Forbidden by Fate Read Online Free

“Who’d you bring with you?”
    “I came by myself. I always do.” She gazed up at the moon. “Every full moon I sneak out and come to the springs. My father’s never seemed to notice before. I doubt tonight’s any different.”
    When she finally brought her gaze back to center, leveling that determined stare upon Damon, he willed his lungs to fill and his heart to beat. Natural tasks that once seemed involuntary suddenly took the greatest concentration. It irritated Damon to no end that she still had this kind of influence over him.
    “Why do you come back here?” Didn’t she have better things to do? Like make litters of werewolf puppies? Isn’t that why Kenyon forbade Sasha to see him all those years ago? So she could further their race? Damon squelched the urge to ask if she’d been mated by chomping on his lower lip.
    “I don’t know, really. I guess I feel connected to this place. Have since we were teenagers.” Mist billowed around her as she stepped around the last corner of the spring, facing him. As she stilled, the night stilled with her. Birds quieted. Even the bubbling waters of the hot springs flattened to an eerie calm.
    Damon had the fleeting thought that he was being stalked by one of the most deadly predators on the planet—an exquisite woman with a hidden agenda. And everything in this place was working to her advantage: moonlight highlighted the sleekness of her hair, the quiet of the forest amplified her gentle intake of air and the gown that Damon wanted to tear thread by thread from her body ruffled softly in the midnight breeze.
    “What about you?” she asked. Another few steps and she’d be pressed against him. “Why are you here?”
    Taut silence.
    The air grew heavy with electricity, sparking across his skin and deep in his gut. One glance into the purple depths of her eyes and Damon was lost.
    “Couldn’t Queen Elixa have sent someone else to negotiate the terms of the fight for the hot springs?” she continued. “I didn’t expect you to ever come back. Not after what happened between us.”
    He couldn’t beat the words back. “You mean, what you did to us.”
    “You can’t still be angry with me for what happened.” Her eyebrows puzzled in confusion. “My father never would’ve allowed it… us . I was too young to live on my own, without my family. I did what I had to do to survive.”
    Taking lead of the pack was something Sasha could’ve never done if they’d continued their relationship. They both knew it. Damon had accepted they’d be exiled. But at least they would’ve been together…and happy. Now, from the position she’d taken next to her father, Damon assumed this was what she’d wanted all along.
    Only she didn’t look happy. Between the crinkle on her forehead and the shadows flittering across her eyes, Damon would say she looked torn. Nearly broken.
    “Is that all you ever wanted for your life? To merely survive ? Guess you’re on the right track then, though I have to tell you that you’re missing a hell of a lot.”
    A gust of wind skidded over the springs and slammed into them. Sasha’s hair flew wildly around her face, but she didn’t catch the silky strands; she just let them fly, peering through them with enough intensity to light the forest on fire.
    “Damon…” Sasha reached for him and he stepped back. One touch could tear his control to shreds. She dropped her hand to her side. “I’m sorry, I thought—when I saw you in my father’s den, I suppose I thought that you…that you might’ve felt the same way and come back to fight for me—for us.”
    “That’s not happening.”
    Her smile faded. Could she really have thought they could be together? When he was full-blooded Draco, exiled from the rest of his clan, and she was full-blooded Were, set to become Alpha of the werewolf pack? What was there to fight for? A love that would be forbidden by Sasha’s Alpha? Damon couldn’t ask her to choose between love and family