Chapter 174 Dark Magic
ROWAN
I clicked my tongue and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to scrape something useful out of my head, but it was no use.
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No matter how hard I forced myself, no matter how deep I reached, I couldn’t remember a damn thing after I stepped into the restroom last night.
It was all just a blur.
Then, when I woke up, Tessa was in my room wearing nothing but a robe.
I sat there on the edge of the bed for a long minute, knuckles pressing against my temples. The longer I stared at the sunlight cutting through the curtains, the heavier my chest felt.
Why the fuck couldn’t I remember anything?
I wasn’t like this.
Even during ruts-especially during ruts-I was careful. I had to be. Discipline was everything.
I didn’t let my instincts drive me into losing myself.
So why now?
Was it because of her?
My wolf was pacing restlessly beneath my skin. Heat licked at the back of my neck, the kind that didn’t fade no matter how much I forced a breath.
It had been a while, sure.
After I confessed to Arden… I stopped sleeping around.
I couldn’t bring myself to be with anyone. There was no shortage of offers, of course. However, I never let it go beyond anything quick. A drink, a fleeting touch, a half-hearted kiss that never made it further than a wall in some dark corner. And
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Chapter 174 Dark Magic
even then, I’d pull back before it could turn into anything deeper than that.
So why-why the hell couldn’t I remember with Tessa?
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My memory flashed unbidden, her standing there in my room this morning. That look. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, and her mouth parted slightly as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t.
And just like that-
Fuck.
My stomach knotted. The heat I thought I’d been containing ripped up my spine and spread faster than I could swallow down.
Her face, her body, the way her lips had been flushed, the way the fabric clung to her. The image burrowed into me, burned into the backs of my eyelids until I had no choice but to see it again and again.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, jaw clenching as I shifted forward on the bed.
That was when I noticed the thick, pulsing tent against the towel loosely around my waist.
“Shit,” I cursed again.
My fingers tightened around the sheets at first, knuckles whitening, but the pressure only made the ache sharper.
It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch, one that grew meaner the more I tried to shove the thought away.
Her face. Her mouth. The robe slipping.
I clicked my tongue again and raked my fingers down my face.
I reached for the edge of the towel, ready to take care of it before I lost what was left of my sanity.
My cock was throbbing with need, and with a touch of my warm hand, her face
mind again.
entered my
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Chapter 174 Dark Magic
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However, just then, my phone rang. It was a shrill sound that made me want to hurl the damn thing across the room.
I hissed a curse under my breath, snatched it off the nightstand, and glanced at the name flashing across the screen.
Francis.
“What?” I barked into the receiver, my voice rougher than I intended.
“Alpha!” Francis’ voice nearly cracked through the speaker. He sounded breathless, panicked. “Where did you go last night?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, dragging a hand through my hair again. “Party. You saw me there,” I muttered. “Why?”
“I didn’t see you for most of it,” he clicked his tongue.
“What do you need?” I asked, already feeling impatient.
རྩོམ་་ཟེར་བས་་ རྒྱལ་
ང་ད
“You need to go back to the South.”
My brows furrowed. “Why?” I repeated.
Francis exhaled hard. “We have another intruder. This time… it seems to be different.”
***
I was back in the South just as the sun settled on the treeline. My body felt heavier than usual.
Francis walked beside me, his silence speaking more than words, but as soon as we entered the border compound, Wilder was the first one I saw.
He leaned against the doorframe like he owned the place, a smug little smirk plastered on his face. “We captured him,” he announced, sounding proud.
His tone dripped with arrogance, waiting for my approval. “I did a good job, right?”
I only looked at him for a second. My jaw clenched, my wolf irritated with his
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Chapter 174 Dark Magic
presence alone. “Leave.”
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Wilder raised both hands, mocking surrender. “Alright, alright. Don’t need to bite my head off.”
He slipped out of the den, his smirk never faltering. With that, Francis and I stepped further inside.
Before I could take another step forward, Francis placed an arm in front of me. “Don’t get too close,” he muttered.
I frowned in confusion. However, the moment my eyes landed on the thing in the center of the biggest cell, I understood why he asked me to do so.
“What the hell is that?” I demanded.
Francis didn’t take his eyes off the creature. “A rogue,” he said flatly. But even he didn’t sound convinced.
I stared harder, my brows furrowing.
That wasn’t a damn rogue. Not the kind I’d known, not the kind I’d fought and bled against countless times before.
The wolf’s body was trembling, hunched forward. Its fur was patchy, missing in places, but what made my stomach twist was its face.
Its eyes-dark, not the amber glow of a wolf, not even the faint cloudiness of madness. Just pure black. Liquid black. They didn’t even blink properly, only twitched and rolled in their sockets. And down its cheeks, streaming where tears should have been, were thick, tar-like trails, staining its muzzle in slow drips.
“That ain’t no damn rogue,” I muttered.
The wolf didn’t even react to me the way a rogue should have. It just sat there, twitching, trembling like it was broken from the inside out.
Francis finally looked at me. “Exactly what I thought.” His voice lowered. “I’ve been around enough rogues to know their stench, Alpha. This one… this one doesn’t reek of instinct. It reeks of something else.”
I tore my gaze from the creature for a moment, studying Francis. “What do you
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Chapter 174 Dark Magic
mean by something else?”
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He swallowed hard, his fingers tightening on the hilt of his blade. “It’s like he’s lost every natural instinct a wolf has. No fight. No hunger. Nothing but… this.” He motioned toward the dark trails running from its eyes. “That’s not madness. It’s pure obedience.”
I looked back at the wolf and bit my lip.
“This guy’s been influenced,” Francis finally said. His jaw clenched before he continued. “Influenced by dark magic.”
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