Chapter 10 - Nicholas
The last person I was expecting to find outside was Dominic, especially since my blood is boiling because of his sister. I don’t want to face him right now, and that’s why I didn’t call him over.
But since Sean and Emily are here, too, I deduce that Delilah must have called the others after hearing about the hex bag and Gwen’s vision.
“Yo, Nick, what’s—” Dominic begins, finding me in the front yard and stopping when he notices my rigid demeanor that must be written on my face. He frowns at me, glances at Sean and Emily as she says she’s heading inside, and returns his skeptical eyes to me.
Before he can say anything, I hold my hand up dismissively. “Don’t ask, Dom. I’m not in the mood.”
Dominic purses his lips, and Sean takes it as his cue to give us some privacy and follow Emily into the house. With my blood still boiling, I can barely meet my best friend’s eyes and growl when he places a hand on my shoulder.
Dominic sighs frustratedly, shaking his head when he hangs it.
“I won’t know what’s going on unless you tell me,” he says, and I chuckle bitterly.
“You must know enough already. That’s why you’re here.”
Dominic narrows his eyes at me. “I wanna hear it from you.”
“Why don’t you go ask your sister?” I sneer, shaking my head. “She’s the one who wants to put herself in danger when I just married her to keep her out of danger!”
“Is that really why you married her?” Dominic asks skeptically, and I scoff.
“Why else would I marry her?”
“Maybe because you’re fated mates,” he says matter-of-factly, and my heart skips a beat, my jaw hanging slightly.
So, he knows.
How was it going to be a secret when the witches knew? Nothing can be a secret anymore.
Gulping hard, Dominic clocks my reaction and chuckles nervously. “When were you going to tell me? When did you discover it? Is that why you married her? I get it, though.”
The exhale I let out borders on relief, only because it sounds like Dominic doesn’t know about what happened last summer. But still, I feel queasy about everything going on, my stomach lurching with a sense of dread I can’t quite pinpoint.
Even my head feels fuzzy, and I can’t quite think straight. The dull ache in my shoulder is a lingering reminder that I don’t want Donna experimenting with powers she didn’t even know existed until a few minutes ago.
She could just slice me with her claws and get it over and done with, but Donna seems determined to do exactly what I don’t want her to. That’s the part that irritates me, and I have a feeling she’s doing it on purpose to get back at me.
“Did you know she’s a witch?” I ask Dominic, to which he shakes his head slowly.
“No idea until Delilah called this morning, panicking, telling me about Gwen’s vision.”
I nod slowly, but hardly thinking or processing what Dominic said, my ears buzzing with vibrations that shouldn’t be there. Dominic’s brows knit tighter when I don’t respond. “Nick, talk to me, man. What’s going on with you?”
I rake both hands through my hair, the tension in my shoulders tightening like metal cables. “What’s going on?” I grit out, “Is your sister refusing to listen. She wants to play hero with powers she doesn’t even understand.”
“Maybe you should let her,” Dominic says carefully. “Delilah knows what she’s doing, and if it helps—”
“I’m not letting her near me with magic!” I snap before he can finish. My voice comes out sharper, darker than I intended, and Dominic takes a step back, his eyes narrowing.
“Nick,” he says softly, brows furrowed, “you’re shaking.”
I glance down at my hands and notice he’s right. My fingers are trembling, the veins beneath my skin pulsing dark, almost black. I curl my hands into fists to hide them, but the motion sends another wave of pain up my arm and into my skull.
“Shit,” I mutter, pressing the heel of my palm against my temple. “It’s just stress.”
Dominic doesn’t buy it. “Stress doesn’t make your eyes flicker like that.”
“What?”
“Your eyes, man,” he says, staring at me. “They just turned…black.”
Dominic’s observation hits me like a punch, causing me to take a step back and shake my head as the world starts to distort around me. The edges of the trees blur, the sunlight splintering like shards of glass. My breathing turns shallow. And then…
A flood of voices whispers in my head, and it’s not my inner wolf. These voices crawl into my skull like tendrils of smoke. Twisting, overlapping, until it’s impossible to distinguish from my own thoughts.
“You can’t fight it.”
“She’s defying you.”
“Take what’s yours.”
I grip my head, snarling under my breath, but the voices keep multiplying, clawing behind my eyes, urging me toward violence.
“Nick!” Dominic shouts, his tone alarmed now. “What’s happening?”
