44. Lumi
Chapter 44
Lumi
T heir lips touch, and it’s seared into my brain forever. I’ll never stop seeing them kiss. Not when I close my eyes. Not when I sleep. I’ll never be able to look at Rowena again without seeing her kiss Ambrose.
Mine—he’s fucking mine! My entire body screams for me to claim him loudly and viciously so that she, nor anyone else, ever dares to touch him again. Ambrose is my mate. If I didn’t believe it before, I believe it now. This coiled feeling of intense possession confirms it.
But I don’t scream or shout.
I don’t say any of the words to let out the pain bleeding from my damaged heart.
I don’t pull Rowena away from him.
I don’t attack either of them for what they did.
My reaction is blank and laser-focused on why I’m here.
I know why he kissed Rowena. He’s trying to deny his feelings for me, to try and prove to the gods that he doesn’t love me. He did it to save me, to buy us a few more minutes of time to break the curse before his curse ends me.
Ambrose’s back is to me, but he feels my presence. I’m thankful he doesn’t turn to look at me, because I don’t want to see the expression on his face. Whatever is there will devastate me. I’m strong, but not strong enough to face that. So I build up my shields in my head, blocking him out so that he can’t speak to me or accidentally send me any of the emotions he’s feeling.
But Rowena’s misty eyes don’t stray from mine.
“Lumi…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—” she says barely above a whisper.
“Don’t,” I should say more. I should tell her not to apologize. I understand why it had to be done. But I can’t say any of those words. If I start, I’ll break. I’ll probably end up killing her and then regretting it after.
She opens her mouth to say more, but I turn to the office door.
“I need to speak with the seer.” I don’t wait for them to respond. I don’t want an apology or an explanation. I just want to forget what I saw, because I’ll die if I think about it too long.
I force my legs to walk through the door, turning my attention to the woman inside. I stutter when I see her. She isn’t what I expected at all. She’s my age for one, and two, there are no ridiculous flowing white robes in sight.
The red-haired woman smirks at me from the chair she sits in behind Ambrose’s desk. “Not what you were expecting?”
I swallow. “Not exactly.”
“You are exactly what I was expecting.” Her words sound as if that’s a bad thing. Apparently, she sees me as nothing more than a weak human who struggles to shift and isn’t strong enough to break the curse.
I grind my teeth together, my anger palpably adjusting the air from cold to warm. But I take a seat across from her, knowing I don’t have the strength to stand for much longer. My head is still light-headed, and my body feels like a light breeze could knock me over.
Her lips curl up. “That wasn’t meant to be disrespectful. As a seer, I’ve seen you coming for years. It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”
“Oh,” I almost say sorry, but then, after what just happened, I’m not in the mood to apologize to anyone anytime soon.
“My name is Thalia; I belong to the Starlight coven.”
“I’m Lumi—”
“I know exactly who you are.” Her eyes beam into mine as if to say she knows what pack I belong to or used to belong to. She knows I’m from the Wintermoon pack.
I pause, hoping she doesn’t call me out in a house full of eavesdropping shifters.
“I’ve spelled this room. No one can hear our conversation.”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. Can she read my thoughts ? Whether she spelled the room or not, I get the impression that I shouldn’t trust her implicitly.
“I assume you’re here to ask what prophecy I told Ambrose?”
“You don’t know why I’m here?”
She rakes her teeth over her bottom lip. “I don’t see everything, only what the prophecies say.”
I take a deep breath, smelling Ambrose’s scent as I do. The rage returns as his familiar scent infiltrates the shields I’ve put up. I love him, and he kissed her. He kissed another woman like I was nothing. He—
I hold my breath, pushing the pain down into my gut, knowing that it will brew there until I explode later. But not right now.
“No,” I know he’ll tell me what she told him. It would be a waste of time to ask her what prophecy she told him.
“How do the prophecies work? Who can see them?”
Her green eyes widen at my questions. “Those with the gift of a seer are the only ones who can see a prophecy. The seers are the most powerful witches in each coven. But the curse has prevented any one witch from seeing an entire prophecy. We only get small parts now. Parts that can be easily misconstrued and lead us to inaccurate conclusions.” She frowns as if it pains her.
“So if I saw something in a dream, what does that mean?”
Her eyes snap to me. “No wolf shifters have the gift. Anything you saw was just a dream, not a prophecy.”
I sigh, knowing she’s telling the truth. I have no special gift. There is nothing special about me that helps me see the future or have any additional knowledge about how to break the curse.
“Don’t you want to know if you’re the one that’s destined to break the curse?”
Do I want to know? No, because it terrifies me if I’m the only one who can break it. I’d much rather know that many could break it. The pressure is too great.
She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “A snow wolf is destined to be the key to breaking the curse.”
I suck in a breath, knowing that a snow wolf is me. My name means snow. But then, in my heart, I’ve always known I was the one—the one everyone has been waiting for.
“But you should know, you aren’t the first the prophecy has said would break the curse. You’re just the current destined one.”
“What happened to others?” I ask.
“They died trying to break the curse.”