Page 11 of Shadowkissed

I shake my head. “I don’t even know his name.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Thorne says. “He’s awakened something. You used your power to protect him. It isn’t just about exposure now.”

I know what he’s not saying.

Seraphiel knows.

The fallen prince. The one with molten eyes and blood-magic chains. The one who’s whispered my name into bone and dirt since the day I was born.

He thinks I belong to him.

He thinks I’m the missing half of his power.

He thinks...

“I didn’t summon the mist,” I snap. “I didn’t call him.”

“No,” Thorne murmurs, “but youfelt. And that’s enough.”

Gods damn him. Damn all of them.

“I’m not going to stop living because he’s watching from the void like a fucking creep,” I say, too loud. Too angry. “I’m not his. I never was.”

Thorne’s gaze is sharp. “Tell that to New Orleans.”

I freeze.

Low blow.

I can still smell the fire when I sleep. Blood on brick. Magic out of control, coiling like a serpent through the air, ripping through walls and people andsouls. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to get away.

Twelve dead. PEACE agents. Civilians. A baby, they said.

No survivors but me.

“I was seventeen,” I whisper. “He was in my head.”

“And now you’re older. Stronger. But no wiser,” Thorne replies. “You saved a wolf, yes. But you also fed the tether. You made Seraphiel hungry.”

I hate that word.Tether.

I never agreed to it. Never said yes. My mother—if you could even call her that—made the pact before I was born. A dark fae womb, a celestial curse, and a ritual written in blood and starlight. I was bred for destruction.

I was never meant toloveanyone.

Especially not someone like him.

“He looked at me like heknew,” I whisper. “Like... he didn’t see the magic. He sawme.”

Thorne is silent. He never comforts. That’s not what he’s for.

I finally sink down on the moss, curling my legs under me, hands buried in the dirt. My magic is still boiling just under the surface, aching for release. It wants to find the wolf again. To wrap around him, protect him,connect.

But if I do, Seraphiel will come. Not just with mist or whispers. With fire.

“I need to disappear again,” I murmur. “Somewhere deep. Maybe underground.”

“No,” Thorne says, crouching beside me. “You need to control it. That alpha? He’s not like the others. I can smell it from here. He’s not just wolf.”

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