Chapter 109 Did She Tell You Everything?

Chapter 109 Did She Tell You Everything?
Cassandra's POV

I sat on the bed and stared at nothing.

Flora and Fauna moved around me, their hands tracing patterns in the air, their voices low and overlapping in the same chant I'd heard before, softer this time, almost gentle. I barely registered it.

This was a terrible situation and I had no idea how to handle it. My heart kept skipping and I realized with startling clarity that I had loved Liam to the point where he had become part of my soul. Fate was being unfair to both of us and I didn't know what to do about it.

‘Kill Liam. Or die before the next blood moon.’

The words kept circling, refusing to settle into anything that made sense. My stomach had gone tight and sour, the particular sickness that comes from being told something your body understands as true before your mind has caught up.

"Fiona's gone to update him that you're now totally fine," Fauna said, somewhere at the edge of my attention. "She'll explain our progress. Nothing more."

I didn't respond. I was watching my own hands in my lap, willing them to feel like mine again.

The spell finished. Flora stepped back, exhaling slowly, the candlelight catching the exhaustion in her face.

"Tonight," she said. "You'll need to summon the dragon tonight, while the bond is still settling. Waiting will make it harder."

I grabbed her hand before she could step further away.

"Is there another way?" My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "Override it. Break it. Anything. There has to be some version of this that doesn't end with one of us dead."

Flora's face said everything before her mouth did, and the truth sitting in it hurt.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "This is the price for disturbing the timeline. The universe doesn't offer alternatives when something this large has already been bent out of place."

"I didn't ask to be bent into this. This is not my fault," I said. The anger arrived fast, sharper than I expected. "I never expected that reading a book could land me here, that some curse would manifest and change my real life entirely. I didn't choose Kiara's body or her sister or any of it. None of this was my decision and now I'm the one who has to–"

The door opened.

Liam came through it before I could finish, and every furious word in my chest dissolved at the sight of him.

He crossed the room in three strides and pulled me into his arms before I'd fully stood. The longing that hit me was so immediate and overwhelming that I forgot, briefly, what we'd just been discussing. I held onto him and breathed him in– that particular mate scent of him, forest and warmth and something I had started to think of as simply ‘home’ and felt something in my chest both ache and settle at once.

He pulled back just enough to look at my face, his hands framing my jaw.

"Are you alright?" His eyes moved over me carefully and thoroughly.

"I'm fine," I said, and laughed despite everything. "Liam, I'm fine."

"These past days–" He stopped. Started again. "I didn't know what was happening to you. I didn't know if you were coming back." His voice cracked slightly on the last part. "It was hell."

I took his hand and held it against my chest. "Thank you for not giving up on me."

"Never," he said, immediate and certain, like the word had never required thought.

Then he kissed me.

It wasn't gentle. It was the kiss of someone who had waited and feared and was finally being allowed to exhale, and I met it with everything I had, my fingers sliding into his hair, my whole body curving into his. Every other thing ceased to exist around us, replaced entirely by him.

Someone cleared their throat.

I ignored it.

The person coughed trying to draw our attention. The coughing became increasingly insistent, and Liam and I finally broke apart to find Flora, Fauna, Fiona and Samuel all standing near the door looking thoroughly uncomfortable.

"We'll just–" Samuel gestured vaguely toward the corridor. "Give you both some space."

They filed out quickly, Fauna muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh she was holding in.

"We've traumatized them," Liam said, looking entirely unbothered by the prospect.

"They'll recover."

He pulled me back against him, one hand moving to stroke my hair, and I leaned into it without quite deciding to. I didn't know exactly when we'd started holding onto each other like this, like letting go was a risk neither of us wanted to take but I was no longer fighting it.

"Fiona told me some things," Liam said, against the top of my head.

I went rigid.

I pulled back slightly to look at his face. "Did she tell you everything?"

He looked at me, something careful crossing his expression. "What do you mean by everything?"

I searched his eyes. Genuine confusion. Nothing heavier underneath it.

I turned to Fiona, who was lingering near the doorway. She didn't speak. She simply looked at me and gave the smallest shake of her head.

She hadn't told him about the blood moon.

The relief that moved through me was so sudden I nearly swayed.

"What's going on?" Liam looked between us. "What is this everything? What are you people not telling me?"

"The bloodline," I said, steadying my voice. "The dragon. Did she tell you about that part?"

Liam laughed– short, slightly disbelieving, the sound of a man still catching up to information that hadn't fully landed yet.

"She did." He shook his head and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. "I'm still somewhat in shock about it, honestly. But it makes sense. More sense than it should."

I exhaled and held onto him and said nothing about the rest of it.