Chapter 52
1075 Words
Cain
The suite was quiet, the usual ease between the three of us replaced by something sharp and tense. Gwen hadn’t come back after storming off from her conversation with Jordan. Cole sat cross-legged on the couch, flipping through a thick, dust-covered book from the library archives. Cash paced like a caged animal, his hands flexing and clenching at his sides.
“She said I gave it to her,” I muttered, scrubbing my hands down my face. “The necklace. But I’ve never seen that thing before in my life.”
Cole didn’t look up. “We need to figure out where it came from and what it’s doing to her.”
Cash stopped pacing and pointed at the coffee table. “I found something earlier. An old pack record—there was a report of talismans made to mimic mate bonds. A kind of magical misdirection. They can confuse the wearer, make them feel bonded to someone who isn’t really theirs.”
Cole finally met my eyes. “It would explain why Gwen’s pull toward us is getting weaker… and why she suddenly feels like we’re the illusion.”
I swallowed hard. “But how? How would she even get one? And why would she think I gave it to her?”
Cash’s jaw tensed. “Unless someone made themselves look like you.”
A chill swept through me. “Glamour.”
Cole nodded slowly. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Someone used glamour to appear as you and slipped her the necklace. And now it’s warping her bond—rewriting it in real time.”
I clenched my fists. “We need to get that thing off her. Fast.”
Cash grabbed another book from the pile and started flipping through it. “They’re dangerous. The longer the wearer has it on, the more their true bond deteriorates. If we don’t do something soon, Gwen might reject us completely.”
Cole’s voice was tight with urgency. “We need to find the witch who made it. And we need to do it now.”
Gwen
I slammed the bedroom door harder than necessary and tossed myself onto the bed. My pulse was still pounding from my argument with Jordan. Her eyes had gone all soft and placating the moment I said it—the moment I admitted I wasn’t sure the triplets were really my mates. And instead of listening, she tried to fix me. Like I was broken.
I gritted my teeth, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe I was broken.
How else could I explain the aching confusion in my chest? The sense of something being wrong every time Cash smiled at me or Cain brushed his fingers down my arm or Cole kissed my cheek. It used to make me feel warm. Grounded.
Now I just felt… hollow.
I rolled onto my side and traced the edge of the necklace with my fingers. It felt cool against my skin, comforting. Familiar. Real.
The triplets were the lie.
Cain admitted he wore a bracelet once to mask his scent. A gift from a witch. So why was it so impossible to believe that they—or someone in their family—had done something to me? What if the mate bond had been manufactured? A way to make me pliable, to secure their place in the Capital City Pack by tying themselves to the Beta’s daughter?
I blinked hard, trying not to cry, and curled tighter into myself.
I just need to rest. Maybe I’d feel clearer afterward. Maybe I’d wake up and this twisting ache would be gone.
I drifted.
Sleep took me under like waves pulling me from shore.
And in the dream, he was there.
Justin stood in the moonlight at the edge of the woods, half-shadowed and beautiful. His face soft, almost apologetic. He looked at me the way no one else had since everything changed—with clarity, with yearning, with a pull I couldn’t explain.
“I never meant for it to be this way,” he whispered.
I took a step toward him, heart fluttering. “Then why?”
He held out his hand. “Because we were never meant to be apart.”
I jerked awake, breath catching in my throat.
The dream clung to me like smoke—familiar and disorienting. My fingers were already reaching for my phone before I could think twice.
I opened my messages. My thumbs hovered over the screen.
Me: I need to talk. Where can we meet?
My chest tightened as the message sent. But I didn’t regret it.
I had to know the truth. And somehow, deep down, I knew he had it.
Justin
My fingers were buried in the soft earth, feeling the pulse of the ley line that ran under this part of the forest. The witch said grounding helped—the power of the land seeping up through me, fortifying what the talisman had begun.
Every day, she said, Gwen would feel more distance from the triplets. More clarity. More truth.
I hadn’t expected the message to come this soon.
But when my phone buzzed in the deep pocket of my coat, I felt it before I saw it—like a wire tightening between us.
I pulled it out, thumb hovering for a second over the screen. I already knew.
Gwen: I need to talk. Where can we meet?
My breath caught. Not because I didn’t expect her to reach out. I had. But still—seeing it. Knowing it.
She was coming back to me.
I closed my eyes, letting the moment wash over me. Her voice from the dream echoed in my mind. That tentative step forward. That question in her eyes. The way her soul still reached for mine beneath all the noise.
The witch had said three more days.
But Gwen was ahead of schedule.
I tapped out the reply slowly, deliberately, my heart thudding with something close to hunger. Not just for her body. But for the bond—the one that had never been severed, only masked.
Me: Tonight. There's a small cabin just outside the Capital border. I’ll wait for you.
I stared at the screen a moment longer, then locked the phone and slid it back into my pocket.
Three days or not, it didn’t matter.
She was coming to me now.
And this time, she wouldn’t walk away.
- Writer
