The Mate That Wasn't Mine novel Chapter 77

Chapter 77.

Chapter 77

TESSA POV

Maxin’s encyclopaedic rundown of the brief time we’d known each other was dizzying. So many names and facts. Achievementa i slojda me Wardens I should feat. Annoyingly, my wolf and brain did not line up to offer me a single memory.

Silas looks like a lion with honey–coloured eyes, Kai has youthful, sharp features and emerald eyes. I just conjured a cheeky little pixle and a hairy awkow lump. Nothing real.

Perhaps an essential, spongy little nodule, sloshing about in the jelly of my skull, has been destroyed. Maxim comparing Wardens to badgers and chayers tennis ball made me giggle at least. I keep listening, holding my sweet mate’s hand a little tighter.

Every so often his thumb rubbed the outside of my hand. The rush it gave my senses was exhilirating.

Of course my traitorous mind conjured up an image of Princess Hazel with ease. Golden hair, wide blue eyes? No doubt the body of a sinful angel and spirit to match? Dressed in white, a perfect smile and beloved by all?

That’s no effort to imagine. My deceitful brain even threw in an image of Maxim kissing her just to really make me blush. The girl Maxim pursued for the semester before we met. My lips pursed in dislike.

But then, his velvet voice soothed even that little rush of blood away.

Hearing him describe how she pleaded with her father in front of the whole pack for another girl’s life only to be ignored? Now i feel sorry for her. The cliffs sound horrific, her life in a towers parlour isolated and lonely.

Maxim kind of sounds like her only friend. She’s got my traitor of a cat too.

Then Maxim had to go and kiss me. So sweetly. So softly. Like I’m being savoured. Soft fingertips running over my cheeks, through my hair, down my shoulders.

No matter how much he warns me of his flaws, I’d rather he just kept kissing me. He thought he knocked those notebooks out of my hand, I practically hurled them when I realised his lips were heading for mine.

Tracing the outline of my shape until my hands land on his chest, over his bite. When he told me what the one I gave him before did to him, it made me gasp. Then it left me severely resenting the lack of reaction this useless, lividly purple bite currently delivers.

I crave him, just as a stalk reaches for the sun. His scent, his smiles, the glint of his amber eye when he’s amused. The calm way he guides us through this completely unknown situation.

Only to feel the brakes slam on, screeching like a steam train. The pages had fluttered about, some even escaping whilst we stole a moment, but when he placed the open, blue–grey leather book into my waiting hands, it left me feeling like I’d been stabbed straight through the guts.

The page was only slightly bigger than my hand. But it was a sketch of a landscape.

Drawn in simple coloured pencils, a grassy green meadow. Dotted with purple, red and yellow spots of flowers. The top half contains a craggy mountainside in the background.

One half pure white, or maybe left uncoloured by the lazy artist. But my wolf disagreed. It’s supposed to be white. The other half of the cliff is coloured in

varying shades of green.

It forms a dipping valley, or a ‘U‘ shape.

And it’s the key to something big. My wolf is pounding at my head to the point my vision goes blurry around the edges. My knees goes weak.

Maxim catches me just as I stumble.

In a garbled rush. “I know this. I know it! I’ve seen this before!”

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Chapter 77

let me see: ho urges, bending to look at the page rather than take the book off më bix brom zreading.

You know this place!” he asks, the confusion in his volca falling to dull my excitement. I finally recognise something beyond the

el dol is it my home?”

“Ravenbow?”

Maxim shakes his head. “No. It’s the exile grounds. When you’re banished from Ravenbow, you’re…well they scar you, between the shoulder Blanes kika the rebels you saw. You can never have a mind link. That happens…around here,” pointing beyond the gap. “Then you walk out into this meados meant to start over. Choose a direction and leave forever.”

“Well where is it?”

“It’s where every rebel and fucked off ex–Ravenbow pack member starts out.”

I know he’s trying to warn me but it’s not working. I need to see it with my

own eyes.

“Can we get there though?”

