Chapter 20 Corin
CORIN
He didn't remember the drive to the well.
One moment he was walking away from Freya's shop, Chloe's pale face burned into his memory. The next he was standing near the clearing, staring at the crumbling stones that had caused all of this.
The image wouldn't leave him. Chloe on the ground, skin white as paper, trembling like something had tried to rip the life right out of her. The way she'd described it: pulling, draining, reaching for something in her blood.
Someone had purposely done this to her. Had broken this seal and let old poison bleed into the land, knowing it would hurt people. Knowing it might kill them. And now that poison was targeting his mate, trying to use her as some kind of conduit for whatever twisted purpose they had in mind.
His bear surged forward with a roar he couldn't contain.
The shift tore through him, faster and more violent than any he'd experienced before.
He didn't ease into it. He exploded. One heartbeat he was human, the next he was an enraged grizzly, claws tearing at the frozen ground as he charged toward the well.
The first swipe of his massive paw sent stones flying. Ancient mortar crumbled like dust. He roared again, the sound echoing through the trees, and brought both paws down on the collapsed wooden cover.
Splinters. Debris. The satisfying crunch of destruction. But it wasn't enough.
He wanted to tear the whole thing apart and dig down to the source of the poison, then rip it out with his teeth. Wanted to find whoever had done this and make them understand what it felt like to have something precious threatened.
He slammed his body against the stone wall, feeling it shift, feeling centuries-old masonry crack beneath his weight. Again. Again. Blood matted the fur on his shoulder where a sharp edge caught him, but he didn't care. The pain was distant, meaningless, drowned out by the red haze of rage.
"Corin!"
The voice cut through his fury with submission to such a command from an alpha of his clan.
Elias.
His cousin stood in the clearing, still in human form, his silver-gray eyes taking in the destruction with grim assessment. He didn't look surprised. Just tired.
"That's enough."
Corin's bear snarled, muscles coiled to strike again.
"I said enough." Elias's voice dropped, taking on the particular resonance that alphas used when they meant business. "You're not going to fix anything by tearing that well apart. All you're doing is destroying evidence."
Evidence.
The word penetrated the haze, bringing with it a flicker of rationality. Corin stood there, massive chest heaving, blood dripping from his shoulder, and tried to remember why he'd come here in the first place.
To find answers. Not to make things worse.
His bear fought the leash, wanting to keep destroying, keep raging, keep doing something other than standing helpless while Chloe suffered. But Corin forced it down, breath by breath, until the red faded from his vision and he could think again and shifted back.
The cold hit him immediately, biting into bare skin, but he barely noticed. He stood in the wreckage of his own making, surrounded by scattered stones and splintered wood, and felt the shame creep in to replace the anger.
Elias shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over. "Put that on before you freeze."
Corin caught it, pulled it around his shoulders. His hands were shaking. "How did you know I was here?"
"I came by your place after we talked this morning. You weren't there, but your truck was gone and I had a feeling." Elias surveyed the damage, his expression unreadable. "Looks like my feeling was right."
"She collapsed." The words came out rough, scraped raw. "Chloe. At Freya's. The soil tried to drain her. I saw her on the ground, barely conscious, and I..."
"Lost control."
"Yeah."
Elias crossed to the ruined well and crouched beside it, studying the destruction with careful eyes.
"You cracked the foundation," he said. "Might have actually done some good, accidentally. I can see the seal better now. Look."
Corin moved closer, still unsteady. Through the rubble, he could see what Elias meant. The gap in the mortar he'd found before was more visible now, the careful line where someone had chipped away at centuries-old binding.
"Still doesn't tell us who," Corin said.
"No. But it confirms what we already knew." Elias stood, brushing dust from his hands. "This was deliberate. Skilled. And whoever did it knew exactly what they were releasing."
"I'm going to find them."
"I know you are." Elias turned to face him. "But right now, you're running on rage. And rage doesn't fix land, Corin. It doesn't fix Chloe either."
He looked away, jaw tight with shame and bitterness.
"She's your mate," Elias said quietly. "I know you haven't told her yet. But she's in danger, and she doesn't understand why. Or why you're acting the way you are, why you keep showing up, why you defended her at the Mercantile."
"I can't just tell her."
"Why not?"
"Because she'll think I'm claiming her. Pressuring her. She's already dealing with accusations from half the town. The last thing she needs is some bear shifter announcing that she belongs to him."
"Is that what you'd be doing? Announcing ownership?"
Corin's hands curled into fists. "No."
"Then what would you be doing?"
Corin stared at the ruined well, at the evidence of his own loss of control, and tried to find an answer that made sense.
"I'd be telling her the truth," he said finally. "That my bear recognized her the moment I touched her skin. That I've been trying to protect her without explaining why. That I..."
"That you love her."
Corin didn't deny it because hearing it out loud made him realize the truth of it all.
"You're trying to solve two problems at once," Elias said. "The land and Chloe. But you're tangling them together in a way that's not helping either. Every time something happens to her, you lose control. Every time you lose control, you make mistakes. And mistakes are what get people hurt."
"So what am I supposed to do? Just let her suffer while I stay calm and rational?"
"No. You're supposed to give her the tools to protect herself.
" Elias stepped closer, his voice dropping.
"Right now, she doesn't know she's your mate.
She doesn't know that whoever's doing this might be targeting her specifically because of you, especially since the well being tampered with is found on your property.
She's fighting blind, Corin. And you're the one keeping her that way. "
The words hit harder than the cold.
"You think whoever's doing this knows about the bond?"
"I think it's possible. Mate bonds are powerful. If someone's working old magic, they might be able to sense it. Might be using it somehow." Elias shrugged. "Or maybe it's coincidence. Either way, she deserves to know."
Corin thought about Chloe's face when he'd left Freya's shop.
The confusion in her eyes. The way she'd watched him go without understanding why he was so angry, why he couldn't stay, why every instinct in his body screamed at him to tear apart whoever had hurt her. She deserved better than his silence.
"What if she doesn't want it?" The question came out small, showing his true fear. "The bond. What if I tell her and she decides it's too much?"
"Then you respect her choice." Elias's voice was gentle now. "But you give her the chance to make it. That's what Vane bears do. We don't hide. We don't manipulate. We put the truth on the table and let our mates decide."
"Kaia chose you."
"Eventually." A ghost of a smile crossed Elias's face. "It wasn't a straight path. But I was honest with her from the beginning, and that made all the difference."
Corin stood in the wreckage of the well, shivering despite Elias's jacket, and felt something shift inside him. The rage was still there, banked but not gone. The fear too. But beneath both, a new clarity was emerging.
He couldn't protect Chloe by keeping her in the dark. Couldn't solve the mystery of the poisoned land while also hiding the truth about what she meant to him. The two problems were connected, and trying to separate them was only making both worse.
"I'll tell her," he said.
Elias nodded. "Soon?"
"Today. Tonight. Before anything else happens."
"Good." Elias clapped a hand on his shoulder, careful to avoid the wound. "Now let's get you cleaned up before you bleed all over my jacket. And then we can figure out what to do about this well."
They walked back through the trees together, leaving the destruction behind. Corin's mind was already racing ahead, trying to find the right words, the right way to explain something that felt too big for language.
She was his mate. He loved her. And whoever was trying to hurt her was going to have to go through him first. But before any of that, he had to tell her the truth.
He just hoped she was ready to hear it.