Chapter 158

• Dane
• Weeks passed after Luisa fell onto the training field, her body perhaps heavier with my cruel words and the shifts she bore. The memory haunted me still, like a specter: the fall, the scream, the crumpling into dirt.
• Guilt weighed heavy on me, and it was heavy on me, gnawing at me as I sat in my study, the air thick with the scent of old leather and wax. I had been wrong; brutal, reckless; thinking that the harshness would stabilize her from the face of her wolf. The scratching claws of my wolf dug into my insides. Restless and hurting from the reality I couldn't escape. Luisa was my mate, the one soul bound to mine, and I was the monster that had shattered her world.