Forbidden by Fate by Kristin Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

her around the corner. A massive wooden door was inset into the rock, flanked by two large oil lamps, burning bright. “Home?”
    He slid his hand along the top edge of the door, came up with a wrought-iron key and shoved it into the crude lock. “After you and I were finished, I went back to Castle Arcane to live with my clan. Turned out falling in love with a werewolf didn’t exactly scream loyalty to the Dracos.” He pushed on the door with the palm of his hand, letting a sliver of light into the cave. The warmth Sasha had picked up earlier swept through the crack in the door and hit her flush in the face. “I had to make a new home away from them…from everyone.”
    Sasha pieced together his words. His clan wouldn’t take him… because of her ? “You’re exiled?” Because of her decision to stick with her pack, Damon had spent all these years away from his family? Bearing the shame she would’ve endured had she stayed with him?
    Waves of guilt rocked and soured her stomach. He’d taken her spot under the guillotine.
    “You make it sound like they sawed off my left arm.” He pushed open the door fully, giving Sasha a glimpse at what had become his home.
    From the look of the goliath-sized vaulted ceiling, the center of the mountain had been carved out, leaving rough walls of stone and dirt. Damon had sectioned off a living room with a leather sofa facing an overflowing set of bookshelves and a wood-burning stove churning hot in the corner. A kitchen with wood counters and a stone slab table was situated in back. And on one living room wall, a door carved out of rock led to what Sasha assumed was Damon’s bedroom.
    But what had become Damon’s home wasn’t what stunned Sasha the most. It was the ceiling…or rather, what was drawn on the ceiling that rendered her speechless. Pictures of people, fish, bats, wolves and lizards had been picked or carved into the rock in some kind of linear fashion.
    “Did you do that?” she asked, pointing up, staring at all the markings.
    “No, that was done long before I came around.” He tossed his backpack in the corner and moved into the center of the living room, waiting for her to leave the doorway. “The cave was carved and the ceiling was designed. I simply hung the door and added some necessities.”
    She’d seen something like the etchings in books—they had to be hieroglyphics or tribal markings, though she could never imagine so many of them being found in one place. They nearly blanketed the ceiling. “Are they hieroglyphics? Like what’s in Egypt?”
    “No, they’re petroglyphs—stories carved into rock. They’re pictures turned into words, instead of symbols translating into an alphabet. They could’ve been done around the same time, though.” He paused, eyeing her curiously. “No way to tell unless we convince a scientist to jump through the portals to Feralon to research them. I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon.”
    It was a damned shame to leave the carvings as they were—hidden and unstudied. She gazed up at them a bit more and then realized she was using any excuse not to think about the more pressing issue—Damon.
    “I’m sorry for the way things turned out,” she said as she paced slowly around the room. “I guess I just thought you’ve been living with your clan all these years. If I’d known…”
    She stopped. What could she have done, exactly? Hell, she didn’t know.
    “Don’t worry about it, Sasha. I’ve done all right for myself. This place doesn’t have the workings of Were Mountain or Castle Arcane, but it’s fine. I only eat and sleep here.”
    It didn’t take long before Sasha was back at the door. Which made her think…
    “Why here?” She spun around. “Of all the places to make your home—the caves carved high in Timeless Gorge or the forest right outside the castle—why did you chose this place? I mean, it’s cool and all, with the petroglyph things and the river outside your door, but why?”
    He