Bound By Moonlight to My Mates (by Sofange Daye) novel Chapter 79

Charlotte

Jake forced me into the shower. He claimed it would relax me, but I think it is because he doesn’t like Theo’s scent clinging to my skin. I did what he asked, and then fell into Damon’s bed, wearing his oversized T–shirt. I let myself drift off to sleep, knowing that there is nothing I can do, not yet.

I wake to the sound of hushed voices and the scent of blood and wolfsbane. I sit up too quickly, and the room spins around me. For a second, I think I’m still reliving Tala’s memories, and I am trapped in the flames. Then I hear the low, ragged breath that could only be Ronan’s. They are back.

Theo steps into the light first, moving like a shadow the way he always does when things are tense. Behind him, Jake and Damon fill the space. Damon is wearing his usual hard–to–read glare, but Jake looks afraid. His eyes are haunted as he looks at me, and I fear the worst.

“Well,” I turn to Theo.

He drags in a breath. “I brought you your mate.”

My chest tightens, and a tear drips down my cheek. He brought me Ronan, but not the box.

Ronan is a mess of bandages and dried blood on the futon, one arm tucked against his ribs, his face slack in sleep. He reeks of wolfsbane, and it did a number on him; the skin at the corners of his mouth is gray, and his breath shallow. But he is here, and he is breathing, and my chest relaxes for the first time in weeks.

I move without thinking and sit on the edge of the mattress. He shifts uncomfortably as the mattress shifts. His lashes tremble against his cheeks, like some corner of his mind knows I am here. He whispers something, no word I can make out, and for a second his lashes flutter.

He’s so beautiful when he sleeps: not the cold, carved king that roamed the pack halls, but someone raw and human and broken down to the bones. My fingers find the line of his jaw before I know what I’m doing, thumb rubbing the coarse stubble there, tracing the scar that runs like an old river through his cheek. It’s filthy, it smells like iron and sweat and wolfsbane, and I want to scrub the whole world clean for him.

“Shh,” I tell him, absurdly maternal. He is my mate, but right now he is a man ripped by poison and politics, and I am afraid in a way that has nothing to do with wolves or pack lines. I am afraid because I remember the taste of the dagger’s steel from Tala’s life, and because Samson holds that box like a god with a secret.

I sit there for a long while, letting the others take up the room around us. Damon sets down a thermos and a paper cup and watches me with a hardness that is almost tenderness. Jake moves like a shadow–freaked wind, checking the windows, listening at the door. Theo is quiet in a way that makes my skin crawl: everything inside him is a simmering volcano threatening to erupt.

When Ronan’s breathing evens, when the shallow husk in his chest deepens just enough that I can loosen my fingers from his jaw, a plan forms in my ribs like a living thing. I don’t think; a small and terrible plan.

Samson has the box. Samson has the dagger. Samson has Ronan’s pack by the throat. Samson has taken our future hostage.

I stand, and the movement feels enormous in the hush. Everyone looks up. Three pairs of eyes land on me at

once.

“What are you doing?” Damon asks, palms flat on the counter. His voice is a low rumble that pretends to be casual and cannot pull off the lie.

“I’m going to see Samson,” I say.

Theo is the first to move. He closes the small distance between us in two strides, and his hand presses to my arm, not to stop me with force, but to test me. I can feel his pulse under his palm: rapid, full of a fear he won’t show on his face.

“Cricket.” His voice breaks like a line of ice. “You can’t. You can’t walk into Blackthorn. Not now. Not…”

“Not now?” I echo, harsher than I mean to be. “Theo, he has the dagger. He’s the one who can end this. If he kills me, if he opens it and the prophecy ends…” My throat tightens and I fight to keep my voice steady, to let the logic, not the terror, drive me. “If he kills me, all of this will end. Maybe someone else is supposed to kill me, not me ending my life myself.”

The room goes very still. Jake’s claws slip from his fingertips, ready to fight an invisible threat. Damon’s jaw does that grinding thing it does when he is angry with me, but is trying to remain calm. Theo’s eyes search mine, and in them I see the memory of every life Tala ever lived.

“You don’t know that,” Theo says, each syllable measured. There is pleading now, and I hate that I hear it. “You think the Moon Goddess’s decree will behave the same every time? You think a box and a dagger are the only keys? I…”

“I know what she told Tala,” I cut in, exhausted by a weight no one but me has to carry. “I felt her hand, I saw the fire. In every life, she died to spare the wolves. The only thing that changes is who picks up the blade.”

My hands shake. I reach for the bedpost to steady myself. “If I walk into Samson’s hall and he chooses to end this by ending me, then at least it will be over. At least one life won’t end in more blood. I am the anchor he’s been waiting for. He has the box; he can make the choice. But I won’t run anymore.”

Damon’s expression crumples. “You don’t get to throw yourself on the altar like this and expect us to watch without ripping their heads from their shoulders.”

Jake’s voice is small. “She’s not the kind to give up. But she’s not an idiot. Charlotte, don’t.”

Theo’s hand tightens on my arm. “Let me go with you,” he says. “We can…”

“No.” I pull my sleeve free gently; I don’t want to be cruel. “You can’t. Samson will use anything, any person, against us. If you go in with me, they’d burn you alive to make me watch. I won’t give them that.”

The room hums with the weight of damnation and devotion. I hear Ronan shift, and in his sleep, he murmurs my name. It breaks something in my chest and steels me at the same time.

“I am not afraid of dying,” I say, and it’s not a lie. I am afraid of many things, but death is not one of them. “I am afraid of being the reason it continues. If my death ends this, if it ends the sickness, then I will go. But don’t mistake it for surrender. I am choosing a different kind of fight.”

Theo’s face collapses. He swallows, and he looks broken. “You don’t have to do it alone,” he whispers. “Let us, let us be there to hold you. To…”

“To make it harder?” I finish for him. I don’t want to be pitied into cowardice. I know them; I know what they would try to do. They would stay my hand with everything they had. They would try to save me. I would be grateful, and then they would be destroyed for it. I will not be the reason they die trying to save me.

A long breath leaves Damon. Jake’s face is a map of grief. Theo’s lips press tightly together as if to hold his

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