We stood in the Ritual Chamber, the four of us. No light but firelight, no sound but the distant howl of wolves echoing through the Alaskan range. The walls were carved with our oath, etched in stone by hands older than mine. And when the final blood vow was made, when our hands met and the circle was sealed, I felt—for a moment—peace. Not the absence of danger, but the belief that we’d finally done something right.
We were going to protect them. The humans. The innocents. Even if it meant denying ourselves everything we were.
Cassian was the first to withdraw. He stopped attending the moon rites. Said they stirred the bear too much, that the guilt made the blood run too hot. No one blamed him—not at first. He’d lost control once, and the cost was a village buried beneath snow and screams. So we let him go north.
Rafe unraveled after. Too much violence with nowhere to put it. He needed the fight, the outlet, the fear. So he went underground, and we stopped asking questions. Better there than loose in the world.
Malek… well. Malek wanted power, and when our Pact stopped giving him the crown he believed he deserved, he made one of his own. Said peace was a leash. Said control was weakness. Said I was a coward.
He wasn’t wrong.
Because I was too afraid to stop him. Or any of them.
And when she died—when Isolde fell—I knew the truth.
It wasn’t the world that broke The Crimson Pact.
It was me.
My hands tremble, just slightly, as the memory fades. Not from grief. That’s dulled into something quieter, colder. No, what I feel now is something else entirely.
Tessa.
She’s in the east wing, probably reading the letter I left for her on the hall table—typed, of course, impersonal, structured, a reminder that I am not a man open to questions or familiarity. I made sure it outlined her duties with precise clarity. Dosage logs, sedation protocols, daily observation checklists. Nothing soft. Nothing warm.
Nothing human.
But her scent, it moves through the vents, winding through the stone bones of this house like smoke from a fire I didn’t mean to light. It’s stronger now than it was yesterday. Richer. Like she’s starting to shed the last of the city from her skin and absorb the wildness here, the cold and the pine and the silence. And underneath it all, there’s that maddening pull—vanilla and sunlight and something fragile that makes my wolf restless.
I close my eyes, press my fingertips to them, and breathe deep.
It’s a mistake, and I know it the moment I do it.
The wolf shudders awake inside me, stretching like an animal that’s been caged too long and smells freedom close. My shoulders ache as if something is trying to split them. My teeth itch. My pulse pounds through my jaw and down my spine.
She’s not just a nurse. She can’t be.
She’smarkedsomehow.
No. Not marked. That’s too dangerous a word. That’s a word I buried with Isolde, swore never to say again. But the way my body reacts to her—the way the beastrecognizesher—it’s not a coincidence.
I rise from the chair and begin to pace, trying to burn it off. Trying to shake her scent from my lungs, her image from my mind—those wide, guarded eyes that watched me without fear, that voice like warm honey edged with steel when she greeted me in the corridor, her chin high despite knowing she was caught somewhere she didn’t belong.
She didn’t run.
Most do.
They smell the wolf in me before they even see me. Sense the violence beneath the surface and take the hint. But not her.
She looked at me like I was broken, yes—but not beyond repair.
That’s the danger of women like her. They make you believe in things that aren’t real.
I pass the window and catch a glimpse of my reflection: shadowed, sharp, a man worn down to edges. My jaw is tighter than it should be, my eyes gleaming faintly in the firelight. The wolf is closer to the surface now than it’s been in years. Too close. And the only thing between me and catastrophe is the locked door to the west wing, the rituals carved into the floor of the chamber beneath the estate, and the strength of my own restraint.
Which means I’m already losing.
I grab the bottle from the mantle—scotch, twenty years older than I am—and pour two fingers into the tumbler. It burns down my throat like guilt.
