34. Genevieve

I returned from Jackson’s vigil around dawn. He will be burnt tomorrow but I cannot stay. Watching my parents pyre shattered a piece of my soul, Jackson would be like offering another chunk of me to the ashes.

So I stayed with Bianca and her daughters as long as I could. Beyond the first candles burning themselves, as and even Bianca was prepared to crash into a sobbing, lonely sleep. I hugged her close, as she whispered, “I am a widow Gen, how could a man as strong as him have left me so…”

“We will find the killers, I swear. Both Cillian and Nikolai have vowed there shall be justice.”

Choking back sobs, her words barely audible,“Gen, he was my world, he was everything,” and her daughters arrived to take their broken mother away. When a shifter dies, so does the mate bond. It is not only grief as a human, your wolf mourns too. Some argue you can still feel them tugging at that connection from the afterlife. Others argue it hurts so badly because the bond is completely severed, you are