Baby System: My Mates Can Read my Mind?

Chapter 88: Episode 088: Iris’s Mate

"What? What do you mean by mate, Iris??"

Rue said the words too loud. The sound bounced off the cold stone walls of the bedroom.

Iris did not turn around immediately. She kept her forehead pressed against the thick glass. Her shoulders slumped forward, making her look incredibly small in her heavy winter coat.

"I mean exactly what I said," Iris whispered. She slowly turned around to face Rue. Her blue eyes were completely red and swollen from crying. "We are mates. Or we were supposed to be."

Rue felt a massive headache starting right behind her eyes. She reached up and rubbed her temples. She was already entirely exhausted. Now she was finding out Iris hid a massive, life-changing secret.

"Why didn’t you say it before?" Rue asked. She kept her voice steady, but the pure shock was completely obvious. "You told me the entire story about the border war. You told me about the blood and the snow. You cried for an hour. Why would you leave out the biggest part?"

Iris wrapped her thick gray blanket tighter around her chest. She looked down at her heavy boots on the stone floor.

"I thought it didn’t matter," Iris cried quietly. A fresh tear rolled down her pale cheek. "I thought I killed him, Rue. When you kill someone, it doesn’t matter if you were supposed to marry them. It just makes the guilt entirely worse. I didn’t want to say it out loud because saying it makes it real. It means I didn’t just kill a friend. I killed the other half of my own soul."

Rue shook her head. She walked right up to Iris. She didn’t hug her this time. She needed Iris to completely understand the reality of the situation. Rue lived with a giant snake and a massive panther. She understood exactly how the beastmen operated. She knew the absolute, terrifying power of a mating mark.

"It matters," Rue said firmly. "It matters more than anything else in this entire world. Iris, you are a wolf. You know how this works better than I do. A mate isn’t just a crush. It isn’t just a boy you like to talk to. It is pure biology."

Iris squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to turn her head away, but Rue gently grabbed her shoulders and held her in place.

"Look at me," Rue instructed. Her voice was soft but incredibly serious. "Think about my mates. Think about Caius. When I get a tiny scratch on my arm, the snake completely loses his mind. He wants to tear the forest apart just to keep me safe. Think about Knox. The panther traveled just because he smelled my scent in the air. That is what a mate bond does. It makes them absolutely crazy for you."

"I know. I know how strong it is."

"If Skoll is alive," Rue continued, pressing the hard truth into her friend’s hands. "He is carrying that bond right now. And he is completely alone in the freezing woods. If you put your blood inside his chest, he is hurting. But the broken mate bond is probably hurting him a thousand times more. It is tearing his mind apart every single second he stays away from you."

Iris covered her face with her hands.

Rue wrapped her arms around the crying princess. She felt terrible for pushing the harsh reality onto her friend, but she had to do it. Iris needed to stop hiding behind her guilt. She needed to wake up and fight for her mate.

"I completely ruined him," Iris whispered into her hands. "He probably hates me. The bond probably feels like absolute poison to him now."

"You don’t know that," Rue argued back gently. "You are just guessing. You have to find him and ask him yourself."

Suddenly, the dark room completely changed.

A bright, blinding blue light exploded in the cold air right in front of Rue’s face. The light was so harsh it actually cast sharp shadows against the stone walls.

Iris couldn’t see the light at all. She just kept crying on the floor.

But Rue saw it perfectly. The system screen hovered directly over Iris’s shaking shoulders. It didn’t pulse softly this time. The blue text flashed wildly, completely demanding her attention.

[Emergency Quest Triggered.]

Rue stared at the glowing letters. She felt her stomach completely drop. The system never gave her emergency quests unless someone was about to die.

The text scrolled rapidly across the screen.

[Target: Skoll. Status: Critical condition. Mind deteriorating rapidly.]

[Objective: Find the lost mate before the feral transition becomes permanent.]

Rue froze, as she read the words three times just to make sure she understood them correctly. The system was confirming everything Axel and Iris just talked about. Skoll was definitely alive. But his mind was actually breaking. He was turning into a feral monster out there in the dark trees.

[Warning: If Skoll completes the feral transition, the Northern Wolf Pack will suffer a massive casualty event. You must find him immediately.]

Rue swallowed hard.

But she looked down at Iris. The Wolf Princess was entirely broken, sobbing on the hard floor. Rue thought about how much Iris helped her back at the Convergence. Iris made her laugh when she was terrified. Iris welcomed her baby without a single question.

Rue couldn’t just let her friend’s mate turn into a monster. She had to help.

The system flashed one final, terrifying message.

[Time remaining until permanent feral transition: 12 hours.]

Twelve hours. That was absolutely nothing. They barely had enough time to put on their heavy snow boots and grab a lantern. The sun was completely gone. The woods outside were entirely pitch black.

Rue took a massive, shaky breath. The blue screen vanished into thin air, leaving the room dark and cold again.

She grabbed Iris’s hands and pulled them away from her wet face.

"Iris, It’s okay," Rue softly spoke, but her tone was firm and full of raw urgency. "I need you to stand up right now."

Iris sniffled. She looked at Rue with entirely confused, red eyes. "What? Why?"

"Because we are leaving this room," Rue told her. She stood up and pulled Iris up with her. "We are going to go find your mate. We need Axel to gather the best trackers in the pack. We are going into the woods tonight."

"Tonight?" Iris gasped. She wiped her nose with her thick gray sleeve. "Rue, it is completely freezing outside. There is a massive storm blowing in. We won’t be able to see a single thing in the dark."

"We don’t have a choice," Rue said firmly. She walked over to the wooden table and grabbed her thick fur cloak. She threw it over her shoulders and tied the heavy strings under her chin. "He doesn’t have any time left. If we don’t find him tonight, we lose him forever."

Iris stared at her. She didn’t understand how Rue suddenly knew all of this, but she saw the absolute certainty burning in Rue’s pink eyes. The Wolf Princess slowly nodded her head. She grabbed her own winter coat.

They walked toward the heavy wooden door of the bedroom. Rue reached out and wrapped her cold fingers around the iron handle.

She was ready to pull the door open and run straight across the hall to Axel’s room.

Before she could even pull the handle, a deafening noise ripped through the quiet palace.

It wasn’t a guard shouting. It wasn’t the wind howling against the stone walls.

It was a massive, terrifying crash coming right from the window behind them.

Rue and Iris both spun around instantly.

The thick, frosted glass of the bedroom window entirely shattered inward. Millions of sharp, freezing ice shards exploded into the room, raining down all over the padded window seat and the stone floor. The cold wind blasted inside, instantly blowing the fire completely out and throwing the room into total darkness.

A giant, completely monstrous figure ripped through the broken window frame and landed heavily on the bedroom floor.

A low, wet, furious growl echoed in the dark.