Shadow Kissed (Magic Side: Wolf Bound 4)

Somehow, it didn’t seem like arguing you didn’t tell me your name was going to be a viable defense.

My mind spun like Robin Arzón, and I swallowed hard. “Of course not. That’s, uh, part of the mystique. People who come here and see this stone will want to know who you are, and they’ll go crazy hunting through books and archives searching for your story. The harder you make them work for it, the better they’ll remember you.”

Practically purring, she traced her fingers over the granite slab. “What is in a name, anyway? They will remember who I was. What I did. Let them look.”

I licked my lips. “We had a bargain. I brought you your eternal gravestone, but you still owe me another answer.”

Her eyes flared with unearthly light, and she disappeared. My stomach dropped. Shit, shit, shit.

I spun around, looking for her. “Please, don’t go!” I shouted as I ran toward the woods. “You promised you’d help me! The Dark Wolf God is coming back, and I need your help to stop him! We had a bargain!”

As I stepped into the dark shadows of the trees, she was suddenly there, looming over me. “It’s dangerous to ask boons of the dead, you know.”

All traces of her earlier gratitude had vanished, replaced by the cold menace of her floating, ethereal form. My skin lost its warmth, and I began to recognize the depths of her madness and how dangerous the specter might truly be.

But I stood my ground. “How do I stop the Dark God from returning?”

Her face contorted into an expression somewhere between disgust and pity as she floated backward. “It’s too late. You released him. You can’t stop him from returning now. He’s already got his claws in you. Now, do not call for me again.”

Dread seeped into my soul. “What do you mean? Please! Help me.”

Like a viper, she lashed out and jabbed her finger into my wound. I gasped as her touch sent ice racing through my veins.

“You’re broken, and your defenses are breached,” she hissed. “Can’t you feel him prying you apart from the inside?”

Every muscle in my body knotted. “The Dark Wolf God?”

“I can feel it. He lives in you now. You are doomed to serve his will.”

She slipped away, but I stretched out my hand in pleading. “Wait! I don’t understand. How is he inside of me?”

An ethereal wind buffeted the spirit as if to blow her away, but her head turned back, and she locked her hollow eyes on me. “You’re a broken ship, and he is the sea. He’s spilling through the cracks, and soon, he will consume you. I can sense him here, even now. I’ve lingered too long.”

With that, the ghost vanished into a stream of glowing mist. Terror and despair pulled on me like heavy chains, and I let my outstretched hands drop.

“What’s going on?” Jaxson growled. He wouldn’t have heard her half of the conversation, but he would have certainly sensed my fear.

I instinctively grabbed his hand and started tugging him toward the truck. “We should probably get out of here.”

As we stepped out of the woods, Casey started to blurt something out, but I froze in place, hand raised to silence him and straining to hear. The air was unnaturally quiet, and the only sound I could make out was the drumming of our heartbeats.

As we stood there, a chilly frost began to creep through the wound in my shoulder, and I sucked in a sharp gasp of pain. It was far worse than the ghost’s touch, like a blade of ice slowly pushing toward my heart.

Run! Wolfie whispered in my mind.