Bronc broke it. “You sound off, Wrecker. What’s the real ask?”
I hesitated. My tongue felt too big in my mouth. “When did you know?” I asked finally. “About Juliet. That it wasn’t just the bond, but actual love?”
Another pause. This one, softer. “First time I saw her laugh at my ugly ass. I knew the wolf part, sure. But the man part took longer.” He waited. “You having doubts?”
“No.” That was a lie, and everyone on the line could taste it.
Juliet’s voice went warm, almost gentle. “Are you worried you’ll lose her to what Silas will do to her, or worried you’ll lose yourself if you claim her?”
I gritted my teeth. The memory of Parker’s body, slick and sweet and shivering in my arms, slammed back into me. I’d almost bitten her. I’d almost gone full animal, just to stamp out the stink of Silas’s hands on her. If I hadn’t held back, I’d have marked her—forever, whether she wanted it or not. “It’s not the bite that scares me,” I said. “It’s the after. Once I do it, that’s it. No way to undo it.”
Bronc’s laugh was a slow roll of thunder. “That’s the point, brother. No take-backs. No trial period. You put your mark on her, you’re in for the long haul.”
Juliet cut in. “You don’t have to wait, you know. There’s no perfect time, no event horizon. If you want her, you do it now, when she’s awake and can say yes.”
“She deserves a choice,” I said.
“Then ask,” Juliet said, voice sudden and sharp. “Don’t be a coward. It’s better than marking her by accident during a full moon.”
I leaned back in the chair, head thumping the wall. The urge to howl was close, so close, but I’d rather die than let anyone hear that sound. “She’s every bit as smart as I am,” I said. “Maybe too smart for me. She’s all about books, and nerd movies, and her dog. She thinks she’s broken, but she’s not. She’s just—” I stopped. Started again. “She’s good. Like,reallygood. Her heart, it’s got a pureness like I’ve never seen.”
Juliet snorted, but it was affectionate. “I bet she’s also a pain in the ass, just like you. Most people with pure hearts are. Maybe that’s why it works.”
Bronc’s voice softened. “What do you want, Eli? Not what the wolf wants. Not what your body wants. What does the rest of you want?”
I thought about Parker, her laughter in my kitchen, the way she poured coffee like it was holy water, her obsession with taking things apart just to see if she could fix them. I thought about her loyalty to her brother, even after he screwed her over. I thought about the first night I saw her in the pack house, years ago, when she was nothing but a spitfire kid with a chip on her shoulder and a hunger to prove herself.
“I want to keep her,” I said. “I want to protect her. But I want her to want me, not just the bond.”
Juliet let out a sigh, all the air in the room rushing out with it. “If you wait for certainty, you’ll wait forever. She’s already choosing you, Eli. Let her.”
I stared at the phone. The little glowing screen, the line of dead pixels across the top. “Thanks,” I said, and meant it.
“We got your six,” Bronc said. “But don’t wait too long. Silas’s got a death wish, and I’d hate to miss the fireworks.”
I ended the call. Sat there in the half-light, listening to the blood thrum in my ears.
Maybe Juliet was right. Maybe my wolf knew something the rest of me didn’t. Maybe it was time to stop waiting for the perfect moment, and just grab hold before it slipped through my fingers.
I went back to the bedroom. Parker hadn’t moved. She’d pulled my pillow to her chest, and her lips moved in a half-smile, like she was dreaming of something sweet. I knelt by the bed, put my head on her hip, and let the silence fill me up.
“I’ll wait until you say yes,” I whispered, the words barely audible, even to myself. “But when you do, I won’t ever let you go.”
I stayed there, counting her breaths, until the sky outside shifted from black to orange and blue and the day began again.
The days passed in a blur of static, screens, and the slow decay of willpower.
We watched Silas on the cameras she’d planted, each grainy feed flickering in the darkness of my den. Parker hunched over the monitors, knees tucked to her chest, mug of tan coffee balanced dangerously on the arm of the chair. She only ever seemed at ease when she was surveilling. There were moments when I caught her smiling—sharp, feral grins when Greenbriar’s dumbest foot soldiers tripped over a trap, or when Silas launched into one of his classic fits of desk-flipping rage. But mostly, she watched with the same hollow focus of someone waiting for the guillotine blade to fall.
I was there too, glued to the other half of the war: the code. Every hour, I combed the server logs for evidence that the data tap was working, cross-referenced every ping, every shadow in the Greenbriar system. We were getting everything: schedules, blackmail, bribes, the dirt Silas needed to run his empire. He talked to his men like a dictator in a bunker, every word weighted with contempt. But the real work, the plotting, always happened in the locked “war room.” No camera. No audio. No sense of what went on behind that door, unless Parker was in the room to plant a bug herself. Which would never happen, not after last time.
Her neck was still ringed with bruises, now a sickly mix of yellow and green. She wore high collars, but I saw her fingers ghost up to the bruising every time Silas’s face appeared on-screen. It made my wolf want to kill him, slow and public.
On the third day, I came back from the shop at lunch to find her still staring at the monitors, face bathed in the blue-whiteglow. She hadn’t moved in hours except to refill her coffee. Her eyes were dry and red, like she’d forgotten how to blink.
I crouched next to her chair. “You’re starting to look like me,” I said, keeping my voice soft. “It’s not a good look.”
She didn’t react at first. Then she turned, pupils huge and bottomless. “I can’t stop,” she said. “What if I miss something?”
