Justin POVIt was my fault. All of it. I was the one who gave Helen the potion to make her mortal and I was negligent in how to handle her lack of strength. It was like she was mortal, a human again, and I could have killed her if my Lycan came anywhere near breaking loose during that moment with her.I was furious with myself, my Lycan needing to run, to exert every ounce of ferocity out until my mind could clear. I found Randy on the brim of the pack, keeping the warriors company on watch.I shifted at last, panting and exhausted when I doubled over in the grass. Randy shifted as well, mortal and confused, but no where near as furious as me. He looked oddly calm, waiting for the storm to brew with that rogue William.“What’s wrong?”I shook all over, trying to make sense of my horrible mistake tonight. “My mate, Randy. I—she just—I should have—”He looked through me with an eye of distain, I could tell he knew what I was aiming to say. “Should I go check on her?”I nodded, though he

Helen POVI tried to sit up, sore and weary after my last stent with the Huntsman.I block out his torture from my mind, reaching to find my mate but there’s nothing in bed beside me. Instead, Russo stood by the window, watching intently while little Freya sat perched on the edge of the bed before me.“What’s wrong?”Russo turned quick, his eyes cold and dark. “Hey, little Luna. How are you?”“Sore,” I mumbled. “I don’t remember everything. I just know I was back in his dungeon again. I was supposed to be safe from that, Russo. It doesn’t make sense. I had to take that stupid poison to prevent all of that from happening.”“I know but…” he looked to Freya. “She was only trying to help the wounds on your face. Her dust seemed to heal everything, instead, which included the poison. I’m supposed to give you another batch of it as soon as you wake up.”He pulled out the small vial and set it down on the nightstand. I hated the taste of it before and it made me feel so weak and pathetic. Wh

Justin POVI chased her until I felt like my lungs and legs would explode. She had gotten too fast for even the likes of my Lycan, which seemed both impossible and impressive.I wasn’t sure if to be angry and or delighted by my little white wolf mate.But the facts still stood in offense to her being honest of me. If she could shift then that means she never took that poison, so all this time she could have been hiding the truth from me and the Huntsman has still been attacking her, or she stopped taking the poison recently.Either way, I felt like I had been lied to and stabbed in the spine again. Every time I just want to do what a good mate is meant to and it ends up like this. She runs off, defies me, and leaves me in the dust.I couldn’t determine if it’s a death wish or a defiant strike where she has to go against everything I suggested. Either way, I didn’t like it, and I refused to find her beaten and half-dead in a field somewhere because of that damn Huntsman. Again.“What’s

Helen’s POV“I know that werewolves are always two parts to a whole.” I stared intensely at him while I laid out the framework for my question. “We have mates that are two parts of a pair. We have two sides to ourselves: a mortal and a woven one. We are all about dichotomies, but you are insisting that I am a dichotomy that can’t exist.”Justin had stopped responding to me, and I wasn’t entirely sure why he hadn’t stormed off yet, but I was going to continue to press my luck. These things needed to be said. They’d been brewing in me for a very long time. And his insistence that I just surrender everyone to the mercy of the Huntsman while he continued to disbelieve me staunchly had finally pushed me far enough to ask something that I had wondered about but hadn’t found the words for yet.“How do you think I could exist as two beings who are so different?” I asked him.“What do you mean?” he snarled. Justin was clearly near the end of this conversation, so I’d have to make do with what

Justin’s POVI gaped at the audacity of Russo’s question. Then sputtered a response. “Helen hurt me first. I was only trying to help her understand the seriousness of her actions.”Russo nodded. “I think that might be part of the problem. I think she’s upset you’re treating her like a child who needs to be taught or punished rather than a mate who’s supposed to be your partner.”“Partners don’t stab each other with poison knives,” I screamed.Again Russo just nodded calmly and took a step back away from my raging lycan. “Let’s look at this from a different point of view,” he said. “I want you to explain to me how the mate bond works because you’re right. I’m not a lycan. I’m not even a werewolf. I’m not even in a partnership with one of my own kind. So why don’t you tell me in your own words how exactly this is supposed to work?”“I’m the alpha. She’s my Luna. Her job, along with the job of everyone else in the pack, is to follow my orders.”“Without question?” Russo asked.“It wouldn