Page 103 of Fated Exile

“A problem for another time, because she’s dying, and none of us can get close enough to stop it.” As he says this, Lance and Kieran try to get around the glowing green threads, but they can’t even see the attack that pushes them further away. “Somehow, whatever spell Knox used caused an attack that injured Hazel badly. I can’t get the details, but some of the other teens who were with her when it happened said something about dark spirits or demons or… something.”

“It sounds like a curse.” My mouth thins. “Just what we need right now.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Roarke sighs. “Do you think you can get to her and help her somehow?”

“I may be able to. But I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do once I get there. A bond like this isn’t meant to be severed.”

“Just try to heal it, and we’ll deal with the rest later.” Roarke grimaces. “That Knox boy ran away, apparently to become a lone wolf, so we can’t fix the bond between them. But we can at least help her survive long enough to figure out a way forward.”

“On it.”

As I step towards the green threads, though, I worry. There are spectators in the town square, more and more of them growing. Teenagers like Micah and Hazel, but also older wolves, who will spread this story like wildfire.

Either I’ll succeed in front of them, and renew their strength in the hybrid wolf-witch alpha of their pack.

Or I’ll fail spectacularly, cementing their belief that I don’t deserve to lead them, sowing doubts in their minds.

They’ve come to trust me and believe in me. But it’s such a fragile feeling. It needs to be built up and strengthened over time.

Thankfully, both my birth mother and my aunt are weaver witches. They passed some of those skills on to me, as I’ve begun to discover with Kerry. And nothing weaves together more easily than threads.

These threads in particular are angry and hurting. They hum and buzz as I step towards them, vibrating with pain and fury.

“Hazel, I’m coming for you.” I pitch my voice loud, seeing her head twitch. “Everything is going to be okay.”

I hope.

Stepping forward with false confidence, I raise my hands up and splay my fingers out. Plucking at the threads like they’re guitar strings, I part them laboriously, pulling them aside with each step that I take. They hiss and snap at my touch, reddening my skin with tiny welts, but they yield to me.

Bit by bit, I get closer to Hazel. She’s in rough shape. The blood that pools around her is growing, and it drips both from open wounds that stretch across her flayed torso, and from a nosebleed. She’s leaning forward over her bent knees, letting the blood drip from her nose onto the growing pool.

“I’m Delilah.” Her eyes twitch up to me at the words, their startling blue so light it’s nearly white. “I know you’re in a lot of pain, but I’m going to help. Let’s start with this mate bond.”

I drop down near her and reach out towards her chest, like I did with the severed bond I felt inside Kieran. She hisses at my touch but lets me, blinking tears out of her eyes. The pain I feel inside her isn’t just physical; her heart is reeling as well.

“He hates me,” she whispers, her voice low and pained. “No one would do this unless they hated the person they did it to.”

“He’s a stupid boy, and we’re going to find him and punish him,” I swear to her, grimacing as I press my fingers against her bloodstained shirt. “Now let me just…”

Stretching my awareness out, I sink beneath her skin.

And feel nothing. No hole, no severing, no sign of a broken mate bond. Just thousands of green threads spooling out of her, more joining each second, as if she’s being unwoven at the core.

“I feel weaker with each one,” she says, plucking at a thread near her feet, surprising me at her ability to touch them. “They’re killing me, aren’t they?”

The threads and the unhealed wounds splitting her skin. “I’m not going to let them,” I swear to her. “I just need to find a way to… put them back.”

Easier said than done. Threads are supposed to stretch out towards a mate—these have nowhere to go. Maybe I can get them to sink back into her, wounded but still nourishing, if I just figure out a way to do it. But they resist my touch in a way they don’t resist hers, disliking an outside intruder.

Hazel’s blood-coated fingers give me an idea. Grimacing, I push my own hands into the blood around us, coating them with dripping red. Blood is a common ingredient in many spells, especially blood of the intended target. Maybe I’ll be able to manipulate her threads if I have some of hers.

Reaching up, I pluck at the glowing green—and this time, it eases compliantly into my palm. Brightening with hope, I twist the thread towards her and push it back beneath her skin.

It obediently goes.

So I gather more of them, scooping dozens into each palm, and push them in. Hazel, seeing my movements and breathing in a little deeper and stronger, does the same. We grab them in fistfuls and wind them around her heart, push them into her chest and force them back where they belong.

Until only a few of them stretch out on the ground from her body, reaching towards something in the distance.

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