Chapter 9 - Cora #2
The town came into view just as the streetlights came to life.
The community was small, close-knit, and, for the most part, predictable.
That was what she’d liked about it when she first arrived—a place where she could blend in, where no one asked too many questions. But tonight, something felt…off.
Cora slowed her pace as she passed the bakery.
Despite the mild evening, a man leaned against a lamppost on the corner with his jacket pulled tight around him.
He wasn’t looking at her directly, but his posture set her teeth on edge.
Across the street, a pair of women stood outside the hardware store sharing a hushed conversation, and their eyes darted toward her building more than once.
She forced herself to keep walking as her fingers tightened around the book. By the time she reached the staircase leading to her apartment, her heart was pounding, and not from the climb.
They were definitely watching her.
Grayson was waiting when she opened the door. He was sitting on the couch with his arms crossed and his jaw set in a way that made her think he’d been stewing for hours.
“You’re late,” he announced.
“Didn’t realize I was on a curfew,” Cora replied, kicking off her boots by the door. “What’s your problem?”
“You were supposed to check in.” He stood, and his broad frame suddenly seemed much closer than it should have been. “Where the hell were you?”
“I was with a friend.” She moved past him, dropping the book onto the table with a thud. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It is my business,” he shot back. “Everything about you is my business until this bond is broken.”
Cora spun to face him as her temper exploded. “Right. Because you think you own me now. Because of this stupid bond that neither of us wanted.”
“I don’t own you, but I’m responsible for you, whether you like it or not. And if you’d stop fighting me for five seconds, maybe you’d see that I’m trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” she demanded, throwing her hands up. “From living my life? From making my own decisions? You won’t even tell me what’s going on. You expect me to trust you, but you won’t give me a single damn reason to.”
His muscles flexed as he struggled to hold back whatever he wanted to say. “You don’t need to know everything.”
“That’s not good enough. If you think I’m going to sit here and let you make decisions for me, you’ve got another thing coming.”
The bond pulsed hard between them with a palpable tug that neither could ignore. Grayson’s wolf stirred in his eyes, but he held it at bay, and his voice dropped to a dangerous calm. “You don’t know what you’re asking for, Cora. If you knew half of what I’ve seen, what I’ve done—”
“Then tell me! Stop treating me like a child. Stop keeping me in the dark. Just tell me the truth.”
The room fell into a heavy silence, broken only by their labored breathing. For a moment, it seemed like he might actually open up, but then he shook his head and retreated a step. “It’s not that simple.”
“It never is with you, is it?”
The frustration raging inside her reached its boiling point, and before she could stop it, her magic surged to the surface. It came alive in a spark of power that shot out like a flash of lightning. Grayson’s eyes widened as the bond reacted, flaring to life between them.
A vision struck her like a tidal wave, vivid and overwhelming.
She saw Grayson, younger but just as intense, with his arm wrapped protectively around a woman with dark hair and a warm smile.
The image shifted, and the warmth was replaced by blood—her blood—spreading across the ground as Grayson knelt beside her, belting out anguished screams.
Cora gasped, and the vision faded as quickly as it had come. Her knees buckled, and she gripped the edge of the table for support. “What… What was that?”
Grayson’s expression was a mask of fury and pain, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “You had no right.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” she insisted. “Who was she?”
He didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder, and his eyes glinted with barely contained emotion.
“Grayson,” she pressed, softer this time. “Who was she?”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, finally, he exhaled, though the sound was more like a growl. “Her name was Emily.”
Her throat tightened, but she managed to ask, “What happened?”
Grayson’s fingers curled into fists at his sides, and for a moment, Cora thought he might refuse to answer. But then he spoke, his voice raw with a pain that seemed to echo through the bond. “She died because of me. Because of a mission I couldn’t walk away from.”
Cora stayed silent, sensing he wasn’t finished.
“I was out of town, tracking a lead on a smuggling ring that had been moving through Bellefleur’s borders,” he continued. “It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out—gather intel, get out, report back. I was gone for three days.”
His shoulders sagged, and his head dipped lower as if the memory was a physical burden pressing down on him. “The bond warned me something was wrong. I… I felt it. That night, in the middle of that goddamned warehouse, I knew she was in danger. I knew it as sure as I knew I was breathing.”
Cora’s chest ached, but she stayed quiet, letting him get it all out.
“I ignored it,” he admitted. “Told myself it was just the stress of the mission. I couldn’t abandon the team or risk blowing the cover we’d spent months building. I thought… I thought I’d get back in time.”
He laughed bitterly. “But I didn’t. When I got back, the house was empty. The bond… It was gone. Ripped away. She was gone.”
“Grayson, I’m so—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Don’t say you’re sorry. It won’t change anything. It won’t bring her back.”
“I wasn’t going to say it would. But you’re blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have stopped.”
“I could have stopped it,” he insisted. “I could have left. Chosen her over the mission. But I didn’t. And because of that, she died. They found her body in the woods a week later.”
Cora flinched at the bluntness of his words, but she didn’t back down. “You can’t undo what happened, Grayson. But carrying that guilt forever? It’s not going to bring her peace—or you.”
He looked away, and his hands flexed and curled as if he were trying to physically rid himself of the tension. “It’s not about peace. It’s about justice. Voss, his network… They’re the same kind of people who took her. If I can stop them if I can keep you safe…”
Cora’s heart twisted at the raw determination in his voice. She stepped closer, brushing his arm. “You don’t have to carry it all by yourself.”
Grayson looked down at her, then, with a sigh, he nodded—just barely. It wasn’t acceptance, not fully, but it was something.
Cora gave his arm a light squeeze and stepped back. She could feel his pain through the bond, a shadow that lingered and only deepened her resolve. Whatever was between them, whatever the bond meant, she couldn’t let him carry that weight alone.
As she watched him retreat to the couch, she couldn’t shake the image of the woman in his arms or the pain etched into his face as he lost her. For the first time, she saw Grayson not as her captor, protector, or reluctant partner but as a man carrying wounds far deeper than her own.
And that terrified her more than anything else.