“Get back!” I growl, but the words come out guttural, inhuman. My wolf surges forward, desperate to protect, to destroy—everything at once. The bite on my shoulder burns, searing through my veins like fire.
Hunter bursts out of the house, eyes widening as he sees me. “Delilah said he’s reacting to the dark magic! We need to restrain him before—”
Before what?
I don’t hear the rest of what Hunter says.
Something snaps inside me, and the ground tilts, my vision blurs, and all I can see are threats everywhere, moving shapes I can’t recognize. My wolf lunges before I can stop it, only my claws distending, a feral growl ripping from my chest.
Dominic dodges my first swipe. Barely. Hunter grabs my arm from behind, but I twist free, slamming my elbow into his ribs with unnatural strength. The world narrows into sound and fury, heartbeats—especially my own—thrumming in my eardrums as I become rabid.
Somewhere in the chaos, I hear Delilah shouting a spell, but it only makes the voices louder.
Kill. Tear. Destroy.
The shadows pulse around me, forming shapes, Tobias’s face emerging in the mist, smirking, whispering into my ear.
“She’ll destroy you, Nicholas.”
“Shut up!” I roar, slamming my fists against my temples as my wolf bursts entirely through the seams. Pain explodes behind my eyes, and I stagger back, choking on a growl that’s more agony than rage.
And then, through the madness, I hear her voice.
“Nick….”
It cuts through everything. The noise, the pain, the fury.
My knees buckle as the world dims, my breathing slowing just enough for me to stumble backward, away from Dominic and Hunter. I don’t know how far I run—maybe a mile, maybe more—but the trees blur into motion until I collapse near the creek that cuts through the far edge of my property.
I land on my knees beside a rock, but it’s no ordinary rock.
Our rock.
The one place I’ve been avoiding this past year. It’s the same place Donna and I used to sit last summer, when everything was simple, and we stargazed at night. When she’d talk about her dreams, and I’d pretend I wasn’t already falling for her.
I lean back against it now, whimpering in wolf form as I lower my muzzle to the rock, the voices finally dulling into silence. My head throbs, but I cling to the memory—her laughter, her hand brushing mine, the scent of her hair when the breeze blew by.
That’s what keeps me anchored.
That, and the memory of the day I let her go.
Closing my eyes, I lay my furry form on the smooth rock, my mind whisked away to a moment in time I wish I could go back to and change.
But some things can’t be changed, like this rock that’s cold beneath the soft cushions of my wolf’s paws.
It wasn’t always cold like this. Summer hasn’t fully bled out of the town yet, but the stone syphons heat from me anyway, like it remembers everything I’ve tried to forget, and it’s forcing me to remember.
I press my forehead against its rough surface, breathing through my nose as my wolf paces restlessly beneath my skin.
This place used to feel like comfort; it used to be a place of peace. Now, it feels like a reckoning, a reminder of my crimes and the place I’m forced to face the demons of my past.
The voices inside my head have gone quiet for a moment, retreating like predators that know better than to strike when I’m still standing.
But the darkness hasn’t left me. It coils low in my gut, heavy and patient, like it’s learned the heartbeat of my regret and decided to wait for the perfect moment to pounce on me.
I’m not sure if the voices in my head are on my side or if they’re against me, but all I know is that I’m forced to recount the things my heart aches for.
I can still see her here.
Not just as a memory replaying itself in my head, but as a presence that never really left.
Donna used to sit on this rock with her legs tucked beneath her, chin tilted up toward the stars as if she could already see beyond this place.
She talked about the future like it was something waiting for her, not something she had to claw her way toward.
The city. Her studies. A life bigger than this valley.
And I was woven into that future, even if she didn’t say it out loud. Not until that day in the service closet…
I swallow hard, my wolf whimpering as moisture pools behind my furry eyelids.
I told myself I was protecting her back then, but that’s the lie I wrapped around my cowardice, and polished it until it almost sounded noble.
I told myself I was choosing her future over my wants, her freedom over my instincts.
That if I let her really believe in us, then I’d be the one stealing something from her.
But the truth sits uglier in my chest now.
I was afraid.
Afraid of claiming her and failing her. Afraid of becoming the alpha of Crescent Moon and turning into my father in all the ways that matter. Afraid that if I reached for something good, something pure, the darkness in me would rot it—rot her from the inside out.
So I let her go in the ugliest, cruelest way I could have.
I feel my claws scrape faintly against the stone as my paws curl into fists. The wounded, suppressed bond hums painfully in response, like it remembers the moment I shattered it better than I do.
