“How could you? ” I asked, my voice flat and empty. To her credit, Willow didn’t try to deny it. She just stared at the page inside the fairy tale book with a stubborn pout before lifting her chin and meeting my eyes.
“He rejected you,” she said, as if that explained everything. “He was a fool. ”
“So you cursed him? ” The words came out sharper than I intended, cutting through the quiet of the room.
Willow’s mouth twisted. “It was to help you. To make it better. ”
I couldn’t breathe.
My little sister—the same girl I’d read bedtime stories to, the girl who still believed in happy endings—had gone to the magician and wished a curse upon my mate. She’d turned the Alpha of our pack into a white wolf, trapped in his own mind, losing himself day by day. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? ” I screamed, rising to my feet.
My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat. Horror and denial battled inside me. Not Willow. She wouldn’t.
She was kind, loyal, innocent. “You’ll see, it’s going to work out,” she promised, her gaze still bright. And I realized then—she truly believed she’d done something good. “He’s our Alpha.
The pack hasn’t been the same since he turned. Logan hasn’t been the same. He’s losing himself, and it’s affecting everyone, even you. ”
Willow’s eyes flashed gold.
Most shifters’ eyes did when their Alpha was compromised. I was the only one who couldn’t shift, the only one who felt the chaos from the outside. “The curse can be broken,” she said. “And it will.
”
“How? ” I demanded, gripping the hem of my shirt. “Tell me. ”
“I can’t.
If I tell you, it won’t work. ”
“Tell me now, Willow. I command you to tell me. ”
“No!
”
She pushed me hard, and I hit the floor. Before I could get up, she was over me, teeth bared like a beast about to strike. “Stop! ” I screamed.
Logan burst into the room and threw himself between us, growling with a violence I’d never seen in him. Willow refused to back down. She started to shift right there, ripping out of her clothes as fur sprouted and bones realigned—all to fight a wolf five times her size. I couldn’t let it happen.
I jumped between them. “Logan, no! ”
But the wolf in him didn’t know me anymore. His fangs sank into my raised arm, tearing through flesh and scraping bone.
Pain exploded up my shoulder as I screamed. By the time Clark and the others arrived, Logan was gone. He’d launched himself through the window and vanished into the trees. I clutched my bleeding arm, staring after him, my heart breaking in a way I didn’t have words for.
—
“This has gone on long enough,” Clark announced to the gathered pack. I stood at the back, dazed. My arm was wrapped, but the throbbing wouldn’t stop. Neither would the ache where Logan used to be.
“We’ve allowed that rogue wolf to live among us for too long,” Clark continued. “He attacked Willow and harmed Kira. I say we hunt him down and kill him before he hurts anyone else. ”
The pack roared in agreement.
Their eyes were wild, their fangs bared. They were hungry for violence, fueled by every month of their Alpha’s decline. And I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that Logan’s curse had pushed them all to this edge. “Stop!
” Willow pushed through the crowd, small and trembling. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault! ”
Silence fell, sharp and sudden.
“What are you talking about? ” Clark snarled. “The white wolf,” Willow said. “It’s Logan.
It’s been Logan all along. ”
The room erupted. Shouts, gasps, a torrent of questions. I could hardly move, listening to my sister shatter the lie we’d all been living.
Clark grabbed her by the arm. “The magician cursed him? ”
“Yes, but it can be fixed,” Willow stammered. “Please, don’t hurt him.
”
“Once we deal with that curse, you’ll be lucky if you’re allowed anywhere near this pack,” Clark growled. “She was just trying to help,” I said weakly. Clark’s eyes met mine, and for a moment, I thought he’d listen. Then he turned back to the crowd, his voice ringing that I was right—that the girl was only a pawn.
The real enemy was the magician. And if the magician couldn’t break the curse while he was alive, well, then he’d have to die. The pack howled, and I couldn’t stop it. They locked Willow and me inside the pack house.
Only Joy stayed behind with us—the only shifter whose grief had kept her from losing herself. I stood at the window and watched them all surge toward Grimswood, toward the magician’s shop. “They’re going to kill him,” I whispered. “Oh God, they’re going to kill him.
”
Willow grabbed my shoulders. “Listen to me. There’s another way. ”
“What are you talking about?
”
“The curse can be broken from the inside. But Logan has to choose it—of his own free will. If anyone forces him, it won’t work. ”
“Even if I wanted to tell him, he wouldn’t listen.
You saw him. He wasn’t himself. ”
“You’re the only one who can bring him back. ” Willow’s eyes were desperate.
