Chapter 139

Harper’s POV

I didn’t know what time it was when my eyes finally peeked open. From what I could see, the sun was still shining through the shades on the windows.

I was surrounded by warmth and security. And oddly enough, I felt deeply at peace. I glanced down at myself to find a large arm draped across my middle. Lucas’s scent filled my senses and eased my sudden distress.

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself wrapped in his arms with his face buried close to where my shoulder meets my neck. It was a sweet feeling that I would happily wake up to every day.

Between the exhaustion and muddled blur of memories, I wasn’t able to recall much since I lost consciousness during the mission. My eyes grew wide in realization.

Oh my God! The mission!

The last I could truly recall from that day was having gotten severely injured and not being able to go on fighting.

My hand drifted down to my side, where I had been gravely injured, and I was shocked to find no bandage. I didn’t even feel a pinch of pain where the arrow had been wedged.

The second I made a move to sit up, Lucas tightened his hold on me. “Take it easy,” he muttered quietly. “I don’t want you over-exerting yourself and passing out again.”

Again?

A line formed between my brows. My voice sounded hoarse as I spoke. “Was I awake before this?” I asked weakly.

“Only for a short while. You overworked yourself and passed out.”

“Lucas, what happened?” I questioned. “I mean, the last thing I remember...We were at the Domain. I was...I got hit with an arrow.”

Lucas’s hold on me tightened. “Please don’t remind me. I will never forgive myself for letting you get hurt.”

“It was hardly your fault—”

This time, Lucas propped himself up on his arm and stared down at me with a troubled look. A mixture of anger, guilt, and remorse streaked across his features.

“You don’t have any idea what kind of hell I have endured these last twenty-four hours,” he said. “You were dying, Harper. There wasn’t anything that anyone here could do to help you.”

I raised my brows. “So, what did you do? Who did you go to?”

I was almost hesitant to ask, but I needed to know. It felt like there was this massive black hole in my memory, and the only chance I was going to find out what was missing was if I asked Lucas.

“I went back to Ms. Sage.”

My eyes widened in shock. “She’s the one who—”

My words trailed off when Lucas shook his head. My stomach slowly began to churn with an unsteady feeling buzzing at the bottom of my spine.

“Sage reached out to another close friend of hers.”

“Another witch?”

He tilted his head back and forth. “...A sorceress. A kind of power that I have never seen before. Her name is Aurora.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “How exactly did she heal me?”

His look remained wary, as though he was trying to anticipate my reaction. “She performed a power transference between the two of you.”

My heart leapt inside my chest. This time, I pushed his arm off my and demanded to sit up. I turned to face him head-on.

“What kind of power transfer?" I demanded.

“Have you ever heard of ‘Mater Luporum’?” he countered.

I narrowed my eyes while folding my arms over my chest. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “My Latin skills are a bit rusty; however, I’m guessing that means ‘Mother of wolves’.”

The corner of his mouth curved upward. “You’d be correct,” he said. “Look, Harper. What you need to keep in mind is that you were dying. No one was even remotely sure how much time you had left. Aurora explained that the non-wold half of you had been completely depleted due to the injury you sustained. Your wolf, Erie, was the sole entity that was keeping you alive.”

I unconsciously pressed a hand to my chest and felt a wave of gratuitous compassion spread through me.

“Aurora heard of your abilities as a healer and was deeply impressed by your work. She passed on the ‘Mater Luporum’ power to you for mainly two reasons. One, it was the strongest chance she had to heal your internal wounds at the time. And two, she needed to pass the gift on to a new successor.”

I took in another deep breath. “What exactly is this power?”

“...You now possess the ability to control every wolf soul in your general vicinity,” he answered evenly.

I practically stumbled off the bed in sheer panic. My knees buckled beneath me, and I readied myself to hit the floor, but Lucas was there with steady hands. He held me firmly by my waist, refusing to let me fall.

“Harper,” he hissed. “Please, you need to calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down?! How the hell am I supposed to calm down?! I don’t want this kind of power, Lucas.”

He gave me a soft look that begged me to understand. “I...We didn’t have a choice, sweetheart. Your very life was on the line, and it was hard enough witnessing your body trying to reject the power.”

I pressed a hand to my head. “Is this why I could hear your voice in the back of my mind?”

It was one of the short moments that I could recall from earlier. That foreign feeling of their being another presence in the back of my head was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

Lucas rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Your body was rejecting the power Aurora was trying to pass over to you. And...I performed a blood ritual to help support the process.”

My mouth hung open. I was vaguely aware of blood rituals, mainly because they were known to be so dangerous and volatile that I never practiced any myself.

But what exactly did a blood ritual entail as far as consequences?

I suddenly felt Lucas’s demeanor shift as his eyes raked over me. A small smile touched the edges of his lips. “You look a little different now, you know?”

“I do?” I turned toward the large wall mirror and gasped.

He was right. My hair felt thicker, and there were highlights in it that weren’t there before. Not to mention that my skin appeared utterly flawless.

I heard Lucas clear his throat behind me. “A little while ago, Mason told me that there’s new information regarding the mission,” he said.

I spun around and eagerly prompted him for more information. “Tell me what happened. Did everyone else make it out okay? Were you able to bring down whoever was behind the operation? What about the captured wolf souls?”

Lucas snagged me by my shoulders and captured my lips to keep me from going on any further.

“I’m going to catch you up on everything,” he promised.

Over the next half an hour, Lucas filled me in on what had transpired during the mission, along with what we failed to accomplish. I was somehow able to feel the irritation and heavy weight of failure that Lucas visually portrayed.

“In any case, I need to meet with Mason and have him catch me up on the new info.”

“Alright, let’s go,” I said.

Lucas gave me a pointed look that told me I wasn’t going to like his next response.