And that is precisely why I must keep my distance.
I stand, muscles aching as I walk to the tall, distorted mirror that hangs like a relic in the far corner of the room. The glass, warped from age and cold, reflects a version of me I barely recognize. My chest, raw and marred. My shoulders tense with restraint. My eyes, faintly gold even in this light, flickering with the hunger I’ve tried so long to suppress.
This is what’s left of me, one of the last founders of The Crimson Pact. A pact made to prevent this exact descent, to hold us accountable when our instincts threatened to swallow us whole. I remember the day we carved our vows into the ritual stone, the four of us standing together as if unity alone could keep the beast at bay. We thought we were making history, but all we did was delay the inevitable.
I built this place. I buried myself in it. But the cracks are showing now. And I’m not sure how much longer the walls will hold.
I turn away from the mirror, dragging on a clean shirt despite the sting as fabric brushes against the scratches. They’ll heal fast, as everything on me does, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt. In fact, they remind me exactly how close I am to slipping.
I move to the window, drawing back the curtain just enough to see out. The sky is gray, the kind of heavy, low-hanging gray that promises snow without offering the decency of beauty. The garden below is half-frozen, the ground stiff and brittle.
And she’s there.
Kneeling by the fountain in a too-thin coat, brushing snow from the lip of the stone like she’s searching for life beneath the frost. She’s so focused, so present, so... human. But not in the way that makes her fragile. She is not delicate.
She is grounded.
And that's a problem.
Because grounded women don’t run. Grounded women don’t flinch.
Grounded women stay. And when they stay, they see. And when they see what I really am—what I’ve buried, what I’ve lost, what I can’t ever give—they bleed.
Even Rafe would have known better.
He’d have sensed it coming the moment she stepped onto the property. He’d have laughed, probably, and called me an idiot for letting it get this far. Then he would’ve said something crude about claiming her and tearing the problem apart before it could become complicated. But underneath all that violence, he would’ve understood. Because Rafe never pretended to be better than the beast inside him. He wore it like armor and dared the world to challenge him.
I envy that.
But if I stop pretending, if I stop restraining, if I let it in even a little—what happens to her?
What happened to Isolde?
I close my eyes and inhale, but it’s a mistake. Her scent drifts in again, soft and clinging, stirring the hunger like an ember fanned in the dark.
I curse under my breath and step back, slamming the window shut, locking the latch, as if it will help. It doesn’t. The wolf is already pacing, already remembering the shape of her.
And I’m starting to remember what it felt like to want without control.
That’s when it happens—quick, unplanned, instinctive.
I find myself in the old training chamber two floors below, where the air is colder, the light scarce, and the stone walls remember everything. I train until I’m gasping, until the muscles in my back threaten to snap, until the fire in my blood quiets into something I can contain.
I bury the hunger under exhaustion. Under discipline. Under guilt. It’s the entire reason she was even brought here. Decades of burying have taken its toll on me, mentally and physically. I thought the right concoction of medicine might bring me some relief.
Instead I’ve brought my own undoing right into my mansion. Under contract. With no way to safely send her home for months.
So I’ll have to bury it even harder. Because if I don’t, she’s the one who’ll pay for it.
7
TESSA
The snow starts slow.
Just a whisper of flakes brushing the glass in delicate spirals, like nature’s gentle warning. But I’ve lived through enough storms to know when something’s rolling in with more than just a scenic dusting, and by the time I’m elbow-deep in potting soil inside the greenhouse, the wind’s already howling through the trees like it’s looking for something to tear apart.
Still, I stay.
