Chapter 72: The Ripple Effect
Elder Iris POV
I caught Sarah Morrison trying to burn her mate mark with a red-hot stick.
"Stop!" I shouted, running across my cabin to grab the iron from her shaking hands. The smell of burning flesh hit my nose, and I saw the angry red cut on her wrist where she’d already started.
"Let me finish!" Sarah cried, fighting against my grip. "If it can happen to Lily and Caleb, it can happen to any of us!"
This was the third mated wolf I’d found this week trying to destroy their own bond. The fear was spreading through Silver Peak like wildfire, and I was running out of ways to stop it.
"Sarah, listen to me," I said firmly, causing her to sit down. "Burning your mark won’t protect you from whatever took theirs."
"Then nothing will!" she sobbed. "Tom and I have been mates for five years. We have two pups together. But what if tomorrow I wake up and feel nothing for him? What if he looks at me like Caleb looks at Lily - like I’m a stranger?"
I’d been alive for seventy years, and I’d never seen the pack in such chaos. Ever since Lily and Caleb returned with their broken bond, fear had poisoned every relationship in Silver Peak. Mates questioned each other constantly. Parents worried about their children’s fate. Young wolves were afraid to even look for their fated partners.
"The Moon Goddess wouldn’t let that happen to everyone," I tried to comfort her, though doubt gnawed at my own heart.
"How do you know?" Sarah demanded. "You’ve never had a mate. You don’t understand what it’s like to love someone so much that losing them would destroy you."
Her words stung because they were partly true. I’d never experienced the mate bond myself. But I’d watched it crumble other wolves when it was lost, and I’d seen what its loss was doing to our pack now.