Forsaken Fate

The Dark Wolf God’s Realm, one week after Samantha’s escape from Dreamspire

Cadean

Soft bands of shadows and moonlight stretched across Samantha’s sleeping form, illuminating her bare skin and golden hair. She’d cast the heavy comforter aside, leaving it twisted and rumpled, as if she were searching for something in her dreams.

With one arm draped above her head and the other folded across her chest, she was agonizingly beautiful. When she’d first arrived in my lands, watching her sleep had been my secret pleasure. Now, it made my heart ache. I couldn’t savor her peaceful beauty without also seeing the woman I’d nearly lost.

She’d been consumed by magic after transforming the Moon’s barrier, and even now, she had no idea how close she’d come to death. It had taken all my power and Mel’s craft to heal her savage burns and wake her from the coma.

My throat tightened at the bitter truth. She’d nearly died protecting my people because I couldn’t. The Moon and the Fates had tied my hands behind my back and left me powerless to defend them or the woman I loved.

And yet, she slept as if there were nothing to fear. As if the Queen of the Fae weren’t circling us like a rabid dog. As if she hadn’t nearly died escaping the fae the week before.

Her chest rose and fell in hypnotic motion, drawing me closer, bidding me to nestle against the soft curves of her body. But I couldn’t rest, not while she was in danger, not until Ayanna’s head was on a spike.

I tore myself away and grabbed the pack I’d prepared, then strode to the balcony. Without daring to look back, I stepped up on the railing and flung myself over the edge and into the night sky.

Shadows burst around me as I took the form of a great horned owl. With keen eyes and quiet wings, it gave me a perspective I didn’t have as a wolf or a man—a chance to see my realm in full and to be reminded of everything that was at stake.

I softly beat my wings as I soared over my kingdom. High above me, the Moon’s barrier glistened, a glass dome dividing my realm from that of the fae.

Not the Moon’s, Samantha’s.

My little wolf had claimed it when she’d taken control.

For now, the shimmering wall prevented the queen’s vines and soldiers from penetrating my lands, but I knew the peace wouldn’t last. Ayanna would strike again soon.

As the night stretched into the darkest hours of the morning, the forested slopes of the red mountains beneath me gave way to a wide plain spotted with dark shapes: the sod-covered homes of Frostfall. Once a peaceful village with smoke rising from the squat stone chimneys, it was deserted now. The werefoxes had moved on to Mistwind Harbor and other havens in my realm, away from the queen’s bloody raids and the agonizing memories they’d left in their wake.

Yet one light remained, flickering at the edge of the forest—one soul who feared neither the queen nor me.

I tipped my wings and circled the abandoned town, descending toward the source of the light. Flying deftly between the trees, I landed in front of a small cabin and transformed back into the shape of a man.

The front door stood ajar, with golden-orange firelight streaming through the gap.

Apparently, Sigrun had been expecting me.

I gently pushed the door open, ducking my head to fit within her tiny abode. The old werefox stirred the embers in her hearth with a long iron prod, then turned to measure me with a predatory gaze. “I thought you would’ve come to me weeks ago, Lord Wolf. But then again, I cannot see the future.”

“I’ve been busy dealing with the Queen of the Fae.”

She returned her iron poker to its rack. “I assume you actually mean that you’ve been busy with Samantha. Frankly, I’m surprised you managed to leave your bedroom. Men are awfully weak when it comes to that kind of thing.”

My neck heated. Samantha was a siren. When she was awake, I couldn’t resist her, and when she slept, I could barely bring myself to leave her side. We’d clung to the sanctuary of each other for as long as we could, but I couldn’t hide from my duty any longer, or the questions that plagued me.

Sigrun’s single eye twinkled as she gestured for me to sit on one of the small stools by the fire. The table beside it had been set with a clay bowl filled with herbs and two mugs of golden mead—one for her and one for me.

I hesitated a fraction of a second, and she revealed a toothy smile. “Afraid I’ll nip?”

My jaw ticked with annoyance. “I’m always wary of those the Fates have touched.”

Sigrun took a long drink from her mug and chuckled. “If you’re this afraid of a little old woman, then it’s no surprise your kingdom is falling apart.”

“You’re no little old woman.”

Her grin widened. “No. I’m not. Now, are you going to sit, or are you going to stand there until Queen Ayanna tears your balls off?”

Sigrun drained her mug as I laid my pack down and took a seat on the ornately carved chair. “I have questions.”

“Questions are free, but answers have a cost. I assume you know the price.”

I pulled two bottles of Selene’s mead from my pack, and Sigrun greedily plucked them from my hands. “Fates, I miss that girl. Your gift is well accepted, but of course, I assume you’re prepared to pay the true cost, Lord Wolf?”

My fists knotted, and the hair on my neck bristled. “I am.”

Sigrun was no werefox. What she was, I was uncertain, but I knew she fed on knowledge like it was venison and on secrets as greedily as she drank her mead.

