Updated Dec 21, 2025 • ~8 min read
The dreams started that night.
Not visions of past lives or battles, but something worse: Lyla.
I saw her through the twin bond that should have been severed but still hung by threads. She lay in her bed in the Alpha’s den, skin pale and waxy, dark circles under her eyes. Her wolf was barely present, a faint flicker instead of the bright spark it should be.
Drake sat beside her, holding her hand, looking haunted.
“Please,” dream-Lyla whispered. “Please come back. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, just please—”
I jerked awake, gasping. The bond in my chest ached, but not the mate bond with Kaian. The twin bond. The parasitic connection that had fed Lyla my power for twenty years.
It was dying. And taking her with it.
I pressed my hands to my chest, trying to calm my racing heart. I’d meant what I told Marcus—Lyla made her choice. She could live with the consequences.
So why did I feel sick?
“Lira?” Kaian appeared in my doorway, shirtless and concerned. We’d been courting for three days now, proper and chaste, but the bond still let him feel when I was distressed. “Another nightmare?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I shoved hair from my face. “I felt her. Lyla. She’s dying and I felt it through the twin bond.”
Kaian’s expression shuttered. “The bond should be almost severed by now. The stronger our mate bond grows, the weaker your connection to her becomes.”
“I know. But it’s still there. Still pulling.” I hated how weak my voice sounded. “She’s my twin, Kaian. We shared a womb. We were supposed to share everything.”
“She stole from you.”
“I know.” I did know. Logically, rationally, I knew Lyla had betrayed me in the worst way possible. But the bond didn’t care about logic. It cared about twenty years of shared heartbeats, shared tears, shared moonlight runs through the forest.
Kaian sat on the edge of my bed, careful to keep distance between us. “Do you want to see her?”
“No. Yes. I don’t—” Frustration boiled over. “I want to not care. I want to let her die and feel nothing but relief that she can’t hurt me anymore. Why can’t I do that?”
“Because you’re not cruel.” He reached out slowly, giving me time to pull away, and tucked hair behind my ear. “Lyla may be a thief and a liar, but she’s still your sister. Your twin. Caring about her doesn’t make you weak.”
“It makes me stupid.”
“It makes you good.” His thumb brushed my cheek. “There’s a difference between being kind and being foolish, Lira. You can acknowledge your sister is dying and still refuse to sacrifice yourself to save her.”
Could I? It felt like being ripped in two—the part that wanted revenge and the part that still remembered Lyla braiding my hair and whispering secrets in the dark.
“What would you do?” I asked. “If it was someone you’d loved who betrayed you?”
Kaian was quiet for a long moment. “I’d want them to suffer. I’d want them to feel every bit of pain they caused me.” He met my eyes. “But I’d also lie awake wondering if I could have saved them. If I should have tried, even after everything.”
“So there’s no right answer.”
“No. Just the answer you can live with.” He stood, offering his hand. “Come. Let me show you something.”
I followed him through the fortress to his study, where he pulled a leather journal from a locked drawer. The pages were yellowed with age, covered in handwriting I recognized as his.
“Year forty-seven of searching,” he read. “Found a girl in the Northern Territories who had silver eyes and made my heart race. Spent three months courting her, certain she was my lost mate reborn. She wasn’t.” He flipped pages. “Year ninety-two. Heard rumors of a wolf warrior who fought like a goddess. Traveled six months to find her. Wrong woman.” More pages. “Year one hundred and thirty-five—”
“Kaian.” I touched his arm. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I spent three hundred years searching, and in all that time, I never stopped to ask myself: What if she doesn’t want me when I find her? What if the woman I loved was gone and someone new stood in her place?” He closed the journal. “I was so focused on finding you that I never considered you might not be findable. That the curse might have changed you into someone who wouldn’t choose me.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Your sister is dying because she’s not the person she pretended to be. Without your power, she’s weak. Vulnerable. Everything she feared.” He set the journal aside and took both my hands. “But you, Lira—you’re discovering you were always strong. You just couldn’t see it while she was draining you.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that you get to decide what kind of person you are now. The kind who lets her sister die out of spite? Or the kind who helps her become whole on her own, even after everything?”
I pulled my hands back. “You want me to save her.”
“I want you to not regret your choice. Whatever it is.” His crimson eyes were gentle. “If you want her to die, I’ll support you. If you want to sever the bond and walk away, I’ll support that too. But if you want to help her learn to survive on her own power—even if she doesn’t deserve it—I’ll support that as well.”
Tears pricked my eyes. “Why are you being so understanding? She tried to steal your mate. She’s the reason it took me so long to come back to you.”
“She’s also the reason you’re strong enough to choose me now instead of being chosen by fate.” He cupped my face, thumbs brushing away tears. “The Lira I knew three hundred years ago would have completed our bond the moment we met because that’s what destiny demanded. This Lira makes me wait. Makes me earn it. And I love you more for it.”
The words hung between us—I love you. The first time he’d said it in this lifetime.
“I don’t love you yet,” I whispered. “I’m not sure if I even like you sometimes.”
“I know.” He smiled, soft and devastating. “But you will. When you’re ready. When you choose to.”
God, he was going to ruin me. This patient, understanding vampire who’d waited three hundred years and would wait three hundred more.
“If I help Lyla,” I said slowly, “it won’t be quick. It won’t be easy. I’ll have to go back to pack territory, face Drake and the elders. They might try to keep me there.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“A vampire in wolf territory? They’ll tear you apart.”
His smile turned sharp. “They can try.”
I thought about it—going back, facing my sister, helping her learn to access her own power instead of stealing mine. Every instinct screamed it was a bad idea. That Lyla would betray me again, that the pack would hurt me, that I’d lose everything I’d gained.
But Kaian was right about one thing: I needed to be able to live with my choice.
“I need to think,” I said finally.
“Take all the time you need.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, chaste and reverent. “I’ll be here when you decide. Whether that’s in an hour or a year.”
After he left, I sat in his study surrounded by three hundred years of searching, of near-misses and false hopes. I thought about the warrior I’d been—fierce enough to face armies, brave enough to accept a curse, strong enough to bind herself to a vampire for eternity.
What would she do?
The answer came swift and certain: She’d do the hard thing. The right thing. Even when it cost her everything.
I pulled out paper and wrote two letters.
The first to Marcus: I’ll come to the pack meeting. But I’m bringing Kaian, and I’m setting terms. If Drake or the elders try to keep me, there will be war.
The second to Lyla, though I didn’t know if she was conscious enough to read it: I’m coming. Not because you deserve my help. But because I deserve to be the kind of person who helps anyway. You get one chance to make this right, sister. Don’t waste it.
As I sealed both letters with wax, I felt my wolf stir—stronger now, more present. She approved of this choice, this show of strength through mercy.
And I thought maybe, just maybe, I was finally becoming the woman Kaian had been searching for.
Not because destiny demanded it.
But because I chose to be.
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