Chapter 11: The Vow

Bram's POV

"It's her, Ilyan. It's Mira."

I heard the words leave my mouth and could not take them back.

Ilyan leaned on the stair rail and looked at me with his pale green eyes.

"You've known since the marks burned in the hall," he said.

"I knew the second I saw them."

"And you made yourself her warden."

"I made myself the only wolf at this school who couldn't kill her," I said. "Nobody else was going to be that careful."

"You slept with her tonight."

"I know what I did."

"I can't lie, Bram. So I'll ask you plainly." His voice stayed gentle. "Will you do it?"

I had been asked that question in my own head every night for eleven years.

I had never once had to answer it with her scent still on my hands.

"I don't know," I said.

It was the truest thing I had ever said to anyone.

Ilyan nodded slowly and climbed the stairs past me without another word.

I stood on the landing until the tower went quiet.

Then I went out into the cold.

The memorial grove sat behind the pack lodge at the edge of the academy grounds, thirty old oaks with a stone circle in the middle.

My mother's ashes were buried under the center stone.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Fae Asked If I Was Human, Now the Alpha Wants the Truth from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.