This can’t happen again.
No matter how she smells. No matter what the beast wants. No matter what her voice does to the broken, bitter man still buried somewhere inside this shell.
Isolde didn’t die because she was weak.
She died because I was foolish enough to believe I could have both love and control. Humanity and the wolf. She believed it too, in the beginning. But in the end, all she saw was the truth.
And if Tessa ever gets too close, she’ll see it too.
I will not make that mistake again.
I will not let the Pact crack further because I couldn't keep my distance.
So I isolate myself. I return to the shadows. I avoid the hallways she walks, the rooms she lingers in, the places where her scent pools too strongly. I keep to the old chamber, the library, the study. I speak only when necessary. I become a ghost again.
Because that’s what it takes to keep her safe.
And if the beast inside me keeps snarling for her, clawing at the edges of my mind like it remembers how to want, how toclaim, how tomate—then I’ll bury it deeper.
Again and again.
Until it forgets what it’s smelled.
5
TESSA
The longer I stay in this house, the more it feels like being snowed into a cathedral built for silence. Everything echoes just enough to make you feel like you’re never truly alone, but not enough to remind you anyone’s actually nearby. That’s what makes this morning’s project so ridiculous—me, padding through ancient hallways in my socks with a breakfast tray in hand, mumbling to myself like some overly ambitious caretaker in a haunted manor.
“Toast, eggs, and fruit,” I mutter as I steady the tray. “And tea. Because coffee might be toointense, apparently.”
I didn’t even get a chance to ask what he likes. I just threw together what I could. I needed an excuse to actually go see my patient. How am I supposed to monitor vitals or take labs cooped up in a spooky gothic mansion room all day, waiting for him to allow me in?
So naturally, I’m going to invite myself carefully.
Because if this man is as sick—or as dangerous—as everyone keeps dancing around saying he is, then a warm breakfast and some quiet company might do him more good than sterile silence. I’ve taken care of war veterans and dementia patients,people whose pain made them cruel, whose grief turned to rot. And I know this much for sure: when people build walls that high, they usually don’t want to be alone.
They’re just scared.
I stop outside the door to what I’ve been told is his “receiving room”—a term that makes me feel like I’m in a Victorian drama—and balance the tray in one hand while I knock gently with the other.
No answer.
I wait, counting to ten in my head, watching the tray start to tremble just a little from the chill in the corridor. Still nothing. I glance down the hallway—empty, quiet, no Mary in sight—and knock again, just slightly louder.
“Mr. Crane?” I ask, my voice soft but clear. “It’s Tessa. I’ve brought breakfast.”
Silence.
I shift my weight, chewing the inside of my cheek. He might be asleep. He might be brooding in a corner like a vampire. He might be deliberately ignoring me. And part of me knows I should just leave the tray outside and go.
But something urges me forward anyway.
I curl my fingers around the old brass handle, twist it slowly. The door creaks open—unlocked. Against the rules, yes. But my nursing license has taught me when to bend rules for human needs, and this feels like one of those moments.
What I’mnotexpecting is to walk straight into the middle of Darius Crane’s morning routine.
He’s shirtless.
