The Rejected Werewolf Princess by Didiadeyemi

CAMILLA'S POV

I sat up in bed watching my mate sleep. My fingers gently stroked his hair out of his face and I was both amazed and relieved that he didn't wake up. Last night, he explained everything to me and my first instinct was to panic but I knew that he needed me for this and the last thing either of us needed was for me to lose my shit. It was one thing to know that Reina wanted to give him the powers, it was a completely different thing to know that the powers chose him. He showed me the books and I promised to wait for him so we could start looking through them together. At first, he didn’t want me to help but I was quick to remind him about all the hours he spent combing my father's journals with me. I was not going to leave him in his time of need, especially not when he had done the very opposite for me.

“How long have you been awake?” Ryker's husky, sleep laden voice asked and I couldn't stop myself from smiling. “How early is it?"

“Well, for starters, I think you've missed your morning run because the sun is up,” I said simply and he groaned but didn't make any efforts to stand up. He rolled over onto his back and took my hand with him so he could place a kiss on the back of my palm. “How do you feel?"

“Like shit,” he didn't even hesitate before responding. “Please tell me that we don't have a busy day."

I thought about it before shaking my head. “I don't know if I should be concerned or not but we don’t. I haven't heard a single complain from inside the town. I wonder if the elders are fixing it all on their own."

“I wouldn't be surprised if they were," he shrugged as he sat up straight.

He looked considerably better than he did last night. He looked well rested and although I could still sense the edge in his movements, it wasn't as bad as it was last night. He caught me staring and I tried to look away quickly but it was too late. He placed his hands on either side of my face and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. He smelled like him, it was perfect.

“'m okay, Camilla, you don’t have to worry about me,” he whispered against my skin. “We have a good day ahead of us and I want to get a head start on the books. Most of them are spell books. I am hoping it would tell me something I need to know."

“I know,” I wasn't sure if I was lying to him or to myself. “We can go through it together and we will find something, I just know it."

He didn’t say anything after and once we were dressed and everyone was accounted for, we made our way to his office where we sat with the books. I didn’t have to sit with him while reading, but it was easier to keep a secret when it was just the two of us. Juan knew but Ryker was adamant that he didn’t want too many people involved in this. Juan had to worry about Christine and their children. There was still some panic there due to Audrey's vision.

He still hadn't told Juan about it and I still hadn't told him about the blood in front of the palace. There was just so much going on that I could barely wrap my head around it. It felt like I was going to lose my mind if I tried to handle it all so I decided to focus on the most important which was Ryker. I couldn't lose him to magic. I wasn't going to. I didn’t care what I had to do but I was going to do everything possible to make sure that he came out of it alive. That was the determination in my heart. It was the only thing that kept me reading page after page of magic spells with Reina’s writing scribbled into the sides. She made adjustments to the spells. Adjustments meant to make the effects longer and deadlier. Many sentences in this chapter have been removed because you are not reading them on FindNovel.net It was while reading that I realized that Reina truly was a dangerous enemy and we simply hadn't realized it because for some reason, she wasn't using her full strength on us. There were spells here that could have burned down the entire palace in seconds and I couldn't help but wonder why she held herself back.

“I think I found something” I announced suddenly rushing over to Ryker's desk. We had been at it for two hours and I wasn't sure how I didn’t think of it before. The book in my hands was a simple spell book but Reina had scribbled something behind it. “Read this."

“Magic comes with a price, especially dark magic,” Ryker repeated before turning to me. “What does this have to do with anything?"

“When I was training with Lois, he kept trying to teach me about the different types of magic. There was light magic and there was dark magic. Think of my powers as a branch, the tree trunk of my powers is elemental magic. It is a type of magic typically associated with light magic but there is dark elemental magic. Are you following?”

“Not really,” he mumbled and I sighed thinking of how best to explain it to him.

“There are types of dark magic and I think instead of trying to figure out what it is, we should figure out what it is not," I explained. “Lois told me that there are two main types of dark magic, we have blood magic and black magic. I think it is very clear that this isn't blood magic or she would have needed to use your blood to give it to you."

“So this is black magic,” he deduced and I nodded.

“Not just any kind of black magic, you specifically mentioned being able to see shadows around my hands, right? Then I think that at its core, this is shadow magic. There are books on it in the private library but at its core, it is meant to manipulate the darkness and the unseen.” I could see that he was starting to understand exactly what I was explaining because he sat up straighter. “How do we explain me seeing auras then?”

“It might be a characteristic of shadow magic. I am not completely sure, this is just a theory but I think instead of trying to figure out what exactly we are dealing with, we can figure out what we aren't and take it from there.”

“This makes sense, but what about Reina? She could raise the dead, that is necromancy, she had the power over death."

“Remember what you told me? It said magic had a price, when she burned down her coven, that might have been her test. She failed it and it turned the magic inherently dark. If she could do all those things on her own, she wouldn't have needed all these spell books. Necromancy was something she had to learn.”

His eyes widened in understanding and he scoffed as he ran his hand down his face. I wasn't sure how right I was but somewhere in the depths of my heart, I knew that I as saying the right thing. It was the only thing that made sense at this moment. We were dealing with shadow magic.

For a full minute, Ryker said nothing and then he pulled me into his arms and kissed me deeply. I was taken aback by the kiss and it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. By the time he pulled back, my cheeks were flushed and I was breathing heavily.

“You are brilliant,” he whispered against my lips. “Do you know where I can find the books on shadow magic?”

“They're in the secret library. I can show you if you'd like,” I offered and he nodded. I started to leave when he grabbed my arm.

“There is one more thing," I stopped and turned to him. “Do you really think that burning her coven down was her test?”

“You said that was what you saw in the vision, right? Well then, it only makes sense. She was probably presented with a choice and she chose to kill them all”

“Surely there had to be another choice where she could have escaped without killing them, right?"

I thought about it for a second before shrugging. “I don't think magic gives us easy choices. Take me for example, on that cliff, I had a choice, I could have let Aurora die or I could have lost my powers to heal her. It is always a choice between two extremes.”

“What if I am given a choice like that?" he asked and I stilled. I hadn't thought about that. I was too focused on my happiness at having found out what we were dealing with. I opened my mouth to try and assure him but no words could come out because I knew they would be lies. “What if I am faced with the choice of saving myself or losing myself to the magic to save one of you”

“Then you save yourself” I said simply and he started to protest but I cut him off. “I would never be able to live with myself if I knew that you gave yourself up for us like that” “Camilla-"

“No,” I cut him off. “l won't let you lose yourself for me. I can't do this without you, do you get that?”

“I can't do it without you either,” he whispered and I knew- I knew without a doubt that he would never save himself.

All I could hope for in that moment was that it would never come down to it because on one hand, Ryker wasn't going to save himself, but on the other hand, I wasn't going to let him lose himself and in that kind of position, things could get ugly very quickly.