Only I Can Help You

Aurora's POV

Kaelen stared at me. "What. Heard the truth and it scares you?"

I set my teeth. "It's nothing to do with you."

"Playing tough." He gave a cold laugh. "The scent-blocker's window is getting shorter, isn't it? Right now you're burning all over and too wet to walk straight. On the day of the trial, one touch of moonlight and you won't even be able to bring your inner wolf out. What do you think you'll hold it off with?"

I ground my teeth and lifted my head to glare at him. "That's my problem. I'll find a way."

"Find a way? Relying on Cedric?" Kaelen's wolf eyes contracted sharply.

"Cedric can't even tell you're in heat — and you think that's really because he can't? All he does is cage you in with that false gentleness of his. What he's actually after is your body."

He raised his other hand, dragged his thumb hard across my lower lip until my mouth came open a little. "Only I can help you."

"I don't need—"

The words weren't finished before Kaelen lifted his head and, without a moment's hesitation, set his teeth into the back of my neck. He did not complete the mark. It stayed exactly where it had been — unfinished. But the resonance of inner wolf came with it, along with that heavy, full scent that was his alone, and nothing about it was gentle.

The instant it reached my nose, the heat low in my belly — the heat that had been near to driving me mad — died down as if by miracle, for one breath. What replaced it was a hunger from the very depths of my soul.

The mate bond was screaming. It wanted him to finish it.

"Answer the call from deep in your soul. You want me." Kaelen said it word by word.

"No…" I turned my head aside, fighting that lethal pull.

"You'd sell your soul for Cedric? I wish I could stand here and watch the heat swallow you whole. Before the trial even comes you'd lose your mind on this path and spread your legs for whatever Alpha's nearest."

Kaelen's voice went grim and cold. "But I can't."

He finished with my nape and then, gripping my jaw, kissed me — hard. I stopped holding anything back, and pulled him into the place I needed him most.

What he poured into me turned to heat and went out through my whole body, into every limb.

The weakness the drug had left behind — the backlash — was washed out of me in an instant, and the grinding emptiness below was filled.

He kissed me until I couldn't breathe, and tears spilled from the corners of my eyes against my will. He looked at me, and the madness and the satisfaction in his eyes nearly overflowed.

I shoved him off and bent double, coughing hard.

"You're insane…" I scrubbed at my mouth with the back of my hand.

"I told you. I'm the one who actually wants to help you, and I'm the only one who can." Kaelen looked down at me from above, tongue at his lip as though savoring the taste of me. "Anything you want, you'll get."

I didn't dare look at his eyes again. That sense of being seen all the way through, of being closed in on step by step, was about to break me.

I turned and stumbled back toward my room.

This time he didn't follow.

Back in my room I bolted the door fast and slid down to the floor, strength gone out of me.

I gripped the scent-blocker, and Rosalind's words were still in my ear. Long-term use causes permanent damage. Loss of the ability to bear children.

Ordinarily I took half a tube. For tomorrow's review by the elders, to be safe, I took double.

The drug slid down my throat into my stomach. There was none of the usual cold settling.

Instead, a dry scorching heat detonated out of my stomach and shot straight up into my skull.

"Ugh!" I clutched my neck and curled up on the floor.

At my nape, the unfinished mate mark that had been hidden under my skin for three years began to burn, with a sharp, prickling itch along with it.

I bit down and dug my nails into my palm, and only when the burning at my nape dulled into a blunt ache did I get up against the edge of the bed.

A knock came from the corridor. Cedric's attendant was outside with a message.

I glanced out the window. It was light out already.

The elders were to meet in the altar colonnade to discuss the final details of the Luna's coronation and of the Moon Trial, and as the candidate I was required to be present and listen.

I couldn't be absent.

The altar colonnade is built halfway up the main peak, held up by twelve great pale-grey stone pillars. It stands in permanent shade; the sun never reaches it.

I walked very slowly. With every step the muscle at the inside of my thigh trembled. The double dose had cut off the scent leaking from my heat for now, but it left my body stretched between extreme sensitivity and collapse.

The colonnade was empty. Moss covered the stone steps.

No elders. And no Cedric.

I leaned on one of the pillars and dragged in breath, cold sweat at my brow.

A wind came through, carrying cedar laced with blood.

My head snapped around.

Kaelen stepped out of the shadow ahead, his gold wolf eyes shockingly bright in the dim of the colonnade.

"You're shaking." He stopped one step away, his gaze traveling down from my face and settling at last on my nape.

I took half a step back and my back met the cold stone. "Where are the elders."

Kaelen spoke, his voice low. "The meeting moved to the main hall half an hour ago. Cedric's busy tallying the offerings for the Moon Trial. He's got no time to come fetch you."

He had lured me here on purpose.

"Did you take an overdose?" Kaelen stepped nearer, closing the distance.

The cedar smell came thick at once.

The mark at my nape jumped and jumped, and a numbness beyond describing came up out of the marrow of my bones along with it.

"Nothing to do with you." I turned my head, meaning to slip past on one side.

Kaelen put out an arm and braced it against the pillar, sealing off the way entirely.

His free hand went into his coat and came out with a roll of yellowed parchment.

"The owner of that shop in the alley by the sea took ten silver coins and gave this up: a she-wolf of Moonshadow Pack came to him for the drug every month for three straight years."

Kaelen looked into my eyes and waved the parchment in front of my face. "Times, doses, distinguishing features — it's all on here. He's in a Dark Moon Pack death cell now."

My pupils contracted.