Jade Fern Grove chafa

She spoke—and he found suddenly he couldn’t look at her. Had he been such a coward before? He didn’t think so. But the sound of her voice after months of not knowing—it was enough to make him want to go to his knees.

And he could not do that. She couldn’t see him break. Not anymore. The line between them had been drawn clearly upon his face—the scar across his eye given to her when she begged him to let her go.

And he thought he had. It had been almost six moons, now. To let her back in to his life… It would destroy him. He knew it. He could feel this, with every shift of the wind that brushed against his fur, stirring her scent over him, reminding him.

Germanicus.

He couldn’t hold back the sneer—Swiftcurrent Creek had cut ties with the wolves of the valleys and thus he held no knowledge of what had happened to the man. Apparently, though, he had children who had brought Silvertongue down.

He could not keep the disdain that dripped from him then—that she had wanted to die. “I assume this was after you made me leave you in a desert to die, then?”

Was this why she called him, now? To tell him she almost died after asking him to actually let her die?

She hadn’t needn’t gone after Germanicus. He would have done it for her. He would have tried to bring the entire world to its knees for her.

Her eyes might have sought his own—her chin may have trembled—but his searched the sky—to look at her would only relive that devastation.