Chapter 16
POV: Riven
I considered dying just to have her.
Just to bury myself inside her once.
One time.
One single fucking time.
I thought about my father screaming while the curse ripped through him from the inside out. I thought about the blood. The agony. The way his body convulsed while my sister cried beside him.
And for half a second—
Half a second—
I still almost chose her.
That was how gone I was.
Then my mind finally caught up to me, and I grabbed her wrist and said no.
And the second I saw the look on her face, I knew she misunderstood.
She thought I was rejecting her.
Thought I did not want her.
The idea was so absurd it almost made me laugh if it had not hurt so badly.
Amara had no idea what it took for me to stop touching her.
No idea that every second near her felt like standing at the edge of a cliff while my wolf begged me to jump.
No idea that I was fighting myself every fucking moment.
So I stayed away that day.
Because I had to.
Because if I saw her again too soon, I was not sure I would survive it.
But then she did not come to breakfast.
Did not come to my office.
Did not appear at lunch.
And by dinner, I could barely focus on anything except the empty chair at the table.
Lyra noticed first.
“I’m worried about her,” she said quietly.
And something ugly twisted inside my chest.
I told myself to let Lyra handle it.
Told myself to stay seated.
Told myself that distance was the only thing protecting both of us.
But the second Lyra stood, I stood too.
I followed her without a word.
And when we entered Amara’s room, every thought in my head vanished.
She was curled on the bed, trembling.
Her skin was flushed deep red from heat and sweat coated her body. Her breathing came in broken little gasps while pain twisted her features hard enough to make my chest ache.
My wolf went feral.
Because she had stayed away.
Because I had made her believe she was unwanted.
Because she was suffering alone instead of coming to me.
I did not think.
I crossed the room and gathered her into my arms instantly.
The second she touched me, she broke apart with relief.
And gods—
That sound.
That soft, wrecked little moan against my throat nearly destroyed me.
I carried her straight to my room because there was no other option anymore. No pretending. No distance. No control left worth a damn.
Then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and whispered that I had made her feel like a piece of shit.
I have never hated myself more than I did in that moment.
Never.
Because hurting her was the one thing I had wanted to avoid from the beginning.
So I kissed her.
I touched her.
I gave her relief the only way I could while still trying to hold the line between desire and complete destruction.
And it was torture.
Actual torture.
Every sound she made. Every tremble of her body. Every time she arched against my mouth and whispered my name—it stripped away another layer of restraint.
When she came on my tongue, shaking and breathless beneath me, I almost lost control completely.
I almost came untouched just from hearing her.
That had never happened to me before.
Not once.
But somehow Amara could reduce me to instinct with a single sound.
After she fell asleep, tangled around me like she belonged there, I lay awake staring at the ceiling while panic hollowed me out from the inside.
Because I was not surviving this.
I was failing.
So after she left the next morning, I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to get control back the only way I knew how.
My own touch felt numb.
Empty.
Wrong.
It did nothing except make me more desperate for her.
I stopped before it got worse because I already knew where that path ended—with me taking Amara against every law carved into my blood.
With me dying for it.
And the terrifying part?
I still was not sure that would stop me.
So I went to Klaus, the healer.
Desperate.
Terrified.
Trying to find some fucking way to survive this before I destroyed both of us.
Later I opened Lyra’s office door without knocking.
She looked up from the papers spread across her desk, and the second she saw my face, her brows pulled together.
“What did you do?”
I closed the door behind me quietly.
For a moment, I just stood there breathing hard, trying to gather whatever was left of my control. Then I crossed the room and dropped into the chair across from her desk, dragging a hand over my face.
“I did what I thought I wouldn’t.”
My voice sounded rough even to my own ears.
Not right.
Not wrong.
Just ruined.
Lyra stared at me for a long second before realization crossed her features.
“You touched her.”
I nodded once.
“And I helped her through it.” My jaw tightened immediately. “I couldn’t watch her suffer.”
Her expression shifted instantly from irritation to concern.
“How far did you go?”
“Far enough to almost lose control.”
The words tasted like blood in my mouth.
And suddenly I was not sitting in Lyra’s office anymore.
I was standing in our old pack house while my father screamed.
Blood everywhere.
Bones snapping under skin.
My sister crying while the curse tore him apart from the inside because he had broken it.
Because he had touched someone who was not his mate.
I swallowed hard.
“I saw our father die, Lyra.”
My sister’s face softened immediately.
