Cassandra's POV
We walked back from Wren's in silence for the first several minutes and I let the silence hold because I needed the space of it to understand what I had just heard properly before any of it was put into words between us.
The marking. When the Alpha marks his true mate the bond closes. The fracture heals. The curse lifts. But it must be willing. It must be real.
I turned those words over carefully as we moved along the ridge path with the morning light coming through the trees at angles and the wind moving above us and the whole weight of what I had just heard settling through me in layers. I had known, somewhere beneath the surface of things, that this was where the path was leading.
I had felt it building for weeks, in the mate bond and in the things that passed betwee