“She deserved better,” my inner wolf murmurs to no one, its voice hoarse inside my head. This time, it’s not the demons speaking to me. It’s my inner wolf, who was hurt when I hurt Donna.
But even now, the words I speak internally sound redundant, because what Donna deserved was the truth. Not the hollow cruelty of pretending she didn’t know her own heart, like I was the sickest man on earth, gaslighting her into believing that what we had meant nothing.
I’m disgusted with myself, and the darkness stirs again, pleased.
It feeds on this part of me—the part that knows I broke something sacred and called it mercy. It whispers that I did the right thing, that love is weakness, that mates are liabilities. I bare my teeth in a silent snarl.
“No,” I growl, pressing my forehead harder into the stone. “You’re wrong!”
The rock hums faintly beneath my touch, as if it’s alive, as if something ancient responding to the tension vibrating through my bones.
It’s like it remembers. Or maybe, I’m just remembering and chastising myself all over again, like a hell of my own conjuring.
And memory, I’m learning, is far crueler than I thought.
It’s no wonder she hates me. I hate myself, too. If this rock could open up and swallow me whole, I wish it could.
Because despite everything, despite the darkness, the corruption clawing at my veins, the chaos waiting for us tonight, this is still where my heart comes to bleed.
Still, where her absence hurts the most.
Still, where I know, with terrifying clarity, that letting her go was the single greatest mistake of my life.
And when I finally lift my head, breath shuddering out of me, I don’t miss the irony of it when I see the rock beneath me. The rock didn’t just inspire the memory. It inspired the truth.
I can’t let the past swallow me whole, or it’ll destroy everything.
I blink hard, dragging myself back to the present, realizing I must have been here for longer than I thought I was, wallowing in my sorrows. The sun has dipped lower, painting the forest in soft gold that only feels mildly comforting. My body aches, but the darkness in my veins has quieted.
The anger has subsided, too—still present, but not controlling me—and my claws have since retracted.
A shadow moves in front of me, and I close my eyes again and hold my breath, but then her voice follows, real this time, not from memory—but my breath remains stuck in my throat.
“Nick…?”
My eyes snap open, and I find Donna standing a few feet away, framed by the setting sun, her hair glowing like copper fire.
For a second, I swear I’m still dreaming. She’s ethereal, like an angel who came to save me from myself, to deliver me from the anguish and regret that still haunts me as if it were yesterday when I rejected her.
“Donna,” I breathe, my throat dry.
She crouches beside me, her expression softer than I’ve seen these past few days, almost confirming that she’s not actually real, but a figment of my imagination.
“Delilah sent me to find you. You scared them back there.”
I let out a rough laugh, rubbing a hand over my face as I sit upright. “Scared myself too,” I admit nervously, my airways now filled with the sweet scent of lavender she exudes, and I know she’s real.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.” I push off the rock slowly, wincing when my shoulder protests. She steadies me, her hand small and warm against my arm. That single touch quiets the remnants of the darkness still clinging to my chest.
“You need to come back,” she says gently. “We’re doing the ritual tonight.”
I look at her, trying to read the calm on her face. “How are you okay with any of this?” I ask, my voice rougher than intended as my brows knit. “You just learned that you’re a witch.”
She hesitates, eyes flicking away. “I don’t have a choice. I’m doing this for Dom.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
Of course. Her brother. Not me.
I nod slowly, swallowing down the ache in my throat. “Right,” I murmur. “You’re doing it for him.”
Donna exhales shakily and starts to turn away, but I catch her wrist. The contact burns in the best and worst way. It’s warm, grounding, and painfully human.
“For what it’s worth,” I say quietly. “I wish things were different. I wish you didn’t have to do this.”
Her gaze meets mine, her eyes unreadable. “Yeah,” she whispers after a beat. “Me too.”
I stare at Donna as she gently pulls her hand free and starts walking toward the house, her figure dissolving into the glow of the fading sun, realizing that she’s only acting brave.
Deep down, this must be affecting her more than she’s willing to let on, but for her brother, she won’t show weakness.
I know her well enough. It’s why Dom doesn’t even know about last summer.
But for the first time in days, the air feels still. The darkness inside me stirs faintly, but it doesn’t rise.
Because even if she doesn’t love me, even if she’s not doing this for me, her presence keeps me going, keeps the darkness out.
And I’ll hold on to that. Even if it’s just until tonight.