*Tilly POV*Run.Run faster. The only thing I can allow to go through my mind as I rush through the barrage of trees and forest foliage is to run. There is no time to slow down and look back, no time to let my mind wander worrying about my best friend and my mate. My mate. Onyx.My pace slows, and I look over my shoulder, regretting it immediately. I’m alone out here. Completely and utterly alone, and I did it to myself. I rest my hand on the rough bark of a tree, allowing myself a chance to breathe as my emotions win and everything I am trying to run from floods back in. Anna has to be okay. There is no way in hell that girl would ever fall. Not with her skill and determination. She is the ultimate apex predator. Onyx, though I’ve only ever seen him train, has to be a top fighter if he has won the right to train all the warriors for years in a row. My stomach lurches, bile rising as I imagine him injured on the ground. My stupid brain’s active imagination is trying to make me tu
“How did you find me so fast?” I ask Anna and she snorts. “Please, you think you can ever escape me?” She jokes and I sigh. “I’m serious, Anna.”She glances at me, her eyes full of curiosity and worry. “I left the second you left the pack grounds. I was with Onyx when he felt the bond on your side disappear.”“And you just knew which way I was running?” I ask her.“You have a scent, Til. I tracked you.” a frown crinkles her brows. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”I don’t miss her accusatory tone and I scoff, like I don’t know what she is talking about. She rolls her eyes and groans, clearly annoyed. “Onyx is your mate!” she announces, and I feel a soft pang in my chest, an ache in my heart.“Was. Anna, I rejected him.” I say, standing from the ground and realizing how naked I am. I grumble in frustration. Cursing the asshole who forced me to shift and ditch my bag. “Here.” Anna says, choosing to drop the subject, but I know it’s only for now. She tosses me a bag and I catc
*Onyx POV*“You understand you are in charge, right? Everything you decide to do has my full backing and I will bear the consequences of all actions?” I reiterate to Tic for probably the third time. My mind swirls with indecision and anxiety. My hands sweat and my stomach feels queasy, but there is no doubt in my mind that I have to do this. “Alpha, I have it under control. I won’t let you down,” Tic says, trying to hide his eye roll.It’s not that I don’t trust him, because I trust him with my life. I’ve never left my pack in this manner before, hell I leave my pack all the time this time of year for training. But now that we are dispatching everyone back to their original pack, it’s time for us to go back to our own lands and this will be the first time Tic travels back alone. This will be the longest time away from my pack, my duties. And as easy as I want to say this decision is, it’s far from it. Tilly is my mate. My fated Luna, the only person who can truly complete me. Even i
In the past twenty-two hours and seventeen minutes have been long, tiring, and fucking stressful. Every minute I am away from her is another minute a terrible scenario lives in my head. The possibility that she might be gone, taken somewhere I can’t follow, makes my chest ache with a rage so violent I could destroy any pack that stands between us. With my pack in trustworthy hands, I only have one thing to think about. Tilly.And how to convince her to come back with me. Everyone knows she tried to reject me. She didn’t really lower her voice when she uttered the words and mouthy warriors spread news faster than a gossiping, meddling mother. What they don’t know, thank heavens, is her reason, though I’m sure some could guess it if they tried. I have a long journey ahead if I think getting Tilly back will be as simple as saving her.She is the kind of woman who would thank me for helping, then send me on my way. Tilly is stubborn and determined, which is why I have to show to her how
*Tilly POV*Onyx’s eyes burn with promise as he stares at me, practically begging me to feel the mate bond that has been suppressed on my end. There is no denying he is still the most attractive man I have ever laid eyes on. I still feel weak in the knees when I’m around him. His heavy gaze makes it hard to think but that electric buzz. The one that grips you so tight, pinching your gut until you announce to the world that you are mates. That is gone. I refuse to acknowledge the flutter in my stomach or the heat in my cheeks at his declaration of making me his. Goddess, how those words would have made me melt into his hands just days ago. None of it matters anymore. He destroyed what we could have been and I’m a rogue now, even if he changed his mind about Harriet. He made his choice, and I made mine based on it. We both must live with the consequences of his actions. “You’re delusional if you think I was ever yours. I was meant to be yours, but you threw me away. And suddenly you w
“I can’t believe you went rogue and tried to leave me behind.” Anna grumbles, her voice soft and wounded. I wince, hearing the disbelief and pain there. We have always been partners in crime, even when her parents expressed their distaste with her spending all her free time with the pack fuck up. Anna never, not even once, thought about leaving me. “I did it for you.” I try to console her and she rolls her eyes. “Leaving me without my bestie is not doing anyone any favors. I would murder my way to you if I had to, Til.” she scoffs like I don’t grasp the magnitude of our friendship, how deep it runs for us. But I do. Which is why I did what I did.“Anna, you are going to be the next Alpha of our pack.” I remind her. “And I was destined to be the next rogue. There is no world in which I didn’t see you shirking the duties that I know you desperately want to protect me.”“I know the responsibilities on my shoulders well enough to make my own decisions. The last thing I need is you makin
*Onyx POV*Tilly’s body falls limp beneath me. My thumb stroking down her cheek, her body unreactive to my touch as I try to remind myself I needed to do this. I hate that it came to this. Circumstances be damned. She is going to try to kill me in my sleep when she wakes up, so I need to move. Now. I jump into action, gently scooping her up and stowing her away in a bush. She may never speak to me again after she wakes up, but I can’t risk her doing something stupid with that big brain of hers. I didn’t want to use the mushrooms I had found on her, but there would have been no stopping her. Not after that heart wrenching cry Ty let out. Not after the way she nearly escaped me, though I’ll never let her know how close she was to winning that fight. To witness her like that, near feral, over her best friend, broke something in me. I’ve only ever felt like I would die for Tilly. Now I know I would also die in her best friend’s stead if it meant she never had to break like that again.
*Tilly POV*Ty’s chest rises and falls with each shuddering breath. He is in rough shape, far worse than I have ever seen him or anyone before. My hands shake as I wrap my arms around myself, searching for any kind of comfort I can come up with. Onyx would be by my side in a second if I allowed him. But I don’t need his arms to make me feel safe. Not when safety in his arms is still the lie it was when I rejected him. The walls of my life are closing in around me. They have ripped what little security in who I am from me, leaving me bare and bleeding. All I want is to go home, a home where I was never wanted or really welcome. I was allowed to live there, but I had no right. It’s impossible to not feel like a fool when I look in the mirror and think I know what I see. Everyone else saw me for who I was long before I ever knew.A product of my mother’s ruining. A cancer in the family leeching off of them and begging for love and attention when they had none to give. It was asking too