Fated Hearts (Echoes of Darkness Prequel)

20

Logan

T he icy air cracks across my cheeks like a whip, and the flurries of snow blind me as I trek in the middle of a blizzard on the narrow forest path, on my way to try and get some cell service so I can call Kaiden with the phone I keep in case of emergencies at my cabin. Seventy inches of the white powder have fallen from the sky in the last two hours. Since the cabin is so high up in the mountains, the wind is unforgiving, and I can barely see in front of me. If the storm doesn’t let out by tonight, all the roads will be blocked. Even in wolf form, it’s almost impossible to travel in seventy inches of snow.

The trek is made even harder by my wolf demanding I go back to Ava and complete the mating bond. He’s been fighting me tooth and nail since he laid eyes on her wolf for the very first time. It would have been so easy to lose myself in her earlier. Hell, it’s physically painful for me not to touch her, to hold back.

Her curvy, sinful body is perfection, almost as if it was made for me. The scent of her arousal nearly threw me off the deep end. All I wanted to do was kneel before her and eat her pussy like a starved man, then sink into her and claim her as mine for hours on end.

Ava being in heat confuses me. A female wolf shifter goes into heat when she is ready to complete the mating bond, but I know this can’t be true because she’s not my real mate. There’s some kind of spell in the middle of this. She did something to my real fated mate, and after I find out what, I’m going to kill Ava. My wolf growls at me for daring to think like that about his mate and demands that I go back to her again.

“That’s not our real mate,” I seethe at him in my mind for the umpteenth time. Sweat dots my forehead and drips down my spine, my muscles straining with the sheer effort I’m making to get away from Ava. Only the burn of betrayal keeps me placing one step in front of the other.

The moment I brought Ava to my cabin after she passed out in the ravine not far from here, I made the same trek to call Kaiden and tell him everything that happened. But then Ava wasn’t in heat, and even if I struggled with it, the trek was much easier. Now, it seems almost physically impossible to do. But Kaiden, Malik, and Dominic are investigating Ava and the two bodies I had to leave behind in the forest. I have to know what they found out.

After thirty more minutes, I finally get one bar, and my phone pings with a slew of incoming messages. I briefly go through them and see they’re all from Emily. I choose to ignore them until I get a better understanding of the situation. I know she got quite close to Ava in the short period they’ve known each other, and I don’t want to hurt her until we know everything that’s been going on. Finding out about Tony will gut her, and then adding Ava’s betrayal on top of it will surely destroy her. I messaged her last night and told her I’m on Conclave business and that she will need to take care of the pack in my absence.

I dial Kaiden. As soon as he picks up, he puts me on speaker.

“What did you find out?” I ask with impatience.

“She’s clean, man. I was at her apartment earlier, and there’s no residual magic,” Malik responds. “If she ever worked with a witch, they must have met somewhere else.”

“We also found her phone in what was left of her clothes after she shifted in the forest. It’s also clean,” Kaiden intervenes.

“And it’s true, she did have a heart transplant four months ago,” Dominic juts in. “Our hacker managed to find her medical history. She didn’t lie about that.”

“We did find something interesting at her apartment, though, and in one of her emails, a file. She hired a private investigator to look into her heart’s donor. She received her heart from a girl who disappeared mysteriously eight years ago from a small mountain town, Devil’s Creek. Her name was Hope Moore. When I saw the name, it gnawed at me because I knew I’ve heard it before. She was on our list of possible Kabal kidnappings, along with other dark creatures that year. She was a wolf shifter. I’ll send you the file so you can take a look,” Kaiden says, and my phone rattles against my ear with the incoming email.

It takes me some time before I can finally grasp the information Kaiden relayed. Of course, I heard a part of it from Ava. But then I thought she was just spinning another story full of lies to deceive me. Is it possible she was telling the truth? I tell them everything Ava did earlier, my heart pounding so fast it feels like it’s going to claw its way out of my chest.

We’re all quiet as they process my words.

“What if she did turn for the first time last night, triggered by her friend getting mauled to death?” Dominic asks after some time. “You know, like the kids shifting the very first time. You said a strong emotion always causes their first shift.”

“If the Kabal had a hand in this, then it might be true,” Malik says grimly. “When they imprisoned Kaiden and me, we witnessed all kinds of sick experiments on dark creatures. We already know what they’re capable of, and we know of the mysterious dark creatures’ disappearances over the years. Maybe we didn’t stop them like we thought.”

Shit.

Why is everything they’re saying making sense all of a sudden?

Kaiden’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “Also, don’t you think it was too easy for you to find her last night? How could she expertly evade us for months on end, covering her scent and even leaving a dead body at the border of your territory with the constant patrolling, and then get caught so easily? It doesn’t add up.”

I end the call, telling them to let me know if they find anything else, and open the email sent by Kaiden. The moment I see Hope’s photo, a sinking feeling of desperation overtakes me. Her golden hair and vivid blue eyes, like the azure water in the Caribbean. The eyes I’ve been dreaming about for five years.

Hope Moore was my fated mate and now Ava has her heart.

I can’t believe I was so blind and refused to listen to my wolf when it tried to tell me countless times that Ava belongs to us.

If Ava has Hope’s heart, does it mean she is now my fated mate?

It has to. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be in heat right now.

Fuck.

What have I done?