Chapter 10 - Emily
The cottage smells like dust, dried herbs, and old memories that never learned how to stay buried. Those memories come crawling back, under my skin, surfacing where I didn’t want them. Now, I’m forced to face them, even while I’m asleep.
The dreams last night were crazy, and I woke up with heavy eyelids parting, staring at the cracked wooden beam above my bed, my chest tight like I forgot how to breathe sometime during the night.
The mattress is thin, familiar in all the wrong ways, and my body aches from curling in on itself like I was trying to disappear while I was asleep.
I can feel its indent from where I’ve hardly moved, frozen in an almost-fetal position as if I were longing for comfort.
I don’t remember deciding to come here; I just remember leaving Sean’s house.
I left as soon as I fled the crime scene of the pack den and went to his house, realizing that I couldn’t be there anymore.
I left before anyone could knock on my door or look at me with those careful expressions; the ones that say they know without ever saying it out loud.
Before they could treat me like something fragile. Or worse, something exposed.
I swallow hard and push myself upright, pressing my palm to the center of my chest as the familiar hum stirs beneath my skin.
There it is.
That low, constant vibration that never fully quiets anymore. Not pain. Not heat. Just awareness. Like something inside me is awake when I want it dormant.
The fated mate bond.
I take a deep breath, feeling moisture gathering in my eyes—unwelcome moisture—and I do my best to stifle the urge to cry.
I wasted enough tears last night, way too many over the years, to let this bring me down now.
But I can’t help but feel so powerless. I guess it was easier to believe that I was to blame for the bond when I thought the lunar binding spell worked.
At least that way, there was a reason for feeling so connected to Sean.
Now, there’s no one to blame.
Except Sean, for existing at all.
I grit my teeth and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cold beneath my feet, grounding in theory, useless in practice. This place was supposed to help. That was the logic, anyway. Distance. Silence. Space to breathe without an audience.
Instead, it feels like I’ve stepped into a version of myself I don’t want to face.
My cottage hasn’t changed, and why should it?
It’s only been a week since I left, but there’s a feeling of emptiness, as if the walls remember my departure and bear a grudge because I left.
Same stone walls, same narrow windows, shelves I built myself, once upon a time, when the only magic I had was whatever I could administer with my hands in the physical sense, back when forces of magic didn’t control me.
But this is also where I lived after everything fell apart. After Sean left. After I let myself believe that what we had mattered.
I force myself into motion, going through the routine of a morning I didn’t plan for.
Kettle on the stove. Mug pulled from the cupboard.
I measure out some dried chamomile carefully, because control lives in small choices now.
It feels monotonous and unusual somehow, while also pulling me back into the familiarity of somewhere safe, somewhere without Sean.
Sitting at the table by the window, I close my eyes, placing my palms flat against the wood, searching for a way to ground myself in the safety that I’d felt in my cottage once.
Breathe in for four counts.
Hold.
Breathe out for six.
I repeat the cycle again and again, hearing the voices of the witches inside my head, echoing with soft voices of reason, gentle nudging with advice. Magic responds to calm. To intention. To balance. That’s what I need to believe in.
Because if I don’t, then I’m giving in to the fact that my magic only responds to the fated mate bond, to Sean.
But nothing happens.
My jaw tightens, frustration curling sharp and hot in my stomach. I breathe deeper this time, forcing my thoughts to still. I imagine my magic pulling inward instead of reaching outward. Folding in on itself. Contained. Obedient.
Then suddenly, the hum beneath my skin sharpens instead, like it’s annoyed with me. My fingers twitch, gold light flickering beneath my skin, faint but unmistakable, before it abruptly dies out like it never existed.
“No…” I whimper defeatedly, but my magic doesn’t listen. It never does, unless he’s close, and I’ve put enough distance between us to ensure that my magic doesn’t work.
I open my eyes abruptly and push away from the table, my heart hammering in my chest. Pacing the small kitchen, rubbing my arms as I can physically shake the sensation loose. The bond pulses harder in the pit of my belly with every step, like it knows I’m fighting it.
