Page 9 of Cursed Shadows 2

Her diamond eyes blaze like the flames in the hearth, the ones that tell when time passes by the hour. “Close, but more than that,” she says, her breathless voice turning desperate, and she leans closer, as though she needs me to be the one to figure it out.

The thought is fleeting, but I wonder if she can’t say more than what she is telling me; perhaps that her words are bound by a bargain or a fae promise, and she’s trying so desperately to manoeuvre her way around it.

‘More than that…’

The experience is about apotentialmate. So many of these evate moments fade away to nothing, nothing comes of them. The animal within is tired and goes back to sleep. The female it awoke for might just be not all that interesting to them when the beast gets closer.

‘More than that…’

The words are a rushed puff of air that come from my tight chest, “I am his evate…”

I am his mate.

His animal didn’t return to sleep after it found me.

The beast stayed.

I should feel something. I should feel elated, feel my heart flip in my chest, my stomach churn with butterflies assaulting it. I should want to run to him, throw myself at his feet and plead for his forgiveness, beg for him to hear my apologies.

Instead, I feel dread.

For an evate to break her dark male’s heart…

I shudder to think of the pain he must suffer, even now. And that would mean that the suffering he wants for me—no, not wants, craves,needs—is more brutal than I can ever imagine.

There has to be a way I can dig myself out of this grave.

Maybe the final evate meaning, the third but by no means the least. “We didn’t have sex,” I tell her, and so that means, “The bond wasn’t forged.”

Only through mating is the final stage achieved. Only when we mate will our souls come together and bond—and our lives tied.

If the mate falls, the male will follow.

“He loved you before he knew for certain what you were,” she tells me, her words hushed and fast.

The dokkalf male can only be certain once the bond is forged, once the female has been mated with. Only then can he be absolutely certain of what she is to him.

Aleana says, “He wrote to me often. Once, he told me that if no bond was forged through mating, and you weren’t his one, he would keep you still, because he loved you. But Nari…” Her face twists, grim. “You did what you did, and you shamed him before the bond was forged. It changed everything.”

It takes a moment for it to click.

It’s been so long, more than decade, since I read about evates in the scripture halls. I took a passing interest, even if it was one I forgot later in my life, but because mates are found among the litalves, I wanted to learn the differences.

We haven’t forged the bond, and so our lives and souls are not connected. I could die now, and he would go on living.

The loss would torment him forever, but he would survive. And my soul would wait for his in the afterlife, so the legend goes, and only in his death would we unite.

It’s the loophole… A loophole that lets dark males kill their evates. If the bond isn’t forged, if there is no mating, then the dokkalf himself can cut her down with his sword.

“If he fights his desires for me…” I push from the shelves to shift onto my folded legs, closer to her. “If he doesn’t fuck me, he can kill me.”

And Eamon’s bargain with Daxeel is the only thing stopping him from actually killing me here and now at Comlar.

If that chill of anxiety had me in its grip before, then now I’ve turned to ice—ice with a stir of sick deep inside of it.

My flesh prickles against the icy crawl of nerves slinking over me.

I swallow back the sickly sensation and utter the only word I can manage, “Fuck.”

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