Chapter 82 Why Save Me?
Maddie Pov
I waited behind the pack house long after everyone else had gone to sleep. The night was cold and dark. My breath came out in little clouds. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to stay warm.
I didn't know if Calix would come. I had texted him an hour ago. A simple message. "Meet me behind the pack house. We need to talk."
He hadn't responded. But the bond told me he had seen it. The bond told me he was thinking about it. The bond told me he was deciding whether to come or stay away.
I had been standing here for twenty minutes when I finally felt it. That pull in my chest. That awareness that he was close. The mate bond flaring to life as he approached.
Then I saw him. A dark figure emerging from the shadows. Tall. Broad. Moving with that predatory grace that all powerful wolves had. He walked toward me slowly. Cautiously. Like he was approaching a trap.
"You came," I said. My voice came out quieter than I intended.
"You asked me to," Calix said. He stopped about ten feet away. Keeping distance between us like always. "What do you want Maddie?"
"Answers," I said. "I want to know why. Why you saved me today after everything you said. After weeks of pushing me away. After telling me we could never be together."
"I already told you," Calix said. "The course was sabotaged. Someone was trying to kill you. I couldn't just stand there and watch you die."
"But you could stand there and watch me suffer for weeks?" I demanded. My voice was getting louder now. Angrier. "You could push me away and call our bond a mistake and treat me like I meant nothing?"
"That was different," Calix said.
"How?" I asked. "How is it different? Either you care about me or you don't. Either the bond matters or it doesn't. You can't have it both ways."
"It's not that simple," Calix said. His jaw clenched. "Nothing about this is simple."
"Then explain it to me," I said. I took a step toward him. "Make me understand. Because right now all I see is someone who keeps sending mixed signals. Someone who says he doesn't want me but can't stay away. Someone who claims the mark was a mistake but saved my life today."
Calix was quiet for a long moment. He just stood there looking at me with those haunted eyes. Like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"Why?" I demanded again. "Why did you save me today? Give me a real answer. Not some excuse about duty or responsibility or not wanting to see anyone get hurt. Tell me the truth."
"Because I can't let you die," Calix said. His voice came out raw. Broken. "Not even if it kills me to stay away from you. Not even if being near you triggers my curse. Not even if loving you destroys us both."
The words hung in the air between us. Heavy. Painful. Full of everything he had been holding back for weeks.
"You love me," I said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement. An acknowledgment of what I had always suspected but never heard him say.
"Yes," Calix said. "I love you. I've loved you since the night I marked you. Maybe even before that. The bond knew before my conscious mind did."
"Then why push me away?" I asked. Tears were building in my eyes. "If you love me why spend weeks making me think you didn't? Why hurt me like that?"
"Because loving you is dangerous," Calix said. "Because everyone I've ever loved has died or been destroyed because of me. Because my curse takes everything I care about and turns it to ash."
"I'm not afraid of your curse," I said.
"You should be," Calix said. He took a step toward me. "You should be terrified. You should run as far away from me as possible. You should find someone else. Someone safe. Someone who won't bring death wherever they go."
"I don't want someone else," I said. "I want you. The bond chose you. The Moon Goddess chose you. I choose you."
"You don't know what you're choosing," Calix said. "You don't understand what my curse has done. What it's capable of doing."
"Then tell me," I said. "Stop hiding behind vague warnings and just tell me the truth. Tell me about your curse. Tell me what happened to the people you loved."
Calix looked away. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. "My mother died when I was ten. She got sick. Started wasting away. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. She just kept getting weaker and weaker until she couldn't fight anymore."
"That's not your fault," I said gently.
"My brother died when I was fifteen," Calix continued. Like he hadn't heard me. "He was the strongest wolf in our pack. Undefeated in combat. Everyone thought he would be the next Alpha. Then one day he just collapsed during training. His heart stopped. No warning. No explanation. Just dead."
"Calix," I said. I took another step toward him. "Those sound like tragedies. Not curses."
"There were others," Calix said. His voice was getting harder. "My best friend from childhood. Dead in a car accident. My first girlfriend. Killed by rogues. My uncle who trained me. Died of a sudden stroke. Everyone I've ever cared about. Everyone I've ever loved. All of them taken."
"And you think you caused it?" I asked. "You think loving them killed them?"
"I know it did," Calix said. He finally looked at me again. "Because that's what the curse does. It feeds on love. On attachment. On bonds. The stronger I feel about someone the faster they're taken from me."
"That's not how curses work," I said. "Curses need intent. Need power. Need someone to cast them. You can't just be cursed because bad things happened around you."
"My family has been cursed for generations," Calix said. "Every firstborn Hawthorne son loses everyone they love. It's been that way for a hundred years. My father lost my mother. My grandfather lost my grandmother. It goes back and back and back. An unbroken chain of death and loss."
"Then break the chain," I said. "Fight it. Don't just accept it as inevitable."