That’s right.” I continued sensing her heartbeat, knowing I was onto something. “What are you looking for in all of this?”

“With all I’ve revealed to you,that’syour question?”

“There’s no reason for you to implicate yourself in my life,” I spat out. “You need something out of it.”

“I need you to beunder control,” she replied quickly, nostrils flaring.

“You don’t need anything from me,” I countered.

“Oh yes, I do.” She sauntered toward me, extending her finger and lifting my chin. A vibration ran down my spine directly into the core of me, stirring my wolf and holding me in place. “Our futures are so closely entwined, I can’t sleep until you and your rogue powers are put back in their place. Little dove, I found you at last. The one who is a scourge onallpacks.”

She stepped back, releasing her power over me and leaving behind a burning in my bones.

“Hopefully it’s not too late,” she murmured, gripping the edge of her cloak. “Or else it’s too late for all of us.”

And then she ran.

Her form blurred as she shifted mid-stride, her cloak falling away to reveal a wolf so perfectly camouflaged she seemed to become a tree in the forest.

Logan moved to follow. I grabbed his arm.

“Let her go,” I whispered, watching her faded form retreat.

I sank to my knees.

Her words were crushing me, killing me.Let me be swallowed whole by the ground below.Logan dropped down beside me, pulling me into his arms.

“What she said changes nothing,” he said. I couldn’t believe him. “I swear to you, Eve.”

He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, like we could snap our fingers and unravel the tangled mess of curses, fate, and choices that led us here.

But it wasn’t simple. Her accusations were dragging me into a despair more pervasive than any other I’d known. Something inside me had fractured. Broken pieces of myself, jagged and sharp, cutting deeper with every breath.

Logan didn’t move. He didn’t flinch.

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