The connection flickers, weak and crackling, and then her voice comes through—thin and broken—and her words nearly rob me of my ability to breathe.
Help…need help. It’s here. My heat?—
Her presence in my mind disappears, leaving a chill behind in her wake.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t explain. I don’t spare a thought for the trespassers or the danger still lingering behind me. The territory could be burning to the fucking ground around me, and I still wouldn’t stop or slow down. My only priority and focus is getting to my mate.
Shifting mid-stride, my wolf rising easily and the change seamless, I launch into a sprint.
Hold on, baby, I’m coming for you.
The forest blurs into streaks of shadow and snow as I tear through it, breath burning, muscles eating the distance that stands between me and my girl. Fear gnaws at my bones in a way I recognize too well. It’s the same hollowed-out panic that nearly consumed me whole during my run to Ashvale, when the town was burning and every mile I crossed carried the question of whether I’d get to her in time. The same terrible certainty that something precious is actively fracturing while I’m still racing toward it.
Her life is on the line now, just as it was before.
But there’s no enemy standing over her with a blade at her throat. The enemy is her own body and the way it’s failing her. And it’ll only unravel faster with the full force of this super heat slamming into her while I’m not there to act as her strength andshield. The sick truth of this beats in time with my thundering heart.
I curse myself with every stride for letting distance exist between us at all. Forty minutes. Less. It doesn’t matter. Time became irrelevant the moment instinct screamed that I’ve made the wrong call, and am now paying the price for it.
I knew better.
I felt it in my gut the moment she said she’d be safe at home alone. Felt the lie wrapped into reassurance, the same way I felt it when she insisted she could delay my claim. She told me she wanted time so we could discover who we were together before the bond factored into everything, before it locked us into permanence. It was a reasonable truth. One I reluctantly accepted.
But I’ve always known there was more beneath it. Under the careful explanation she gave aloud lived the part she kept close to her chest. That she still needed time to finish healing the damage I’d carved into her psyche with my rejection. Time to make sure those old wounds wouldn’t bleed into a bond that would irrevocably braid her heart lines to mine.
I believe her when she says she’s forgiven me, I do. But forgiveness doesn’t easily loosen the binds of fear. And it doesn’t soften the whiplash of going from surviving my dismissal to surrendering herself completely to me and my bite.
As I said, I knew better. Knew waiting would be no better than gambling with her life.
Foolish.
I’m roughly a hundred yards from where I left the others when something moves at my right, too fast, too sudden to brace. There’s only a blur and then impact.
A brutal force slams into my side and sends us both crashing to the forest floor. Snow mixed with mud explode around us as I hit hard, oxygen ripping out of my lungs.
There’s no time to think. No time to question how I didn’t sense him, why there was no warning, no sound, no scent. I rip my attention away from Noa only because I have to, because keeping my focus locked on her will get me killed. I roll hard and surge upright, barely avoiding the snapping jaws of the beige-and-gray wolf lunging for me.
We circle, heads low, hackles raised. I draw in a deep breath, and it takes effort to catch his scent. It’s faint and distorted, buried under something sharp and wrong. Magic is my guess. But up close, there’s just enough remaining beneath it to smell the truth.
Recognition hits like a punch between the ribs.
Councilman Randolph.
The older alpha male appointed to his position during my father’s reign, rewarded for his devout faith in Merritt’s ways. The same bastard who told me at the party that my father would be ashamed of me for choosing a girl over my pack. For choosing my mate. And then he’d followed Darran over the proverbial line to join McNamara.
The desperation rolling off him now is thick and he all but vibrates with reckless and unchecked urgency. He lunges first, teeth snapping, but I don’t retreat. I meet him head-on. We slam together, bodies colliding with a bone-jarring force.
I’m stronger. I know it. He knows it too. But desperation and stupidity make men dangerous, and it buys him an opening.
Pain blooms white-hot and searing at my right side as his canines sink in, tearing flesh. Not a kill wound, but it’s enough to have me faltering. I twist, ripping free before he can do real damage. Blood soaks my fur there, warm against the frigid air, but I barely register it.
Somewhere in the distance I hear shouting. Feet pounding through the half-melted now. Amara and her coven. My pack. Closing fast.
I don’t need them to win this.
We slam into each other again, rolling, snarling, the fight devolving into a fury of pure violence.
The old wolf’s strength falters. I sense the moment he fully comprehends the magnitude of his mistake in attacking me.Alone. Fear overtakes whatever conviction he has left to fuel him.
