Page 115 of Shifters Reckoning

That night, I couldn’t get warm.

Logan built a fire in every fireplace, including the one in our bedroom, and piled every quilt in Six-Mile on our bed. Then he wrapped himself around me. Front to back, his heartbeat against my spine, he tucked his arm across my ribs. Still, I couldn’t get the Void out of my bones. He just held on and let me find the words in the dark.

“Why didn’t he attack me?” I whispered.

“Maybe the full moon is when his strength is strongest. He keeps eating shifters, and that’s true of our kind. Our magic is always strongest under a full moon,” Logan murmured. “His vision of winning happened under the full moon.”

“After he refused to give in, he should have attacked me.” My teeth chattered, but I forced the words out. “He chose to be what he is, Logan. He found the wizard, and he wants to end the multimorph cycle. He thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

Logan rubbed my back and pulled me more tightly against his chest. “Every villain is the hero of his own story.”

The silence stretched as I trembled in Logan’s arms.

“I keep waiting to be afraid of losing,” I finally whispered into the quiet. “That’s the fear you’re supposed to have, right? The night before. That he’s stronger, that I’m not ready, that I’ll make that dome and he’ll wrap his hands around my throat like he showed you a hundred times and that’ll be it.” Scooting back into his warmth did nothing to ease the shivering. “But that’s not the one that won’t let me sleep, Logan.”

His arm tightened. “Tell me.”

“I’m afraid I’ll win.”

“Afraid you’ll win?”

“I’m terrified I’ll do exactly what I made the trip to the cave to learn how to do. I’ll close the Veil, send him back to the dark, and save every human town he wants to hollow out…” I paused long enough to try to swallow the boulder in my throat. “But I’ll do it the only way the histories show, the way the last multimorph did. I’ll pour myself into the gash in the Veil to hold two worlds apart forever.” My chin quivered, and my teeth still chattered. “I’ll win, and I won’t be here to know it.”

“Oh, love,” he whispered, his breath feathering over the back of my ear. “I won’t lose you.”

A flood of hot tears came, soaking into the pillow. “That’s my biggest fear. Not that he takes everything I love. That I save everything I love by giving up myself. I walk in as Emma, and I win as a thread for a wound that needs stitches.”

For a long time, Logan didn’t say anything. He only held me while I sobbed. He pressed one hand over my heart. Then, low, against the back of my neck, he said, “No.”

“Logan—”

“No,” he repeated. “Dr. Wise said the price had been cut out of the histories because each multimorph chooses their own, so we choose a different outcome. It’s that simple. You’re the multimorph, Emma.” His lips found the top of my spine. “You are not walking in there to be mortar or stitching. You’re walking in there to win as Emma Carter, DVM, Rainbow Vet of Willow Creek, the most stubborn supernatural being in Louisiana. I’m going to be on the other end of that bond the whole time.”

“What if it’s not that simple, Logan?” I breathed, allowing hope to bloom in my chest beneath his palm.

“Both of us come home. I already told Dr. Wise to shut up about any other option.”

I laughed, half hysterical. “You told Dr. Wise to shut up.”

“I did. She listened, mostly. Then she scribbled furiously in her journal. Can’t let our histories be boring, can we?” He shoved his other arm beneath me and pulled me even closer. “Sleep, love.”

I shimmied my ass against him. “Nothing else?”

He sighed. “As much as I’d love to get lost in our bed for days, tomorrow you build that dome. Tonight, you’re just my mate, and my mate is going to get some damned rest because I’ll be damned if the multimorph faces down the end of the world tired.”

I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I slept.

During our last shared night, the two of us promised to build a world where everybody came home, even the heartbroken wizard in the Void. Especially, maybe, him.

Because I wouldn’t snuff life out while there were any other options available.

I was the vet who vowed to always try to heal first.

I am the multimorph.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

logan