His first shot goes wide. He only gets one off before I’m inside his reach.
My fist connects with his jaw, and he stumbles back, boots scraping ice. I follow with a hard jab to his gut, not enough to break anything, just enough to make him feel how deep I’m willing to go if he pushes me. He tries to swing at me, but I catchhis wrist and twist, flipping him over my hip and slamming him into the snow-covered rock.
I straddle him, pinning him down with one knee to his chest, and I raise my arm.
He looks up at me, blood in his teeth, hate in his eyes.
“You don’t win,” he gasps. “Not this. You’re property. You always were.”
And for a second, everything turns white.
I see the room again—the cell where they kept me. I hear Roman’s voice behind the glass. I feel the shock collar bite into my throat like it did the day they first called me monster to my face.
And I almost let go. But then I hear her.
Angie.
She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t beg. She just says my name. Quiet. Unshaken.
“Cassian.”
That’s all it takes to pull the fury back down inside me like a fist closing around fire.
I lower my arm. Breathe. Let the bear stand down.
I push off Harrow’s chest and rise. He coughs, curling on his side, humiliated, broken but still breathing. Blood stains the snow in a wide smear around his head, red on white like a warning to anyone else who thinks they can leash me again.
I look at him one last time.
“I’m not yours,” I say, voice steady. “I never was.”
Then I turn away.
Angie’s there, wide-eyed, arms crossed, breathing hard like she’s been holding her breath this whole time, and when I reach her, she doesn’t flinch. She just steps in close and rests her hand on my chest, right over my heart, where the thunder still pounds in me.
“You didn’t finish it,” she whispers.
“No,” I say. “I chose something else.”
She nods, and that’s all she does, because she understands better than anyone that this wasn’t just a fight—it was a reckoning.
And I walked away from it whole.
Because this time, the bear didn’t rise for rage.
He rose for love.
18
CASSIAN
The door slams shut behind us, pine resin and cold still clinging to our clothes, and then Angie’s hands are on my chest. Not soft, not tentative. She shoves, hard, driving me back against the rough-cut log wall of the cabin. A puff of dust shakes loose from the chinking. Her eyes, wide and fierce only moments ago when I walked away from Harrow, now burn with a different kind of fire.
"Almost lost you," she breathes, the words hot against the base of my throat. Her fingers claw at the buckles of my heavy parka, frantic. "Saw him aiming... saw you..." Her voice chokes off, replaced by the harsh sound of fabric tearing as she yanks the coat open, pushes it off my shoulders.
I don't move. She owns this moment. I let the rough bark bite into my back as her hands slide under my thermal layer, ice-cold fingertips searing trails across my heated skin. Her mouth crashes against mine, not gentle, not seeking permission, but demanding. Claiming. Her tongue invades, tasting of snow and desperation.
My hands find her hips, pulling her flush against me. The hard ridge of my cock strains against my pants, an urgent pulseagainst her lower belly. She moans into my mouth, a low, hungry sound that vibrates through me.
