.Chapter 12-2
Instead, my body felt… different. Better than it had in years, actually. The wounds weren’t pulsing with pain anymore, and there was an energy coursing through me that I hadn’t felt since before the
curse.
It was as if I’d been renewed, cleansed from the inside out.
I tried to sit up, but pressure on my stomach stopped me. I looked down, and the blood drained from my face as horror took hold of me.
“Simone!” I yelled, my hands hovering uselessly over her still form.
Her head was resting on my bare skin, her eyes closed, her body completely motionless. She’d
touched me, and now she was…
“No, no, no,” I chanted desperately, panic clawing at my chest. “It can’t be. You can’t be dead. I couldn’t have killed you.” My voice broke completely. “Fuck, Simone!”
This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not to her.
The beautiful, brave woman who’d risked her life for peace. Who’d saved my life not once but multiple times. Who made my dead heart feel like it might actually be capable of beating again.
My lycan was strangely calm inside my head, which only confused me more. Why wasn’t he freaking out? Why wasn’t he as devastated as I was?
I didn’t even know why I’d offered to escort her to her pack in the first place. All I knew was that I needed her safe before I went back to investigate what my son had been doing in my absence. I was obsessed with her in ways that terrified me. I wanted to know everything about her. Her favorite foods, her fears, her dreams, the sound she made when she laughed.
I wanted to possess her completely, to keep her close and safe and mine. But I knew I couldn’t. The curse made sure of that.
I was haunted by the effect she had on me, but I couldn’t stay away from her either. Every instinct I had screamed at me to protect her, to keep her close, to make her mine in every way possible.
And now I’d killed her just like I’d killed my mother.
I grabbed her by her clothes and carefully laid her beside me, my hands shaking as I tried to figure out what to do. My vision started to blur as panic took over, my breathing becoming ragged and desperate.
This was my fault. I should have stayed away from her. I should have let her find her own way
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Chapter 12-2
Claim
home instead of indulging my selfish need to be near her. I should have remembered that everything I touched died.
“Calm down, Kane,” my lycan groaned in my head, cutting through my spiral. “Pay attention!”
I forced myself to take a few deep breaths, shaking the images of my dead mother from my head. I had to focus on the woman in front of me, had to see what I hadn’t processed in my panic.
Her skin wasn’t pale and lifeless like my mother’s had been. Her lips were still pink, and her chest was rising and falling with slow, measured breaths. She wasn’t dead, just unconscious..
She was lying against my bare chest, her cheek pressed to my skin, and she was still breathing.
How was that possible?
I wrapped a discarded, bloodied cloth around my hand and gently shook her shoulder. “Simone?”
No response, but I could hear her heartbeat, steady. I looked down at my chest and saw that my wounds were covered with a green mixture of crushed leaves. The yarrow she’d brought back. Lycans usually healed only slightly faster than humans, but right now I seem to be healing at an accelerated rate I’d never experienced before.
The deepest gashes were already closing, new skin forming over what should have taken weeks to heal. My strength was returning faster than it ever had, and I felt more clearheaded than I had in
years.
I reached for my backpack near the cave wall and pulled out some clothes. As I dressed, my mind
raced with questions.
Simone had touched me and didn’t die.
My mother wasn’t the only person my curse had killed over the years. There had been other encounters while I was in human form, animals that had gotten too close, some wolves who’d stumbled across me in the woods. They’d all died within seconds of contact with my bare skin.
A deer I’d tried to help when it was caught in a trap. Dead.
An injured rabbit I’d found during a blizzard. Dead.
Even the mice that sometimes scurried across me while I slept had died instantly.
Everything I touched died. It was the nature of the curse, the witch’s revenge for my rejecting her. But Simone was alive and seemingly unaffected by whatever dark magic had made me toxic to every living thing.
Was she immune? What could possibly protect someone from a curse that powerful?
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< Chapter 12-2
Clairy
I fetched some wat
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didn’t take long to catc…
Al Crashed-My
Check It Out
Secret Husband Aba…
elt stronger, and it སབབས་ H་ས་9y་་ས་ P་སསྱསསས”དང wue vumpletely gone,
replaced by an energy and vitality I’d forgotten I could feel.
When I returned, Simone was still unconscious, so I started a fire and began cooking the meat. I kept glancing at her, checking to make sure she was still breathing, still alive. The relief I felt every time I saw her chest rise and fall was overwhelming.
She’d touched me and lived. For the first time in years, I’d had physical contact with another person without killing them.
I was turning the rabbit over the flames when she finally stirred.
“What happened?” she mumbled, trying to sit up.
I rushed to help her, making sure my cloth-covered hands stayed well away from her skin. “Easy. I think you passed out.”
She blinked at me in confusion, then looked down at my chest where the yarrow paste was still visible. “I should be the one taking care of you. You looked like you were knocking on death’s door.”
“But
you healed me.” I stared at her, trying to understand what had happened. “How did you heal me? What did you do?”
She was quiet for a moment, and I could see her mind working behind those green eyes. There was a secret she was keeping, some truth she was weighing whether to share.
My hands clenched into fists. I needed to know. I had to understand how she’d managed what no one else ever had.
“What are you,” I demanded, my voice harder than I intended, and how were you able to touch me?
”
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