My wolf surges. Not gentle. Violent enough that I stumble on the landing. She throws herself against my control, snarling furyand grief and the overwhelming sense ofwrong wrong wrongthat makes my vision blur.
I grip the railing. Breathe through it.
My eyes are burning. When I catch my reflection in the stairwell window, they’re pale green bleeding to platinum. My wolf trying take over and go back and fix what I just broke.
I blink hard. Reach for the human in me; it’s a struggle. By the time I reach my quarters, I’m shaking badly enough that it takes three tries to unlock the door.
Inside. Door closed. Safe.
Except I don’t feel safe. I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams.
I cross to the window. Stare out at the mountains. Aurora’s territory stretches in all directions. This is home. Has been for years. Safe. Familiar. Mine.
Except now it feels contaminated. Everywhere I look, I’m aware of him somewhere in this building.
The briefing room flashes through my mind. Walking in. Seeing him standing near the tactical display. Professional. Controlled. Every line of his body radiating military discipline.
For half a second, when our eyes met, I wanted to go to him. Wanted to acknowledge what happened. Wanted to see if he felt even a fraction of what I was feeling.
Then he looked away.
Cold. Deliberate. Cut me off completely like I didn’t exist. Like the night before never happened.
That hurt.
My wolf surges again. Harder this time. My hands grasp at the window ledge, and this time, I can’t stop the transformation. Claws fully extended. Scraping stone. Leaving marks.
No.The word isn’t verbal. Just overwhelming sensation. Wrongness. The bone-deep certainty that I’ve made a catastrophic mistake.
“Stop,” I say out loud. Speaking to her. To myself. To the empty room.
She doesn’t stop. Just keeps throwing herself at my control. Showing me images. Memories. His hands on my skin. His teeth on my shoulder. The way he looked at me right before—
The guilt hits then. Crushing weight that makes my knees buckle. I sink onto my bed. Bury my face in my hands.
I had sex with Chance’s killer.
I can’t get that thought out of my head.
Chance and I were bonded. Soul mates. Years together. Years of happiness and partnership and love that was supposed to last forever.
Then Jericho gave an order and Chance died and I spent years drowning in grief so profound I thought it would kill me.
And I threw it all away in one night.
My wolf rejects this violently. Not words. Just raw emotion. Images that aren’t memories—Jericho’s eyes going cold when I said I didn’t need him. The hurt beneath his control. The way something shut down in his expression before the mask fell.
She shows me what I did. Makes me see it. Makes me feel it.
“He killed Chance,” I say. Need to hear it spoken. “I can’t just forget that. Can’t forgive it.”
The response is physical. My fangs elongate. My eyes burn. Heat floods my system that has nothing to do with the cycle that ended this morning.
She’s furious. Not at Jericho. At me. For lying. For denying. For pushing away what she knows with absolute certainty.
A knock at the door startles us both.
My fangs retract. Eyes fade back to green. I stand and try to compose myself.