That’s what terrifies me. Not the power, but the fact that my body responds whether I want it to or not. I can feel my magic stirring now without even trying, prompting me to look up and gaze out of the window, where I see Sean crossing the road from where he’s just left the library.
It’s no wonder my body is all over the place, and I tap my bare foot on the wooden floor with impatience, waiting with bated breath until he’s down the road, turning the corner, and disappearing toward his house.
I turn to the shelves lining the far wall and start pulling down jars and vials, lining them up with deliberate care. If meditation won’t work, then chemistry will. Potions don’t care about heartbreak. Ratios don’t care about history.
Logic has always been safer than emotion.
Grinding roots, measuring powders, and whispering the incantations I learned over the past week under my breath, I prepare something that might take the edge off.
Numb my emotions enough so that I don’t shed another tear.
The air fills with the sharp, bitter scent of crushed herbs.
When I finish, I lift the vial and drink, then wait at the kitchen table for it to work.
Five minutes later, and nothing has changed from the potion that should have suppressed my emotions after two minutes.
Ten minutes later, and there’s still no quiet, no release.
I laugh once, the sound short and hollow, and set the empty vial down harder than necessary.
Of course it doesn’t work.
Why would it? Everything I try circles back to the same truth: my magic doesn’t respond to what I want. It responds to him. To Sean. To the bond I refuse to acknowledge.
I press my hands to the counter and close my eyes, and memories crash into me without warning, turning my heart into heavy lead.
I remember it as if it were yesterday, a time in our lives that feels like a fever-dream now, in hindsight.
But the image of Sean in his childhood home, kneeling beside his mother’s bed, and the weight of his grief pressing into me like gravity is still fresh, raw.
The way he held me that night when everything was falling apart, like I was the only solid thing left in his world.
My chest pulls tighter when I remember his arms around me.
Then, my heart shatters all over again when another image pops into my mind. The way he looked at me when he rejected me in the woods.
Cold. Distant. Final.
I squeeze my eyes shut, my chest burning.
He didn’t want me. He never did. I was just a crutch he needed when his mother was dying, and when she passed away, he didn’t need that crutch anymore.
He didn’t need a shoulder to cry on. He didn’t need me, and he made it abundantly clear when he rejected me.
That’s the truth I’ve clung to for years, because it’s the only one that makes sense. Because the alternative—that I mattered, that I was something he couldn’t carry—hurts much, much worse.
The fated mate bond doesn’t care what I tell myself.
It hums louder when I think of his name. When I picture his hands on me, or when I remember the way my magic surged the moment he touched me.
Humiliated.
That’s what I was in that meeting. Standing there while everyone watched my power explode because I couldn’t control myself. Because I needed him. Because the truth came to light, and I was exposed for everything I’ve been trying to hide.
That’s why I came back to my cottage. I didn’t come here to be rescued. I came here to remember who I am without him. But I also came here to hide from the embarrassment of yesterday’s meeting.
A knock sounds at the door, and I flinch, my heart leaping into my throat before I force myself to breathe. My eyes shoot open, head snapping in the direction of the front door.
“Emily?” Delilah’s voice floats through the wooden door, sounding hesitant. “It’s me.”
I hesitate, too, my heart beating unsteadily before I find the courage to stand up and cross the room to open the door.
She looks tired. Guilty. Like she’s been rehearsing what she wants to say all night and all morning.
“I heard you were back here,” she says softly. “I wanted to check up on you.”
I step aside, letting her in without a word. Delilah doesn’t comment on the mess of half-finished potions or the tension humming through the air. She just watches me with careful eyes as I sit back down at the table.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly, standing nervously beside the empty chair and wringing her hands in front of her. “About yesterday. I should have handled it differently.”
I stare at the grain in the wood, nodding thoughtfully as I gesture to the empty chair. When Delilah takes a seat, I say, “You told the truth.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “But it wasn’t my truth to tell.”
Silence stretches between us, and I finally look up and meet her hazel-brown eyes. They’re full of remorse and sadness, with a glint of hope that ignites when I offer her a timid smile.
“You did me a favor,” I relent with a sigh. “I didn’t dare to admit it myself, and it’s been eating me up for five years.”