Chapter 87

Isla POV

They shimmered gold when I approached.

I crouched down, pressing my fingers against the cold ground. The hum met me instantly steady, familiar, alive. The same rhythm I’d felt in the bond.

The forest around us seemed to lean closer, the air thickening as the light shifted.

Lyra knelt beside me, notebook in hand. “It’s responding again.”

“No,” I whispered. “It’s remembering.”

The moment my palm flattened against the earth, the glow deepened spreading outward in a slow ripple. Gold light threaded through the soil like veins waking beneath the world.

And then, faintly, a voice. Not a sound. Not words. Just a memory brushing against the edge of thought.

You were the bridge.

I gasped, pulling my hand back. The glow dimmed instantly, sinking back into silence.

Lyra leaned forward. “What happened?”

“I heard something,” I breathed. “A voice. It said” I stopped. The words felt too heavy to speak out loud.

Tristan’s voice came from behind me, low and tense. “It said what?”

I turned to look at him. “It said I was the bridge.”

He stared at me for a long time, then finally said, “Between what?”

“I don’t know.”

But deep down, I did. Between Kieran’s world and his. Between the old and the new. Between everything that once was and everything that was still waking.

The thought made my skin crawl. Tristan stepped closer, his shadow falling across the fading light. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine.”

He reached out, fingers brushing my wrist. “You’re not.”

I didn’t pull away. For a moment, we stood there silent, breathing the same air, the hum between us almost indistinguishable from the one beneath our feet.

Then Lyra cleared her throat softly. “You two can stare at each other later. Right now, we have living magic to study.”

Tristan stepped back. I almost laughed, but the moment was too fragile.

By nightfall, the tension in the packhouse had shifted again. Not chaos, not fear just waiting.

Every wolf could feel it. The hum beneath the walls, the subtle changes in the air, the way the moon seemed brighter tonight, sharper.

I found Tristan in his office, standing by the window. His jacket was draped over a chair, his sleeves rolled, the fatigue etched across his shoulders like armor.

“You’re avoiding dinner again,” I said.

He didn’t turn. “You didn’t come either.”

“Touche.”

He finally glanced at me, his eyes softer this time. “Did you eat at all?” “I tried,” I lied.

He smiled faintly, like he could see right through me. “You’re terrible at that.”

I stepped closer. “At eating or lying?”“Both.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward it was familiar. The kind that carried too many words neither of us knew how to say anymore.

“You shouldn’t keep doing that,” he said quietly.“What?”

“Carrying everyone’s weight. Mine. His. The pack’s. You’re allowed to just breathe.”

I met his gaze. “And if I stop, who holds it then?”

He exhaled, looking away. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

For a second, the world outside went still. Even the crickets seemed to fall silent. And in that stillness, the bond pulsed again soft, distant, alive.

Kieran.

Tristan felt it too. His body tensed, his eyes darkening. “He’s calling again.”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“It never is.”

I didn’t respond. Because even though he was right, even though I wished the bond would fade into silence, it didn’t. It only grew steadier.

Like a heartbeat that refused to forget.

Later that night, I found myself wandering the outer corridor alone. Moonlight cascaded through the tall windows, painting silver ribbons across the marble floor, casting long shadows that seemed to dance with each step I took.

I paused by the glass, gazing out toward the forest's dark silhouette. Somewhere beyond those ancient trees, I sensed Kieran's presence close enough to feel like a phantom touch against my skin, yet too distant to reach with outstretched fingers.

"Stop calling me," I whispered, my breath fogging the cold glass momentarily.

But the bond responded with a quiet thrum, warm and steady as a familiar heartbeat, ignoring my feeble protest.

I closed my eyes, surrendering as it washed over me. The persistent heartbeat. The magnetic pull. The exquisite ache that had neither beginning nor end, threading through my very being like a silver cord I couldn't perhaps didn't want to sever.

Somewhere deep in the forest, a faint golden light flickered in reply small, fleeting, but undeniably real, a distant star in my private constellation.

And just like that, understanding dawned: he wasn't calling. He was reminding.

Reminding me that the world hadn't forgotten our story. That something ancient and alive still watched from between shadow and light, patient as mountains.

And that perhaps, when the final moment arrived, remembering wouldn't become the force that destroyed us.

It would emerge as our salvation. The night held its breath around me.

The pack slept peacefully in their quarters. The forest whispered secrets in languages long forgotten.

And between the pulse of two bonds the man who held my heart and the one who haunted its darkest corners something shifted quietly within me.

Not war. Not ending. Just the slow, inevitable beginning of whatever waited beyond the horizon.

The remembering.

The bridge.

The choice that lingered unmade.

And the steady heartbeat that kept everything hope, fear, possibility alive.