Chapter 16 Lumi
Lumi
“Done fighting?” I ask Ambrose when he finds me sitting in the small library on the second floor, which gave me a perfect view of their fight.
I have no idea what they said to each other. They spoke mind to mind, and Ambrose kept me entirely locked out of his mind the entire time. It doesn’t matter what was said. It was clear enough what the fight was about and who ended it.
Ambrose stares at me for a moment. He’s wearing only loose shorts, apparently; he wasn’t able to find a shirt before coming to find me.
“Where is everyone?” he asks. But I know what he’s really asking. Where are my guards?
I shrug.
He sighs, taking a seat in the small, high-backed chair next to me. He stares at me, and his gloss over. He opens and closes his mouth several times as if he’s trying to tell me something, and then forgets completely.
“You okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah, I just have a pounding headache.” He gets up and finds Nyx’s liquor. Pouring himself a glass of amber liquid, he sits back down.
“Probably that fight you just had.”
“Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.
“You going to tell me what you two talked about?”
His eyes darken. “You already know.”
I sigh. I guess I do.
I pull my legs up in the small chair, tucking them against my chest.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that we haven’t been attacked yet? That the witches haven’t found us?”
He thinks for a moment. “Not really. I’m sure they know exactly where we are. They have a plan. And even if they capture us, they can’t use us to break the curse until the next full moon. They’ll attack closer to then, and we’ll be ready for them.”
I raise an eyebrow skeptically. I’m not sure I trust his assessment of the situation. For one, I’ll probably be dead if we don’t figure out how to break Ambrose’s curse soon.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. We’re going to figure out how to break my curse,” he says in my mind like a gentle caress.
I sigh. I guess that’s my fault for thinking my thoughts too loudly.
“There you are, you aren’t supposed to run off alone. Or be alone with anyone, Lumi,” Kael says from the doorway.
I don’t respond. I don’t tell him that after what I saw Nyx do, death doesn’t feel terrifying anymore. It feels…easy. An inevitable conclusion that would finally take away my pain. But I keep those thoughts to myself. I don’t let Kael know what I’m thinking.
Ambrose, on the other hand, can read me like an open book. I’m not good at blocking people out of my mind, and he knows exactly what I’m thinking. But he doesn’t call me out on it.
“I’m glad you’re the one who came. Lumi is going to need her best friend here for support,” Ambrose says.
“Support for what?”
“I think I’ve figured out how to give you your wolf back.”
My eyebrows raise. “How?”
“I’m pretty sure your individual curse has to do with you not taking control of your own destiny. Not truly believing you were a wolf shifter. That you deserved to be able to shift. That you’re powerful enough.”
I frown, not liking where this is going.
“I know that I’m the cause of your wolf, but I think it happened because of your curse, not because of a choice I made.”
“So how do I undo it?”
“You believe in yourself. You claim it for yourself. And you become an alpha in your own right.”
I frown. “I don’t want to be an alpha. I don’t—”
“You do. And you know exactly what pack you should be alpha of.” He stares down at my hand where the snowflake marking has taken root.
I cover it abruptly. “No.”
Kael takes a minute to follow our conversation before he catches up. “You want her to become the alpha of the Wintermoon pack?”
Ambrose doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. I know that’s exactly what he means.
“No.”
Kael frowns. “Why not?”
I can’t believe they are suggesting this. For one, it used to be my greatest secret. That I was from Wintermoon—the pack that started the curses, and now they want me to claim it again. Putting an even bigger target on my back.
“No one will care after you break the curse,” Ambrose says in my mind.
I shoot icy snowballs at him in my mind, and he immediately leaves. But there is a deep frown on his face, like he can’t figure out how I did that. I honestly don’t know either.
“It’s always been your destiny to be alpha. Your father was alpha,” Kael says.
“But he wasn’t training me to be his successor. He never thought I’d be good enough. There has never been a female alpha. And once we are mated, what happens then? Two alphas? Would we join our packs? Not that I have any pack members left to lead.”
“You’ll have pack members. I’ll be your pack member,” Kael says.
But the rest are gone. Our family is gone. My father…dead.
If I do this, I’ll know for sure. There will be no going back.
“How do we know it will even work?”
“Because it will. But if it doesn’t, then no harm done. You get the strength of an alpha inside you. That sounds like a win to me,” Ambrose says.
I look from Ambrose to Kael, unsure if I should do this. I feel like leaving Ambrose’s pack is going to do the opposite of helping me to fall in love with him.
“I can help you get your wolf back. You’ll have full control again. I can undo the thing that destroyed us. Make it right. Please, give me a chance. Trust me,” he says.
The way he says it—his voice trembling, just slightly. The way that hint of desperation mirrors my own. It lands deep in my soul.
I need to control my wolf. Not just for my safety—but because without it, I’m incomplete.
I’ve felt it my entire life. The aching, gnawing feeling that I was always missing some essential piece of myself. Like I never quite fit anywhere, no matter how hard I tried.
And now…
He’s offering me a way to get my wolf back. A chance to reclaim the part of myself that I thought he’d control forever.
But I’m terrified. Terrified it won’t work. Terrified it will, and it won’t live up to the expectation that I’ve set around it. That I still won’t feel like a wolf shifter after everything. And worse, that I’ll never make a worthy alpha.
“Okay, I’ll do it.”