Maybe defecting changes more than which side claims your loyalty. Maybe it changes something about how you see yourself. About what matters. I’m beginning to realize that I have no idea who I am without the structure the Syndicate provided.
The fire crackles. The storm fades. Across the flames, she pulls her knees tighter and stares at nothing.
We wait for dawn.
And I doubt either of us is ready for what comes after.
Chapter 10
Nadia
I jolt awake with my back against stone and his scent in every breath. That’s the first thing I notice. Not the cold. Not the muscles locked from dozing upright. His scent—even suppressed by the cuffs, even across eight feet of shelter—threading through the air.
Clean. Male. Dragonfire buried beneath metal and runes, but not hidden. Not from my wolf.
She stirs. Hungry.
I keep my eyes closed and try to remember why I hate him. The memories come: Chance’s funeral. The phone call that shattered my world. The grief that emptied me out and filled the space with rage. But underneath those memories, my body hums. Heat simmers low in my belly despite the cold. Despite everything.
Traitor.
I force my eyes open. He’s sitting exactly where he was last night. Back against the wall. Cuffed wrists still in his lap. Watching me with those unsettling gray eyes. Not mocking. Not threatening. Just… watching.
“Storm’s breaking,” he says quietly. His voice does something to my spine. Travels down it like a caress I didn’t ask for.
I push myself up before my body can betray me further. Every muscle protests. “Good.”
Silence fills the space between us. Awkward in a way violence never was. I should acknowledge what happened. The fight. The heat. The breakdown where I curled against a wall and came apart.
I don’t. Just stand and brush ash off the coat. Check my weapons. Keep my eyes on anything except him.
“We’re leaving,” I announce.
“All right.” That’s it. No argument. No questions about where or why or what happens next. Just agreement.
It troubles me more than resistance would. I expected him to push back. Assert dominance. Make demands. That’s what Syndicate commanders do. What dragons do.
Instead, he waits for me to decide. Like my choices matter more than his. I hate that this bothers me.
We leave the shelter in silence. Step out into a world scrubbed white. Snow has stopped but lies thick across everything. No tracks. No sound except wind through pines.
I start walking. East, back toward where the convoy burned. He follows. The awareness hits immediately. Fifteen feet behind me. Then twelve. His boots crunching through snow in a rhythm my wolf tracks automatically.
Heat builds beneath my skin. Low. Insistent. Wrong.
I count steps. Focus on terrain. On maintaining distance. On anything except the way my body keeps trying to turn around. Keeps wanting to close the space between us.
Thirty minutes pass. Maybe forty.
The heat doesn’t fade. Just simmers. Constant reminder that my biology has rewritten years of certainty into something I can’t control.
My wolf wants to slow down. Let him catch up. Let him get close enough that—
No.
I walk faster. He matches my pace without comment. Stays exactly twelve feet back. Giving me space I desperately need and somehow making it worse by being thoughtful about it.
An hour passes. The sun climbs behind clouds. Visibility improves. Forest thins as we approach the road. Smoke rises ahead. The convoy site. We stop at the tree line.
