30. Asher

ASHER

I t took every ounce of my willpower not to reach out and stop her from walking away, but I held firm. This was for the best, I told myself. All I ever did was hurt her, and I couldn't keep pitting her against my pack and weighing them like I had from the start our relationship.

I'd been so defensive, but over the course of the argument, I realized I wasn't being fair. Focusing on who had told her, pulling attention away from her point, just because I didn't want to hear the lecture. Why did I act like that with her? If I was a better man, a man who could give her the love she deserved, things might have gone differently, more gracefully. Grief didn't justify my treatment of her. I'd wanted to be firm when I ended things between us, not angry.

I was reminded of the way my uncle had spoken about Phaedra when I told him that she and I shared a fated mate bond. He had been courteous to her, able to empathize with the way Connor had rejected her even though she was from the Wilcox pack. I'd was ashamed even then, and I was sure he'd be disappointed in my actions.

Those were the thoughts on my mind as I curled up on the hard floor instead of using the linens she had brought me. When I woke from a thankfully dreamless sleep, it was the dawn of the third week under Connor's rule. As the sun began to push away the darkness from the sky, I felt no sense of hope looking at the brightness of the sky—only emptiness.

My muscles ached with a heaviness that mirrored what I felt in my heart. Every move made exaggerated the dull, throbbing pain. I was healing, but everything hurt so much more than it should have.

I had contact with my wolf again and sensed him sulking within me. I couldn't blame him. He wasn't happy with how things had gone, but I'd done what was needed. It hurt like hell now, but we would get over it in time, wouldn't we?

No guards came to fetch me, so I went to my pack to help them chop wood. Being around them numbed the searing grief a bit.

Taig found me right away, the two of us working as far away from the supervising guards as we could get. We took axes to the thick trunks of the tall firs.

"You don't look great," he said, speaking just loud enough for me to hear. "You didn't try and kill Connor again last night, did you?"

It was a miracle I could muster the energy to snort in response. "No, but Phaedra found out that I tried. She wasn't happy."

"Ah." He stopped chopping to wipe the sweat from his forehead with his thin, sweat-stained shirt. Taig had always kept himself clean shaven, but his beard was already an inch long after weeks of not taming it. It had a tint of red to it in the patches of sunlight filtering through the thick canopy of leaves overhead.

"That isn't unexpected," he said. "I guess that caused an argument."

"Yeah. A big one."

"Well, it's not the end of the world. I'm sure the two of you will patch things up when you see each other again."

I stopped cutting and pushed on the tree so it fell away from us. When I looked at him, he was staring back at me with a raised brow.

"You… didn't break up with her, did you?"

I sighed. Observant as usual. Or maybe I had become predictable. Either way, I didn't have to confirm that he was right; we both knew it.

"How did that happen?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I grumbled.

We moved to opposite sides of the tree and started chopping the branches from the log. Other members of our pack came to help us since this was the most time-consuming part.

"You don't have to say anything," he said. "I can take a wild guess. She told you your actions were dangerous for the mission, then you snapped at her and told her you two were better off apart. Now you're beating yourself up because you came off harsher than you meant to, and you're feeling like shit because you broke up with her."

I stopped working and stared at him. He smirked.

"Either I really am predictable, or you've gained the ability to see my thoughts."

He chuckled. "You're basically wearing the truth on your face, and I've been reading your expressions for years, Asher. Garrett taught me all about observation."

Thinking of Phaedra and my uncle made my bad mood fouler.

"Fair enough," I said. "But you didn't see her last night. She was furious… at least she was in the beginning." Because by the end she'd looked so lonely, so dejected, I nearly took everything back then and there.

"Neither of you are very good at communicating your feelings," he said. "If she came on strong last night, it was probably because she was worried and stressed out over you and the mission. If you snapped at her, it was because you're exhausted and grieving. Your emotions make perfect sense, but you're both too stubborn to admit when you're wrong."

"So, you're psychoanalyzing Phaedra, too?"

Taig rolled his eyes. "Of course. I've got to keep her in mind. She's your mate."

I grimaced. "We're not…" I started, but the rest of the sentence got stuck in my throat, my tongue refusing to shape the words of that denial.

"This sort of thinking was what separated the two of you in the first place."

"Doesn't that show we're not meant to be? We just aren't compatible."

"No, it means you two like denying yourselves the things you want or need out of some misplaced sense of ‘doing the right thing' for each other. Garrett was right when he called you both masochists."

"Wait, what? When did he say that?"

"He and I spent many hours talking about you two."

"I've been so worried about the two of you, but here I find out that you had plenty of time to gossip."

He scoffed. "Don't give me that, Asher. Your relationship drama happens to be the least depressing subject to talk about."

I found myself wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. Garrett loved gossip. His partners had mentioned numerous times that sometimes he only invited them over to hear about the extraneous goings-on of our pack.

"Hey, Ash," Taig said, wiping at the inner corners of his eyes. "You already know what advice he'd give you, right?"

I shook my head, too choked up to think. "Tell me."

"He'd tell you that mistakes are bound to happen in any relationship, but that doesn't mean they can't be learned from or forgiven."

As he spoke, it was like I felt Garrett standing next to me, the heavy weight of his hand on my shoulder to comfort me. That compassionate, thoughtful, occasionally irritating, and always well-meaning man would want better for me. Lowering my head, I let the tears fall.

Between memories of Garrett and half-baked ideas for how to word my apology to Phaedra and how to deal with it if she chose not to accept it, I felt like I was in a daze for the rest of the day.

When I returned to my shed, I allowed myself to use the linens again. I couldn't keep denying myself this comfort and softness. I fell asleep, a dream claiming me.

I was in my wolf form, running through the forest surrounding Dagger pack land, my land. What was I doing? Was I patrolling? Following someone? I had no idea, but I kept running, the familiar sights and scents I had grown up with offering comfort. I stopped at the spot where the forest met the feral lands, unease lifting my hackles, but some invisible force kept me from turning back to the land I knew and loved.

" There's something you need ," a voice whispered. It was feminine, unfamiliar, and a bit cold, but there was no one around me. The voice may as well have come from the sky the way a goddess's might have. " Can't you scent it? "

Scent? I raised my head and took a deep whiff. She was right, but it wasn't quite a smell I was detecting. It was a feeling—no… a compulsion. Something I needed was deep in that forest, and whatever it was, my need to have it was far, far more pressing than any fear I felt about crossing into feral lands.

I gave in to the compulsion and let it push me to cross the border. The difference was stark and immediate. Daylight hardly reached the ground, though the sun was high above. The trees were so densely packed, my shoulder brushed against trunks and branches. Even the air felt different, heavier somehow, than my land.

Howling and shuffling noises echoed from unknown locations. Anxiety pushed me to move faster, to get whatever I needed and leave before anything caught up to me, before the trees closed in around me.

Then I found it, in between two trees that had fallen toward each other, forming an X with their trunks. I knew I had to dig directly below that intersecting point.

I pounced on that spot, my claws digging away heaps and heaps of dirt with abandon. I needed to leave. This wasn't my home, and the forest knew I didn't belong here. I dug faster until my claws scraped across wood. I moved a bit more dirt away and dug my head in so I could close my jaws around a box and lift it free of the soil.

I dropped the box on the ground to see what it was… and it was the very last thing I ever would have expected to find so far away from where it had been made,

The puzzle box my father had given to me.