The true cost was to be seen, to allow Sigrun to strip bare my soul and peer inside. She would see past the thousands of lies and delusions I’d woven around myself and find the sin and shame and doubt that I’d buried. In exchange, she gave answers the Three Fates did not want others to know. The secrets of a god would be a meal beyond all others. I hoped the answers would measure up.

Sigrun uncorked one of the bottles and refilled her mug, a greedy glint of anticipation in her eye. “Let us begin.”

Moving like a viper, she seized the little bowl of herbs from the table and hurled it into the fire. The clay shattered, and the contents sizzled and hissed. Plumes of white mist twisted upward, and the scents of salt, angelica, moss, and birchwood whirled about us. I breathed in the damp air, and fire filled my lungs.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, the shadows of the room changed—no longer leaning away from the fire, but each in the direction of its own choosing. The colors of the house began to run like paint bleeding down canvas.

Sigrun covered the scarred socket of her missing eye with her palm, then slowly pulled her fingers away from her face as if removing an invisible mask. A sapphire light blazed where her missing right eye had been. Her magic ripped through me like wildfire, devouring me from within and tearing truths from my soul. My ribs became iron, each breath a struggle.

“So many secrets and so many lies,” she said in a raspy voice. “What is it you wish to know from me Lord Wolf? Because I know more than I ever imagined I could about you.”

“Who is Samantha Bennet?” I demanded. “Why did the Fates bring her back?”

Sigrun’s eyes dilated, and as the shadows danced around us, her voice flowed in and out like the ocean. “Both shifter and fae, she is a tool of the Fates and a child of two worlds—both the waking world and dreaming. But all this, you already know, Lord Wolf. What is your true question?”

It was the one that haunted me relentlessly—the one I asked every time I looked at her, every time she moved or spoke or breathed. My mouth turned dry, but I forced the words out anyway. “Is Samantha Bennet my mate?”

Sigrun revealed her sharp teeth. “Yes. But you must both accept the bond.”

My ribs felt as if they were caving in against my heart. “Why would the Fates pair a mortal with a god? Why create a bond that can only end with both souls broken?”

“I cannot tell you, only that the Fates brought her back for a purpose.”

The words tore a low growl from my throat. The Fates had been fucking with the world for millennia. They were callous and cruel, and they had no qualms about sacrificing mortals to achieve their aims.

I wouldn’t let Samantha be their pawn.

Shadows of the room swirled around me as my fury rose. “The queen’s oracle claimed she was a coin spinning on edge with the power to free me or bring me to my knees. Are the Fates trying to use Samantha to destroy me? To break my soul through her death?”

Both gods and demigods had been broken by love before.

“Arrogant beast!” Sigrun spat, her sapphire eye blazing with reproach. “Why must all men think the universe revolves around them?”

Frustration simmered under my skin. “I’m worried that the Fates will destroy her to get to me. If for a moment I thought that was true, I’d banish her from my kingdom and bear the grief of not seeing her ever again.”

“How noble.” Sigrun sneered. “Are you truly so self-absorbed? Her fate isn’t about you or your heart, but about what she is to achieve in this world. And yet here you stand, trying to make it about you.”

Heat seared my jaw as my stomach churned. It was not my fate I cared for, but hers.

“Then tell me what her purpose is,” I demanded roughly. “Is it to protect my people? To defeat the queen? To save the fae? Tell me, old woman.”

Sigrun shook her head. “No one knows the true motives of the Fates, not even I.”

I flexed my fist, my impatience seething. “Then can you see what will become of her?”

Sigrun’s fierce expression softened, and her mouth turned down. “Samantha will die. She was returned for one task, and when that task is complete, the thread of her life will unwind.”

A suffocating hollowness settled over me. At last, I whispered, “How can I stop it?”

The old fox shook her head. “Samantha is mortal. You may be a god, but you cannot fight death, Cadean. You cannot stop it.”

“What if she never completes her task?” I asked in desperation. “Would it stop her from dying? Would she…”

Sigrun’s blue eye snapped back to me with an accusatory glare. “And what would you do, greedy wolf? Keep her for yourself? Lock her in your tower to die of old age?”

“If I had to,” I snarled. “To keep her safe from the Fates.”

“You are a fool, Lord Wolf,” Sigrun said pityingly. “If you try to keep Samantha from her purpose, it will break her heart, and you know it. Anyone can see that her purpose is her spark. Without it, she will wither into nothing.”

The landslide of helplessness consumed me. “And if I cannot save her or stop her, then what am I to do?”

She stirred the fire with iron poker, then sat. “I cannot tell you that.”

A wretched silence drifted between us, and finally, I scrubbed a hand across my face. “What would you do, old fox? Because I have no answers.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand to silence her. “I’m not asking Sigrun the mystic—or whatever the hell you are. I know her answer: nothing. I’m asking Sigrun, my friend. The old woman I’ve shared wine and mead and whiskey with, the one I’ve sheltered in my realm for centuries without asking anything in return.”

The glowing blue light faded from her absent eye, and Sigrun gently laid her hand on my arm. “Death comes to all mortals, Cadean. But if I had a mate, I would stand by them against the world. Whatever the cost. Whatever their fate.”