Page 7 of Fated to the Wolf Billionaire

I shifted, squinting harder at the light overhead. It looked old, nothing like the usual harsh fluorescent glare of a hospital.

Wait.

I wasn’t supposed to be at a hospital. I was supposed to be photographing— I gasped and tried to sit up as the memories flooded in. The alpine shrew jumbled together with the strange wolves and the hallucinations about their glowing eyes and my glowing hand. I scrubbed at my eyes and winced as my abdominals didn’t want to engage to lever me upright.

My whole body hurt like I’d been put through a car wash made of whips, but panic was setting in, because the last thing I remembered was stumbling into a bar and collapsing. I was alone in a foreign country, and I had no idea where I was or who had brought me here.

“Hey, it’s okay. Fiona? You’re okay. Do you want to sit up?” A woman’s soothing voice pierced the panic, and I froze as her face came into view. She was lovely, flawless cream skin framed by dark, messy curls and piercing eyes. “My name’s Brielle. You had a seizure this evening, and my friend Reed brought you to see me because I’m a doctor. But you’re safe, and we’ve got your wounds all cleaned and bandaged up.”

Her voice was so calm, so assured, that all the nervousness fled my body as quickly as it had started. “Hi, Brielle,” I answered, but my voice sounded raspy, and the ache in my throat reminded me of what had caused me to collapse in the bar. I touched my neck gingerly, and she winced.

“Olivia has a frogs-foot tincture on your abdomen to help ease the worst of the symptoms of exhaustion postseizure, but if you’d like to take something for the pain, I can help with that as well. We didn’t want to do anything else without speaking to you once we knew you were stable.” I glanced to the side, finding a redhead with kind eyes standing right past Brielle’s shoulder, and another, silent woman with darker skin and tight black curls watching me intently.

I thought I saw a flash of light there along her cheekbone for a second, but I blinked, and it was gone. Clearly, the hallucinations weren’t completely past yet.

It was so humiliating. My disease was better controlled now than it had ever been, but stress was a trigger, and getting chased by four wolves through a forest definitely qualified as stress.

“I would like to sit up,” I whispered when I realized they were all staring because I hadn’t answered her question. “But I don’t need any more medication, thank you.”

“No problem, we’ve got you,” the redhead said, coming around behind me to put a hand behind my back and another on my arm, the two of them helping me sit up without too much fuss.

I gazed around the room, confusion sinking in as I took in my very un-hospital-like surroundings. The walls were stone, the furniture old, and the window looked like it was made of single panes of glass in a leaded frame.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Umm…” Olivia—I thought the redhead was Olivia, but it felt kind of rude to ask after they’d taken care of me, so I kept my mouth shut—glanced nervously at Brielle, then the third woman.

“We’re inside a place called the Maiden’s Enclave. Have you ever heard of it before? It’s very old.” Brielle spoke calmly as she tidied a roll of gauze.

“No. We’re still in Romania, right?”

“Yes, we are. It’s pretty remote here. Reed says he met you in a bar nearby. Do you work there?” Her eyes were kind, and for some reason, I wanted to tell her every crazy, ridiculous detail.

“No, well—not really. I’m a wedding photographer, and a client got married at a nearby castle. I had a day left before my return flight, so I was out hiking, hoping to get some wildlife photos.”

“Oh, you’re a wildlife photographer too? How exciting,” Olivia said, giving me a supportive smile as she sat next to me on the edge of the bed, raptly listening.

“It’s a hobby for now.” I cleared my throat. I felt like an impostor whenever I told people I wanted to publish a book. So few people actually did that, and photography books were expensive to produce. “But I got the shot, and on the walk back, I heard something. And there were wolves chasing me. It was the strangest thing, because they followed me all the way to the edge of the bar parking lot, even after I hit them with the bear spray.”

“That must have been terrifying, being out there all alone like that.” Olivia’s compassion was clear as she squeezed my hand.

“It was. The seizure hallucination made it seem like they werehuge, and—” I shuddered at the memory of the glowing eyes… It was eerie. Fit for one of those scary Halloween movies. “It was the craziest thing. Maybe none of it was real, I don’t know. This time, I even thought my palm was glowing. Have you ever heard of anything so crazy?”

I shook my head, but the women were so silent, you could have heard a pin drop.

Shame and humiliation flooded me, and I looked down at my lap. And that was when I saw it. My hand, glowing up at me exactly as it had the night before. It wasn’t as bright because it was daytime, but I could clearly make out the shape of a moon and stars, and my head started to spin as I stared.

What the actual fuck? I blinked twice, hard, but the glow didn’t fade or vanish.

I started to shake, this time from terror. What was happening to me? I’d never had a seizure aura last this long. Was this somethingelse? Did I need my daily meds adjusted?

Hands landed on my shoulders, and a sense of cooling calm rushed through me like I’d never known before.

“Fiona, I have to tell you something, and it’s not going to be easy to swallow. But in this case, I feel like it’s time to rip off the Band-Aid. Do you feel… calmer?”

I blinked up at Brielle, whose hands were anchoring me. “I… Yes. And that’s really odd.”

She nodded, expression grave. “That mark on your palm isn’t a seizure hallucination, and you’re not imagining it. That’s called an omega seal, and you’re not the only one who has it. Olivia has one too. It means you’re both special, and you’ve got a destiny written by the Moon Goddess herself.”

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