Shattered Bonds A Second Chance Mate (by Yui) novel Chapter 215

Chapter 215

Knock.. Knock…

64.)

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A knock like a knuckle that owns the door, and then it opened, and the room filled with a scent that always makes me think of thunderheads and clean linen: Lira.

It’s been a while since I see her, since I decide to go with Francesco from Florence, only ending in different territory with new adventure here.

She looked exactly like herself–severe braid, plain dark dress, eyes that turn soft only when she is about to be unkind to pain.

She didn’t spare anyone a greeting except a nod for Monica and a brief, fond pinch for my toes under the blanket.

“You’ve been eating gifts,” she said, as if I’d been found with a hand in the sugar bowl.

“Only the sugary ones,” I croaked.

She laid cool fingers at my throat, and the hum Monica had named shivered against skin and bone.

Lira’s mouth hardened. “Fen has clever children,” she said. “And cleverer grandchildren.”

Francesco’s hands closed into fists. “Fix her.”

She rolled her eyes in annoyance “Always so polite,” Lira murmured. “Monica, the green jar. No, the ugly one. Audrey, bolt the door. Marlow, if you pace while I work, I’ll sew your feet to the rug.”

If I am not sick, I already laugh at her.

God, I missed her.

She bent over me, and the taste on the air shifted–mint, char, something like rain hitting hot stones. “This will not be graceful,” she warned. “You will want to throw me off the bed. Don’t.” Then she turn her gaze at Francesco “This warned for you too, Alpha, don’t move”

I heard my mate huff and scoffs loudly when I try to nodded “Yes, not even a little?” I breathed.

“Maybe at the end,” she said, and began.

The pain that came was not the wildfire from before; it was a deep wrench, like a hook being unthreaded from a net that had decided it liked the fish.

I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted copper.

Lira’s voice braided old words with newer ones, a rope thrown across a gap. Monica’s palm stayed steady at my shoulder. The hum faltered, then snarled, then weakened again like a storm running out of sky.

“Good girl,” Lira said, which I always hate and always save under my pillow for later.

11:42 Wed, Oct 1

Chapter 215

64

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When she leaned back, sweat beaded fine along her hairline. She wasn’t old, but the work ages the hands first, and hers looked like a woman who has held too many breaking things and insisted they learn a new shape.

“It’s coming out,” she said. “Not all at once. The bit that hid will sulk. You’ll dream of water with teeth for a week. Don’t drink anything you didn’t watch being poured.”

Francesco’s exhale was almost a sound.

He bowed his head over my hand and then kissed Lira’s knuckles like a prince bribing a saint. “Thank you.”

She sniffed. “Don’t thank me yet. You will make me go to the south with you and shout at a swamp. I will have to wear boots.”

Marlow made a pained face. “Swamps shout back.”

“They do,” Lira agreed. “And they hold grudges longer than kings.”

Audrey unbolted the door.

The house breathed in a draft that smelled like bread and steel and the particular kind of relief that lives in kitchens after storms.

“We found a thread,” she said. “Rope–burn hands. Salt–shed smell. A song that tastes like wet.” Her eyes slid to me. “Children safe.”

“Good,” Lira said briskly. “Keep them near ovens. A witch’s pocket stays warm when it is empty.”

Francesco straightened.

The part of him that is map and blade stepped forward, one hand still on me, the other already closing around the day.

“Go,” I said, because it had to be me who said it. “Hunt the hand. Not the cake. Not the children. The hand.”

His eyes met mine–gold, steady, a hearth that remembers being wildfire.

“I will bring it back to you,” he said. “And if it won’t come, I will bring you its name.”

I nodded.

The nausea sighed, sullen and smaller.

Lira tucked something under my tongue that tasted like the underside of a stone and sunshine, somehow both.

“Rest,” she commanded. “Later you may lecture kings.”

He leaned down, pressed his mouth to my brow, and let the kiss say what he could not yet place into language.

Then he was gone–Audrey on one shoulder, Marlow on the other–down into the house that had learned

11:42 Wed, Oct 1

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