Vanc
hair across my face. Ryker led me along a narrow, winding path that skirted the e
hunting grounds in the territory are down there." His wor
med in my mind. *Get
ile my eyes darted across the treacherous ground, search
alice radiating from him. He began to tell a story about some ancient wolf hero,
led like a spring, my weight shift
oming somber. "You know, Elara, sometimes, for the
tion of a startled beast. In the same motion, his foot "accidentally" dislodged a loo
horeographed to look l
th the awkwardness of my pregnant body, I had no chance. A scream was ripped from my throat
cliff face, finding and locking onto the thick, gnarled root of a stubborn tr
gone. His face was a canvas of triumphant cru
ply lifted his heavy hiking boot and brought
knuckles. A cry of agony escaped my lips, but I
ipping sensation, a brutal severing, as if something vital was being ripped from my ver
y baby. My b
gony that it extinguished every other sensation. The pain in my hand, the f
ers wen
ip fa
I
s face impassive, and opened a mind-link to his Beta. *Missio
of agony through my already broken body, but it slowed my descent. I tumbled from the ledge into the thick, de
, and utterly empty, drifting
oices from the clifftop abo
er. His Beta, Marcus Cain, was with h
, every cell in
n if it didn't, no one survives a night in this part of the forest.
e cold. "Now you can officia
This wasn't just an affair. It wasn't a moment of weakness. It was a calc
hollow space where my heart used to be. It wasn't love, or
hrough the undergrowth. I didn't know where I was
make him, and the woman who
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