Bearing the Ruthless Alpha's Twins novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Stone Circle

The healer's voice went on, low and level, and the words were older than any language I knew.

Aldric's blood ran off his palm and down the stone toward the place where Torin lay.

The grooves in the altar took it.

They had been cut there long before either of them was born, and I watched them fill, branch by branch, until a thin dark line ended at Torin's breastbone.

Aldric stopped screaming.

He stood between the four men with his bleeding hand flat on the rock, and he looked at me with a face so naked that I understood he had never once thought of me as a person.

I looked back at him.

Then I turned my back on him for the last time and put both hands on Torin's shoulders.

"I'm here," I said.

"I know."

His skin was hot.

The air in the circle had gone thick, and the nine stones hummed, a note below hearing that I felt in my teeth.

Under my palms Torin's chest began to glow.

It came up through his skin as gold light, and it pulsed once, slow and heavy.

He arched off the altar with a cry he could not hold back.

"Hold him," the healer said, without stopping.

I held him.

His eyes flew open, gold from edge to edge, and found mine.

"Ingrid," he said.

"I'm here."

"It's coming out of me."

"I can feel it," I said.

I could.

Something in my own chest had turned over and begun to pull, hard, toward his.

It was the pull I had felt every time he stood within arm's reach, and I had called it warm hands.

"Let it go to you," Torin said.

"You let it go," I said.

"Do not make me do this alone, and do not hand it over and lie down.

"I am taking my wolf, and you are staying in your body.

"Do you hear me?"

"I hear you," Torin said.

"Say it."

"I'm staying."

His mouth shook, and he tried to smile and could not.

"I'm staying," he said again.

The healer broke off in the middle of a word.

"Now," she said sharply.

"Put your palms on the brightest place, and do not let go until it is done."

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