“I made it so his wolf would weaken after so long. But you have to reach him. ”
I stared at my little sister—my only family, the girl who’d cursed my mate, doomed the pack, and who still thought she was helping me. “Alright,” I said.
“Tell me what to do. ”
—
She told me. I didn’t like it. I almost refused.
But there was no other choice. So I ran. The woods were dark, the cold biting at my skin. I wore a red cloak, and it flew behind me like a warning.
I knew the color would catch his attention, spark his rage. I wanted that. I wanted him to find me. I ran until my lungs burned, calling his name into the shadows.
And then I felt him. His eyes on me before I saw him. A shiver twisted down my spine. The white wolf stepped out from between the trees.
He was bigger than I remembered, his fur bristling, his growl low and foreign. And his eyes—
They weren’t blue anymore. They were blood red. Unnatural.
Monstrous. “I’m here,” I said, raising my chin. I bared my neck to him, slow and deliberate. A submission that went against every instinct I had.
He tensed. Growled deeper. “Come and get me,” I said. Then I turned and ran.
I didn’t look back. I could only pray as his paws pounded the earth behind me, moving closer, faster. He’d catch me. He had to.
And when he did, I’d have to hope Willow’s plan worked, because there was nothing else left. He tackled me hard. My face hit the damp ground and pain splintered through my skull. I rolled onto my back, and there he was, pinning me down, fangs bared inches from my face.
The red in his eyes wanted the chase. The violence. The hurt. I closed my eyes and bared my neck again.
*I’m yours. Make me yours. *
His teeth pierced the skin of my throat. Pain and shock shot through me, but I didn’t fight.
I reached up instead, my hands finding the fur of his back. And then it wasn’t fur anymore. It was warm skin, human skin, stretching and shifting beneath my touch. Logan pulled back.
His eyes were still red, still wild, but there was something else there now. Confusion. Fear. “Kira,” he growled, his voice ragged and raw.
“I’m going to bite you back now,” I said. “And then you’re going to be mine, the way I’m yours. ”
“You don’t mean that. You don’t understand what a faded bond is like.
”
“I do. I met your mother. I know the risks. But I’ll have you anyway—if you’ll have me back.
”
He shook his head, pain twisting his face. “You say that because you’re young. Because I’m your Alpha. Because I saved you when you were a child.
”
“I love you,” I said, grabbing his face. “I’ve loved you my whole life. ”
“It’s infatuation, not love. ”
“I do deserve a choice,” I said.
“I’m choosing you. Do you choose me back? ”
For a long moment, he stared at me. Then the red began to fade, replaced by that familiar warm blue, full of love and fear and hope.
He nodded. I smiled, and then I bit him. Hard. Blood filled my mouth as he groaned and pulled me against him, and when he claimed me, I’d never felt more like I belonged anywhere.
—
The magician’s shop was a wreck. Wolves had torn through it, leaving shattered glass and broken shelves. Adrien lay on the ground, and for one terrible moment I thought they’d killed him. But the wolves had frozen.
All of them, mid-attack, as if a spell had broken over their line. One by one, they turned and left. Later, Clark came back to apologize, head hung low in shame. The curse had lifted the moment Logan chose me.
And Willow? “You’re welcome,” she said, beaming, when Logan and I came back to the pack house hand in hand. I didn’t push it. I just disappeared behind our bedroom door with my mate.
When I finally asked her what the magician had taken in payment for her wish, her face crumpled. “My piggy bank,” she wailed. “All my savings. I had almost forty dollars.
I was going to get us tickets to Disneyland. ”
I stared at her, speechless. Of course Logan insisted on replacing it. I argued that she didn’t deserve it after nearly dooming the pack, but he wouldn’t hear it.
And then I went back to the magician’s shop to thank him. Curious, because a piggy bank hardly seemed like the price for such a wish. Adrien shrugged when I asked. “It symbolized her dream of a happy, normal family experience with you,” he said.
“The thing she loved most. ”
His assistant made a sour face from the back, but I believed him. “Thank you,” I said. “Is there anything I can do?
”
“Just make sure none of your pack ever comes back here,” he said. “The last time, they really upset Iris. ”
I glanced at his assistant, who looked away. But as I left, I paused.
“None of them will hurt you or your friend,” I whispered to her. “I’ll make sure of it. ”
She gave me a curt nod. And that was that.
Logan and I were mated. The pack was whole again. Willow slept in her own room without complaint, and Joy, Logan’s mother, finally started drifting toward the windows with something other than grief. Fairy tales, I’d learned, were dangerous.
They’d ruined Kira once. Then Logan. Then all of us. But somewhere in the mess of wishes and curses, I’d found my own happily ever after.
I just had to bite him to get it.