His amber eyes are sympathetically warm, his jaw relaxed, not annoyed at my request. These little things cause me to fall in love with him a little farther every time.

“The other side of the mountains. I guess there is a path from Ravenbow but I don’t know it. You’d have to approach it from the meadow end. It’s just miles and miles of wasteland.”

“I need to go there. I’ve got to!”

Maxim is silent for a while.

“There’s something there. Something bigger than me. I felt it in my guts the instant I saw that page. I can see it in my head. The real version. Exactly this view. It’s a memory. A real memory,” before exclaiming in pain and dropping to the floor, hands clamped over my eyes as a migraine–like blast of pain takes full force.

“Shit,” I whimper, curling up into a ball, shielding my eyes from the light.

“Tess!” before darkness and that precious oak and berries scent surround me. Tentatively squinting, I realise Maxim has draped his leather jacket over my head, whisking away the painful brightness. Keeping me safe, I remain curled up.

“Pass me the book.”

Reluctantly I poke the book out, wincing at the shards of sneaking sunlight.

“We’ve covered good ground. Have a rest,” before I felt the shift of huge body sitting down beside me, his leg resting gently against my back. He doesn mention how my laying down in this position means my panty–covered ass is on display for the forest to see.

“Okay, so this notebook is a list of recruits. There’s different handwriting in it…it’s just names and names…doesn’t say who drew this…”

I hear the sound of page rustling. “Hang on. I’ll have a look through the others.”

Keeping my eyes closed, I see shapes the shape of the cliffs, green and white, spiralling around. Faint, barely anything but a lump of colour my confuse brain is producing under stress, but I know it is calling me.

Maxim clears his throat. “There’s a map. Ravenbow, farming, mines. It’s one of the ways through to the exile grounds. Shit Tess it’s the safe routes through. Tunnels, old mines, tracts of farmland. This area is known as waterlogged and useless, apparently it’s a path! This is really important.”

“So we can go?”

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Chapter 77

“Tess…I have to report into Ravenbow otherwise they’ll just samt more Betas out looking for me. Then we’ll have to dels of people out to hurt us

“Then why don’t I go alone?”

“Absolutely not. Lose you again?”

This is what will bring me back!” allowing my voice as loud as I dare underneath the leather jacket. “I don’t know how I know it, but I think he beg waiting my whole life to find that place. My wolf is desperate!”

The more I talk, the more the pain lessens. My wolf is pleased at my protesting.

I slowly raise myself from the ground, keeping his leather jacket around my shoulders. His huge hands to wrap around my waist, lifting me with ease back onto his lap, my head against his chest. He kisses my hair and I know he’s deeply upset.

I can feel his wolfs distress racing through his chest and it tears at me.

But to follow him to Ravenbow is to remain ignorant.

“Is this to help you think?” I whisper, planting a soft kiss against the solid plane of his chest.

“Not at all.” making me stifle a smile and nuzzle in closer.

Together we read every notebook. Mainly names. Dates of battles stretching back years. Maxim was thrilled to find a coded piece of paper that had drawings of the pills.

“This fucker is the recipe list I’m sure. Someone at Ravenbow will be able to crack that code and we will have them.”

The sun has almost set by the time we finish working through the books. We eat and drink in silence.

“I don’t want to hurt you. But…” I say, stroking at his chest, his solid, thumping heart.

“If this is something your wolf has waited all your life to do…then you’ve got to do it. I know.” my mate agrees with a heavy sigh. “But…you need to be properly prepared. You’re going to need supplies. So…”

Before he can continue I quickly reach up and plant a grateful, lovestruck kiss to his cheek.

“You might want to take that back in a minute,” he grins. “I’m taking you to the whorehouse.”

“What the hell?”

He grins for a second, a devious twinkle in his eye. “It sounds worse than what it is. It’s right on the border of Ravenbow. You stay there one night. Just one night. I’ll report back to Ravenbow, Prince Remy. Do all the duty shit. Then I’ll get you money, clothes, weapons. Food. Anything else you can think