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No recognition. No pull. Not even the echo of what had just lit me up from the inside.
Or she didn’t remember. Or it was already lost.
Her.
It felt like I’d been shot through with a bolt of lightning, freezing me from within.
My silence was all the answer she needed.
Sera pulled her arm out of my grip, putting space between us like she needed it to breathe. Lucian was already at her side, steering her away without saying a word.
I felt Ashar-who had been quiet all morning-stir.
The bond.
My brain scrambled. I’d never felt anything like this. Never heard that frequency, that tone. Never smelled that exact scent-warm vanilla and sandalwood, the edge of something wild, yet fragile.
She didn’t look back as they left the room through a second doorway.
And then it hit me-what this strange, overwhelming sensation was.
But it was one thing to see the numbers; it was another to have a firsthand experience of just how far behind Celeste was in her training.
Celeste approached slowly, her voice careful. “Kie, what were you doing in Sera’s class?”
“Oww!” Celeste’s indignant yell floated out into the corridor. I fought the urge to roll my eyes and pushed away from the wall.
I stood there, heart pounding, chest hollow, the echo of something precious fading fast.
Whatever I’d felt… she hadn’t.
And I stopped cold.
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She gasped, sharp and startled, as if waking from a dream.
So I wrapped my arms around Celeste, pulling her into my chest.
My pulse stumbled.
I ran my hand through my hair, feeling disheveled. “I don’t know what I felt, Celeste, I…” Something singed my blood. Like a voice. A whisper. A command.
But I didn’t.
Ashar snarled and lunged, recognition blazing through him like wildfire. He knew that call. He knew her.
Gone.
She flinched.
Kneeling across from Lucian Reed, their hands clasped, her face flushed, her lips parted like she was caught mid-breath. Her eyes were closed. Her expression was softer than I’d ever seen it-unguarded, glowing with something deep and primal. A sheen of sweat clung to her brow, trickled down the back of her neck.
Ashar whined low, disoriented.
Like whatever force had tethered us had retreated the moment she came back to herself. Eventually, I stepped away. Told her I needed air. The truth was, I couldn’t take the weight of her gaze anymore. I was a distraction she didn’t need right now.
“I-“I could barely form the words, could barely understand their magnitude. “I felt something. Ashar did-a call. I don’t understand it, but…” I exhaled heavily. “It was intense.”
In the center of the room, a meditation circle. The soft haze of incense curled through shafts of golden light. And at the center of it—
The second I stepped out of the room, the pressure in my chest shifted. Like the air changed density.
Her footwork lagged, her form slipped, and her trainer winced more than once when
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Celeste nearly missed her mark.
Snapped. Cut clean.
I felt it before I understood it: the low hum in the room, the frayed threads of something destined being stitched back together.
“Mine.”
It wasn’t just instinct. It wasn’t routine alertness or the casual awareness of another wolf in the vicinity. This was primal. Visceral. Intimate.
Celeste looked up at me, eyes glistening. “What you felt wasn’t Sera. M
was my
wolf. I’ve felt her growing stronger since I’ve been training. Maybe that’s what you
sensed.”
I didn’t understand it. But he did.
Celeste’s face shifted, wounded pride curling into something sharper. She looked away, voice tightening.
She looked at me-but there was nothing in her eyes.
The plan was to keep a respectful distance, show support, maybe give her some pointers if she asked.
“That’s not possible,” she snapped. “Werewolves without wolves don’t have mates. There’s no way Sera’s your mate.”
Ashar let out a low, pained growl inside me. A sound of protest. Of mourning.
I was about to turn and head back to Celeste’s training room when I froze in my tracks.
I’d agreed to accompany her to her training session at OTS that morning when she’d asked. Her gaze held that familiar plea, the one that said, ‘Prove you still care.’
I couldn’t say anything.
And… familiar?
She stepped closer, her voice quiet but sure. “You and I are fated, Kieran. We’ve always
known that. I’ve never doubted it-not even after what happened.”
