Chapter 16
942 Words
CASSIE’S POV
The tear that rolled down my cheek surprised me.
I felt it before I even knew it was happening. I felt the warmth of it tracked down my cheek and dropped off my jaw before I realized it. I stared at the back of my hand where I had wiped it away like it had appeared there from somewhere outside of me. Which, in a way, it felt like it had. Because I didn't know why I was crying. There was no clear reason sitting in my chest that I could point to.
There was only this feeling inside me that I couldn’t explain.
It should be joy, right?
That made sense, didn't it? I had found my wolf. After seventeen years of nothing, she was here. She was actually here.
Of course, I was crying. Anyone would cry.
I pressed my hand flat against my chest and felt her there - Amara, curled and warm and present.
This was mine. She was mine. And no one could take that.
I became aware that I wasn’t alone in the car.
I looked up.
Three faces looked back at me - the Leviathan brothers. The three of them watched me with intense expressions.
Something happened to me when I looked at them.
I noticed it before I could stop myself noticing it. I felt this pull - not the ordinary kind of noticing that happens when anyone encounters three extraordinarily handsome people. This was something deeper than that. I felt this magnetic pull to them in my chest.
I didn't understand it. Why did I feel this way? I barely knew them.
“Oh” a voice said.
I went very still.
It came from inside my chest — from the warm place where Amara lived, curled against my ribs. It wasn't words exactly, not the way spoken words are words. It was more like meaning arriving directly, bypassing sound entirely. But it was a voice. It was hers. And it was unmistakably delighted.
They're cute.
I felt heat climb up my neck so fast it was almost painful.
Amara, I thought back, which felt bizarre and natural at the same time. You've been awake for five minutes.
Long enough, she said, and I could feel her amusement like warmth spreading through my ribs, lazy and bright and completely unbothered. Look at them.
I'm not going to—
The tall one especially. A pause. I could feel her practically purring. All three of them, actually. I'm not picky.
You are absolutely not helping right now.
You're blushing.
I am not—
"How are you feeling?"
The question came from the outside world and yanked me back into it with a small internal lurch. Castien — the one with the pale eyes who seemed to be permanently in the process of thinking something through — was the one who had spoken. He was leaning slightly against the car door, arms crossed, watching me with that particular focused attention that made me feel like I was being read very accurately.
I cleared my throat. "I'm — fine. Better." I pressed my hand to my chest briefly. "I found my wolf."
Something moved across all three of their faces simultaneously. Not surprise exactly — something more complicated than that.
"We know," the one called Bastian said. His voice was careful in a way I couldn't quite account for.
"Her name is Amara," I said, and just saying it out loud made something in my chest bloom warm. I smiled without deciding to smile. "Which is — it's my mother's name. Which means she must have known somehow. My mom, I mean. Maybe she sensed it." I felt the smile widen at the thought of it. "She's going to be so happy when I tell her. She always said—"
I stopped.
It happened quickly. One moment I was reaching for the thought — my mother's face, the specific warmth of imagining her reaction — and the next moment the thought sort of... softened at the edges. Like trying to find something in a drawer and finding the drawer wasn't quite where you remembered it being. I knew my mother. I knew her face, her voice, the way she always smelled like the palace's cleaning soap when she came home. But something about where she was right now wasn't sharp. It wasn't there the way it should have been.
What I had instead was an image. Her face, smiling — a real smile, the full one that reached her eyes — and her lips shaping something that looked like goodbye. Peaceful. Like someone who had been set down somewhere safe and was telling me she was alright.
I held onto that.
"She got out," I said, mostly to myself. The certainty of it settled over me like something solid. I didn't know where it came from exactly but I believed it completely. "When the men came — she got out. She's somewhere safe right now." I looked up at the brothers. "That's right, isn't it? She escaped?"
None of them answered immediately.
The silence lasted just a beat too long.
"She's somewhere good," the one called Darren said. His voice was quieter than I had heard it before — the volume turned down, the edges softened. "Somewhere she's not in any pain."
I nodded. That lined up with what I felt. With the image of her face and her goodbye smile. "She's always been stronger than she looks. Everyone at the palace underestimated her." I felt my throat tighten, but warmly — not with loss, just with love. "She's okay. I know she is."
- Writer
