Wolf of Stone novel Chapter 82

His voice sounded in my mind, "Precious..."

I ignored him.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Of course!" I exclaimed aloud, causing Liza to glance at me curiously.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, willing my thoughts away as I began to feel for the mental links that were floating at the back of my mind. Many solid yellow lines appeared intertwined and woven together as a whole new network was opened to me. As I tuned into these channels, I managed to pick up on the many voices that chattered mentally. Within all those channels, I glimpsed the blazing gold line that stood out among the rest; its light bright, steady, and welcoming.

I felt myself being drawn to that line as I leaned in closer. The emotions that came from that line urged me forward, telling me who it was that I was being called to.

My mate.

I touched the line tentatively and then dove right in as it readily embraced me.

"Axil?" I called out to him warily.

"You're finally accepting me," came his satisfied reply.

I furrowed my brow in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Normally, connecting to your mate mentally is supposed to be an easy and instinctive process. If you can't do that, then there's a high possibility that you're still refusing to accept your mate. It's like a mental block that you've barricaded around yourself. Your thoughts can filter out, but you're unwilling to seek out my thoughts, or maybe even afraid to." He explained.

"Barricaded around myself..." I muttered to myself thoughtfully.

An idea suddenly hit me, and my lips curled mischievously.

"Precious..." Axil's voice got deeper as he growled in warning over our link.

I pictured a room within my mind, with thick cemented walls that barely allowed noise to get filtered out. In that room, I placed all my thoughts and emotions within, blocking them from filtering out.

My mind suddenly became peaceful, and all I could hear was myself thinking. I could still strongly feel Axil's presence within my mind, but I felt like without my permission, he couldn't hear what I was thinking.

I did it.

I blocked him from hearing my thoughts.

A sense of satisfaction welled up inside me as a triumphant grin crossed my face.

I finally connected the dots. A bit late considering how simple it was, though.

I trembled in both pleasure, anger, and embarrassment, as I exclaimed, "Stop!"

Liza coughed from next to me and turned the other way as if she was intruding on something private, while the others simply ignored us and continued talking.

I was completely embarrassed.

"Precious... Unless you let me in..." he growled, his teeth lightly grazing his mark.

I immediately gave in at that, tearing down the room that I had just built up and allowing him to once again peer in on my thoughts.

As I felt his presence poke around in my mind, Axil released me and began walking back over to where Abel stood, leaving me standing there with a burning face as I felt the eyes of a few people from the crowd below staring at me intensely.

I couldn't even look them in the eye...

Another 10 minutes passed before Axil's voice sounded out.

"Let's begin," he said, his voice firm as he and Abel finally turned towards the people below us. Although his voice wasn't loud, with their supernatural hearing, it scattered over every inch of the clearing and caused all the chatter to slowly fade as everyone diverted their attention to us.

Axil then began his speech: "A lot has changed. Some of you found out that you were wolves; some regained their memories of being a werewolf, some realized this wasn't originally a human settlement while the others were finally freed from Tiana's curse. These past few weeks have been chaotic for everyone, and we've tried our best to accommodate your needs and to help you settle into this new reality that you've found yourselves thrust into. By now, I'm sure many of you have had your questions answered and have been informed of what happened to us in the past that brought us here today, fractured and barely hanging on, but I'm going to make it clear for the ones who are still in slight disbelief. Years ago, when our pack was striving, my mother and father were the Alpha and Luna of this pack. The Mystic Pride pack. My uncle Dexter was our beta."