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I was supposed to be watching Celeste train.
She frowned, confusion giving way to disbelief. “And that led you here? You thought Sera might be your mate?”
Then why did it lead me to-
I stopped in front of a closed door I hadn’t meant to find. My hand went to the handle, already burning with tension I didn’t understand.
A sudden, fierce tug beneath my ribs. An awakening.
I stared at her, guilt winding through me like barbed wire.
I paused in the hallway, rolling my shoulders.
The pull grew stronger. Ashar surged, growling low in my chest: “Go.”
I’d found something-and lost it in the same breath.
Something inside me twisted. The connection-whatever it had been-was gone. wolf I’d felt rising to meet mine had vanished like smoke. As if it had never existed.
The
It wasn’t a direction-it was a feeling. A scent, barely there. A heat blooming under my skin, electric. Foreign and familiar all at once.
That caught me off guard.
I kept my distance. I didn’t want to overstep with her trainer’s instructions. But the longer I stayed, the more distracted she became-tripping over drills, snapping at her trainer, stealing glances at me like I was the one throwing her off balance.
I stumbled forward a step, desperate to feel it again. To confirm it hadn’t just been in my head. That the sudden… hollowness inside me had once been filled with something bright
and burning and potent.
Just-gone.
She trembled slightly.
I turned to find her standing in the doorway, eyes flicking between me, Sera, and Lucian. Hurt was already blooming on her face, even though she didn’t know what she was
<
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seeing.
And I held her tighter. Even as Ashar growled low beneath my skin-restless.
Unconvinced.
That, and her appalling statistics that Lucian had shown me, were the reason I was once again at OTS headquarters.
Sera.
I barely heard him. My focus was on Sera-now standing too, her expression shuttered. Not when she looked at me like that. Not when she’d just cracked herse
I stamped down the urge to seek her out, to see her. Nothing good would come out of that. Not after the way we’d left things.
“My wolf’s been… off,” she said finally. “For the last decade. I haven’t told anyone, not even you. I didn’t want it to affect how people saw me. How you saw me.”
She continued, softer now. “After what happened that… night, my wolf never fully recovered. The trauma of seeing you two together-it changed something. She stopped responding like she used to. Some days, I can barely feel her at all.”
What is that? I thought in confusion.
And I…
And everything changed.
I was barely able to restrain myself from tearing into the room with all the force simmering in my body.
And in the space of a single breath, the feeling disappeared.
But Ashar… He knew. His voice was pure certainty.
Mating call. O
We hadn’t even made it halfway through warm-ups before I realized she wasn’t focused.
Her eyes weren’t on the course. They were on me.
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I turned, following the magnetic pull like I’d been hooked on an invisible thread and reeled
forward.
Time stopped.
My heart seized.
I wondered what she was doing-whatever it was, she was probably performing levels higher than Celeste.
Lucian moved before I could reach her. He rose to his feet, placing himself squarely between us. Calm. Controlled. Possessive.
“Kieran?” Celeste’s voice was like ice water down my spine, dampening the last embers of the fire I’d felt.
KIERAN’S POV
Ashar howled-not with rage, but with longing. With recognition.
I stepped closer anyway, hand reaching out of its own accord. It wrapped around her arm. “Sera-”
The door behind me slammed open, jolting me.
He made me surge toward her, certain-of what I couldn’t name, only feel: this was it. Her. The one.
I wandered the corridor outside the training halls, heading nowhere in particular. I knew Sera was somewhere in this building and that knowledge was a curse.
I remembered Lucian’s words, urging me to focus on Celeste and her training. But I didn’t even know where to start with her. How could I help her if she couldn’t even concentrate with me in the same room?
Ashar went from curious to feral in a heartbeat. I could feel him straining against my mind, pushing against the cage of my body, demanding to move faster, get closer.
“This is a sacred space, Alpha Blackthorne,” he said evenly.
Then her eyes flew open.
