Sleep never came. I lay there all night staring at the ceiling, thoughts I wanted to silence shouted in my mind, my body still vibrating in response to the bound we’d sealed. Lucian’s bite left behind a feeling, neither itch nor pain but a sensation that refused to fade, a brand not only on my skin but on something deeper I didn’t want to look at. My wolf had stopped the fighting, settled, both an embrace and a horror, and no matter how many times I shrieked in my head that this was still the nightmare I had to wake from, the truth remained. I wasn’t waking up. This was my reality now.
When morning finally came I hadn’t even moved from where I lay on the bed, the fire in the hearth already long dead and cold, leaving the room chilling even more than it had before. My body was worn, my min
