Chapter 1

Violet’s POV

Olivia left my study after a painfully long and convoluted conversation. I had a message from her the day that I returned asking to come visit. I was surprised she was asking instead of just showing up uninvited.

I took it as a sign of goodwill.

Which is why I only rescheduled for three days later. I doubted her goodwill would last much longer. But I needed those first few days to tend to my territory and for Kincaid to catch me up on everything I had missed before he went on his own little three-day vacation.

My conversation with Olivia had been a rollercoaster. One second she was explaining how tired she was of being denied opportunities because she was a woman and how we needed to band together to fight for gender equality. The next second she would be volleying veiled threats across the room about “accidentally” revealing to the wrong people that I was pregnant unless she was given a good enough reason not to.

But I was fairly confident we had come to an agreement that no one would be able to top, thereby ensuring that she didn’t trade our arrangement in for a better one. I still didn’t prefer relying on trusting her with something so drastically important, but we didn’t have much of a choice.

I had just finished relaying the conclusion of our conversation to Theo through our magical connection when Lily entered the room. My Gamma and best friend who I was hiding so much from. If Theo’s and my time in Henosis taught us anything, it was that it was time to gather allies.

Still, I wanted it to be her choice.

Lily skipped and spun across my study, dropping herself in the chair across my desk that Olivia had just vacated. Lily propped her feet on my desk. She only ever comported herself so casually when Kincaid wasn’t here.

With him in the room, she was my Gamma, expected to follow the lead of my Beta. But when it was just the two of us, she was my best friend, and formalities were forgotten. I grinned at her carefree attitude, sorry that I was likely about to spoil it.

“Tell me, best friend,” I leaned across my desk, “would you rather…”

Lily’s eyes gleamed at the familiar game we often played, coming up with exaggerated situations to choose from.

“…be fully informed about treasonous intent of those you loved so that you could aid them even if doing so threatened your life or remain blissfully unaware, protected by your ignorance should your loved ones’ treasonous attempts go awry?”

Lily cocked her head in a way I knew she had picked up from me. She remained sprawled in her chair, but her easy smile faded, and her eyes searched mine. This was too real of a situation to be an innocent, playful question, and she knew it.

“I would always choose life-threatening situations if they keep me at the sides of those I love, facing life together, no matter what.”

I was relieved and disappointed all at once, glad to gain her as an ally but sad to put her in danger.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

It was all the confirmation she needed to know this truly wasn’t a game. She dragged her feet off my desk and sat upright in her chair. “Without a doubt.”

I told her everything.

From the fake mate bond to my mind-to-mind connection with Theodore to our intent to bring Owen down. She teared up when I shared about the immense family Theo found loving him from afar in Henosis, and joyful tears fell in earnest when I told her I was pregnant. She blanched when she found out I had magic but eased when I assured her I had learned to control it enough to not be found out.

She was sitting in my lap by the time Kincaid and Dahlia entered my study. When Lily saw them, she immediately removed her hand from my stomach that she had been whispering to. The two Betas closed my study door, and I patted Lily’s leg.

“It’s okay, Lily. They both know everything I just told you.”

She looked a little disappointed to be the last to know, but as my Gamma, she understood that my Beta needed to know first.

Kincaid glared at Lily in my lap. Lily huffed in response, giving me a great, big hug and a kiss on the cheek, before she hopped off me, hurrying off to stand just a step behind Kincaid and Dahlia.

“Welcome back to Darkmoon, Dahlia,” I said, and she inclined her head. After she and Kincaid had kept an eye on Midnight and Darkmoon respectively while Theo and I were in Henosis, we had agreed that they deserved a little vacation together upon our return. It was meant to start as soon as this meeting concluded.

“Now that you’re all three up-to-date with the same information, I want to share a new development with you all.”

Here we go, I informed Theo through our connection.

It had been a risk not telling Kincaid, or anyone in Darkmoon, about my hallucinations right away, but my magic felt more stable outside Henosis, possibly because I no longer had the magic in the environment adding to everything. Theo had been displeased to say the least that I didn’t tell Kincaid the second I got home, but I preferred to wait until Dahlia arrived for her vacation with Kincaid so that I could tell them together.

“Between my magic being repressed my entire life until recently, the tampering of my magic via the fake mate bond, and the triggering of my magic through the pregnancy hormones, my magic has become unstable. If left unchecked, the continued or worsened instability will cause my wolf’s spirit to flee my body, effectively killing me.”

I watched as the two Betas and my best friend remained utterly calm.

“The fact that I was recently weakened by Lucas’ rejection makes the situation worse. Only time will fix that factor. Otherwise, practicing my magic to expel the extra reserves from both the life-long repression and the pregnancy hormones will help to restabilize it, as will undoing the fake mate bond.”

Kincaid’s shoulders lowered a fraction as I voiced the solutions.

“Until then, the instability causes hallucinations. The worse the hallucinations get, the more they pull me into them, and the longer I stay in them, the more damage is done to further destabilize my magic. I will need your help,” I looked between Kincaid and Lily, “to recognize when I’m hallucinating and pull me out of it.”

I looked to Dahlia next. “When you go home, please tell my worry-wart of a mate that you witnessed me informing Kincaid and Lily who have agreed to help me in his absence. Right?”

I looked to my Beta and Gamma. They nodded. “Consider it done,” Dahlia replied.

“When will the fake mate bond be undone?” Kincaid asked.

Yeah, this was the part that sucked. “I don’t know because we’re still not sure how to undo it.”

Lily asked a question next. “Will the hormones destabilize your magic for the entire pregnancy?”

“Not on their own, but as long as at least one other thing is destabilizing my magic, like the fake mate bond, it will exacerbate the decline.”

Kincaid ground his teeth. “How long… until the destabilization induces the departure of your wolf spirit?”

I sighed. “We don’t know.”

A long moment of silence passed between the four of us as the direness of the situation settled in. Finally, Kincaid said, “Tell us how to identify your hallucinations and how to pull you out of them.”