“I know I shouldn’t be here,” I say, voice low and rough as gravel under boots. “But I couldn’t stay away.”
Something flickers in her eyes then. Not fear. Something warmer, more dangerous.
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t have to.
Because I’m already moving.
Three strides. That’s all it takes to reach her. And when I do, when her hands rise slowly—almost reverently—to frame my jaw, I feel something inside me fracture, deep and immediate, like a fault line cracking beneath the weight of too many years.
I lean in.
And when our mouths meet, it isn’t soft. It isn’t hesitant.
It’s fire.
It’s rage and grief and longing all tangled into one feral kiss that strips us down to skin and bone and need. Her lips part, breath catching as I claim her mouth with the kind ofdesperation that only comes from too many nights spent alone, too many days convincing myself I didn’t need what I’d lost.
She gasps, and that sound shatters whatever scraps of restraint I had left. My hands go to her waist, pulling her against me like she belongs there, like the space between us is the only wrong thing in the room. She doesn’t push me away. Her arms loop around my neck, fingers threading into my hair, anchoring me to her like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.
And maybe I am. Maybe this is a dream.
But if it is, it’s the sweetest one I’ve had in a hundred years.
Her lips taste like mint and honey, like the tea she drinks in the evenings when she thinks no one is paying attention, and the heat of her body seeps through every layer of clothing between us until I can’t tell where she ends and I begin. The wolf surges upward, howling through my blood, wild with approval and possession.
She’s ours, it growls.
Ours.
And then the shift hits.
A wave of heat bursts beneath my skin, so sudden and sharp I stumble back, gasping like I’ve been punched. My vision doubles, claws pushing through my fingers before I can stop them. The beast is no longer content to stay buried. It wantsout—wants her.
“No,” I snarl, digging my nails into the backs of my hands, trying to anchor myself with pain. “No, no, no…”
Tessa’s lips are parted, chest heaving, her arms slowly falling back to her sides as she stares at me with something between heartbreak and horror.
“Darius?” she says, her voice full of confusion, of soft bewilderment, not anger. Never anger.
I shake my head violently, backing away until my spine hits the bookcase behind me. “I can’t,” I whisper, more to myself than to her. “Ican’tdo this…”
“Do what?” she asks gently, taking a step toward me. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a kiss.”
“No,” I growl, the word ripping out of me like a wound. “It’s never just a kiss. Not with me. Not when there’s this…”
My hands are bleeding. I’ve gouged deep crescents into my own palms, the scent of my blood hitting the air with a copper tang that makes my stomach twist. I see her see it—and still, she doesn’t run.
She reaches a hand out. Not to grab, just tooffer.
And that’s what breaks me.
I bolt.
Out the door, down the hall, through the back into the snowdrifts that swallow me like a grave. The cold bites at my bare feet, my hands, my face, but I welcome it. Let it sink into me, let it punish me for daring to hope that something so warm, so human, so kind might want me.
I collapse near the old tree line, where the snow lies undisturbed and the wind howls loud enough to drown my sobs. I fall to my knees and press my forehead into the snow until the cold seeps all the way to my bones.
Because I kissed her.
