Chapter 558
The night she had told me Andrei had to die.
I stared at the illuminated path. It pitched upward, toward the mountains. I’d have to traverse them to follow it. It would be dangerous, but I knew her light would guide me.
But if I followed it… Would I have no choice but to fulfill my “destiny“? To kill my mate when I was trying to save him?
I hadn’t accepted it back then, five years ago, and I didn’t want to accept it now.
“I heard you the first time,” I said. “And I told you I’m not doing it.”
The wind blew a little harder, making me shiver as pebbles rolled down the slopes above me. But I ignored it and limped back to
my camp.
The fire was completely dead. I rebuilt it with numb fingers and sat close to it for the rest of the night, not sleeping, letting my wolf heal my wounds as the fire slowly warmed me. The mountain lion’s carcass lay several yards away, but I tried not to look at
I didn’t sleep. All night, I thought about the vision I’d had five years ago.
I had thought about it a hundred times before, turned it over and over in my mind until it became smooth like a stone polished by the tide. I had looked at it from every angle and I had never found a way out of the Moon Goddess’s prophecy, but I had also never found a real reason to follow it.
And even now, I still didn’t see one.
There had to be another way. I pulled the heart–shaped ruby out of my pack and studied it. Was this the way to save Andrei and stop the darkness before it spread? Or was this all part of the Moon Goddess’s prophecy, too?
I shuddered at the thought that my sudden and desperate urge to go through with this dangerous journey was purely because of the destiny laid out before me and not of my own free will.
At some point, the sky started to lighten. The cloud cover had moved back in and the moonlight was gone, leaving behind the dull gray color of a cold morning. I broke camp, packed up, and ate the last of the previous day’s food while I studied my map.
The path the Moon Goddess had lit went west–northwest, curving away from the route Celeste had marked and over the mountain range. It would be difficult and dangerous terrain, but the Moon Goddess’s light would protect me just like it had last night, and it would shave time off my journey.
I put my thumb over the divergence point and traced Celeste’s line instead, following it north with my eyes to the marker she’d drawn at the portal site. Two days.
The Moon Goddess’s path would be quicker.
But I wouldn’t follow it.
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