“I know.”
“No.” I shook my head sharply. “You saw him too. You were there. You were ten years old and covered in his blood while he screamed in front of us.” My voice broke lower. “You know exactly what happens if I lose control.”
Silence filled the room.
Heavy.
Old.
Painful.
Our father had been lucky. Blessed, even. He had found our mother during his very first moon ball. The curse barely touched his life because fate had handed him salvation immediately.
But me?
I waited fourteen years.
Fourteen moon balls.
Fourteen years of watching unmated wolves find each other while I stood there empty-handed.
At this point, I did not think I had a mate at all.
So I built my entire life around restraint.
Control.
Discipline.
Distance.
I became the kind of man who never let instinct win because instinct would kill me.
And for years, it worked.
It was not easy, but it was manageable.
Until her.
Until Amara walked into my office with those impossible green eyes and destroyed every system I had spent years building.
I leaned forward slowly, resting my elbows on my knees.
“We need something,” I said quietly. “A solution. A loophole. I don’t care what it is anymore.”
Lyra exhaled shakily.
“Riven—”
“No.” I looked up at her. “You don’t understand. I can’t keep touching her and stopping. I can’t keep hearing her beg and trying to remember my own name while my wolf is tearing itself apart inside me.”
I laughed bitterly under my breath.
“She thinks I’m restraining myself because I’m honorable.”
My eyes closed for a second.
“She has no idea I’m restraining myself because I’m terrified.”
Lyra stayed quiet.
Because there was nothing to say.
Nothing helpful existed for this curse.
No cure.
No treatment.
No fucking hope.
She became a doctor because of me. Because of our father. Because we both spent our entire lives praying there would someday be an answer hidden somewhere inside medicine.
But there never was.
“There’s nothing in the records,” she admitted softly. “Nothing that breaks the curse. Nothing that weakens it.”
I stared at the floor.
Then I said the words I hated most.
“I went to Klaus again.”
Lyra blinked.
“You went without me?”
“I needed answers.”
Klaus was the oldest healer in the northern territories. Ancient enough that wolves joked he had probably treated the Moon Goddess herself at some point.
I had gone to him dozens of times over the years.
Every single visit ended the same way.
There is nothing I can do.
But this time was different because this time there was Amara.
This time there was hope.
Or maybe desperation disguised as hope.
“I told him about her late heat,” I said quietly. “I told him how we react to each other.”
My throat tightened.
“I told him maybe…” I laughed once, humorless. “Maybe she could still be my mate somehow.”
The words sounded pathetic out loud.
Like a starving man hallucinating water.
“Because her heat was delayed,” I continued. “Because silver changed her body. Because maybe fate got confused.”
Because maybe I needed one impossible thing to finally be true.
Lyra’s face broke a little at that.
“And what did Klaus say?”
I looked away.
“He said probably not.”
The silence afterward felt suffocating.
“He thinks the silver exposure delayed her heat and sexual instincts, but not the mate bond itself. If she were truly my mate, we would have known already.”
Every word felt like another knife sliding between my ribs.
“He said she’s likely reacting to my alpha pheromones because her heat awakened late and violently.” My jaw clenched harder. “And because I’m reacting to her, my wolf latched onto it.”
Lyra swallowed.
“But there’s more.”
I nodded once.
“Yes.”
Because that was the part destroying me.
“Klaus said continuing this could hurt her.”
My sister froze.
“He thinks if we keep… escalating whatever this is, my wolf could start forming a secondary bond toward her.” My voice dropped lower. “And if that happens, it could interfere with the real mate bond she’s supposed to have someday.”
The words nearly killed me saying them.
Because the idea of another wolf touching her already made me violent.
But hurting her?
Twisting something sacred inside her just because I could not control myself?
Never.
“Klaus said it could tie her instincts to me permanently,” I continued roughly. “That it could confuse her wolf. Damage future bonding. Maybe even leave her unable to fully connect to the mate actually meant for her.”
Lyra covered her mouth.
And suddenly I felt exhausted.
Not physically.
Soul-deep exhausted.
Because for one selfish second, I had wanted to ignore all of it.
Wanted to keep her in my bed.
Wanted to touch her until neither of us remembered anything except pleasure.
But loving someone meant protecting them.
Even from yourself.
Especially from yourself.
So I made the only choice I had left.
I looked her in the eyes while she smiled at me like I was something good—
—and I told her to leave my pack.