All Chapters of Wild Heart ,Wolf’s Desire: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The word Speaker hung in the air like a gunshot.Everything stopped. The wolves who had been ready to kill now stood frozen, staring at Tess. The young wolf still hovered over her, whining softly, a living shield that didn't understand its own actions.Kael had shifted back to human form. He stood naked and bleeding, but his eyes were blazing with a feverish light. He looked at Tess not like a prisoner, but like a treasure hunter who had just found a lost city of gold."Of course," he whispered, walking slowly toward her. The wolves parted for him. "It makes sense. The bloodline. The white wolf. You don't just carry the power... you speak to the wild. You calm the beast. You command without command."Liam struggled to his feet, one arm hanging uselessly at his side. "Stay away from her, Kael!"Kael ignored him. He was ten feet from Tess now. "Father's books spoke of it. He thought it was a fairy tale. The White Wolf's Echo a human who carries the ancient alpha's soul and can speak to

The sound of Cath’s laughter was a nail hammered into the coffin of their hope.It bounced off the wet trees, sharp and bright with triumph, before being swallowed by the heavier roar of the motorcycle engine. The engine didn’t fade into the distance. It gunned, idled, gunned again a predator circling, searching for a scent.“She’s looking for us,” Gareth whispered, his voice gravelly with tension. He melted into the shadow of a broad hemlock, his body still, his senses stretching out into the rain-slick dark.Liam lay on the moss, a fallen king. The shallow rise and fall of his chest was the only sign he still clung to the world. The magical waters had closed the worst of the gashes, leaving angry pink scars that looked months old, not minutes. But the cost had been immense. He was hollowed out, his alpha vitality drained to a flicker. The silver light from Tess’s hands had vanished, leaving her feeling just as empty.Ethan crouched beside Liam, pressing two fingers to the pulse poin

Silence pooled in the cavern, thick and heavy as the darkness. It was broken only by the ragged symphony of their breathing Liam’s shallow and pained, Ryder’s wet and labored, Ethan’s sharp hisses as Tess finished binding his arm, Fred’s quiet, shocked pants. The air, cold and tasting of wet stone and ancient dust, felt like a held breath.Gareth’s words hung among them, more real than the shadows. A temple.Tess looked at the strips of Liam’s shirt in her hands, now stained with Ethan’s blood. A temple. Not a refuge, but a destination. The thought was too large, too terrifying to hold. She focused on the smaller, immediate terror: the man dying beside her.Ryder’s skin was on fire. Even in the gloom, she could see the fever burning him up from within. The long gashes from the Wendigo’s claws were an angry, weeping red, the edges already tinged with a sickly greenish-black. Poison. Gareth had gathered the dry, shelf-like fungus and, with Fred’s human ingenuity using Liam’s metal belt

The beautiful room was a lie. Tess learned that in the first hour. The plush rug, the stocked bookshelf, the view of majestic peaks they were just the shiny paint on her cage. The air smelled of lemon polish and loneliness.Kael had taken her in the chaotic aftermath at the cave. One moment she was watching Liam’s chest rise and fall, the next a chemical sweetness filled her nose, and darkness swallowed her. She woke here, in this alpine prison, with no idea if the others were alive or dead.He visited every day. He never shouted. He was a patient, chilling teacher. He brought her ancient texts with drawings of white wolves and humans with radiant hands. He called her “cousin” and spoke of destiny.“Your power isn’t to fight, Tess,” he explained, sitting across from her like a therapist. “It’s to understand. To harmonize. The wolf is a creature of pure emotion rage, loyalty, fear, protectiveness. You can speak to those emotions. You can… adjust them.”“You want me to make them slaves,

The truck hurtled down the winding mountain road, headlights slicing through the lashing rain and the dark. No one spoke. The only sounds were the engine’s roar, the drumming of rain on the roof, and that terrible, fading screech echoing from the peak behind them.Tess sat crammed between Ryder and Ethan in the backseat. Fred drove with white-knuckled focus, his eyes glued to the treacherous road. Liam was not with them. He’d given a sharp signal from the balcony go before turning to face the source of the new threat, buying their escape.The relief of being out of the cage was swallowed by a churning sea of new fears. The child. The screech. Liam, alone and wounded. The truth of what Kael had been building.Ryder was the first to break the silence. He reached over Tess, his movements stiff with healing wounds, and tapped Ethan on the shoulder. “What was that? In the last room. You felt it.”Ethan, clutching his splinted arm to his chest, didn’t open his eyes. His face was pale. “It w