I cry out without meaning to, and through the door, I hear him respond. A low growl, barely audible, immediately suppressed. He's out there. Guarding me. Listening to me fall apart and refusing to help.
Refusing to enter. Refusing to leave.
The fever climbs higher. The need grows sharper. I lose track of time, lost in waves of desperate arousal that crest and break without relief. I touch myself with shaking hands, trying to take the edge off, but nothing helps. My body doesn't want my fingers. My body wants him.
Three days, he said.
I scream into my pillow and wonder if I'll survive that long. I wonder if I want to. And beneath the agony and the fury and the bone-deep need that threatens to shatter me, one thought circles endlessly.
He could end this. He could walk through that door and give me what I'm dying for. But he won't. Not until I crawl to him. Not until I break.
It takes every shred of willpower I have left not to rip the door open. Not to confront him as he waits on the other side,watching for me to shatter. And I don't know what would be worse—finding him there, watching me with those pale eyes while I beg for something I swore I'd never want, or finding the hallway empty. Finding out he walked away and left me to burn alone.
When this heat finally breaks, when I can think clearly again, I'm going to make him pay for every second of this torment.
6
STELLAN
She's screaming my name through the door, and every syllable is a knife in my chest.
I could end this. One turn of the lock, and I could bury myself inside her, knot her until the heat breaks, claim her so thoroughly she'd never doubt who she belongs to. My cock throbs against the confines of my trousers, aching and leaking, demanding what her body is begging for. The scent of her slick seeps through the gaps in the doorframe, thick and sweet and maddening, coating my tongue until I can taste her without even putting my mouth on her skin.
Instead, I don't move. And that single act of restraint costs me more than any battle I've ever fought.
The first day is the worst. Or so I tell myself, because I need to believe it gets easier. I've positioned myself against the wall opposite her door, close enough to hear every whimper and moan, far enough that I can't simply reach out and turn the handle. The stone is cold against my back. My claws have already scored grooves into the wall beside me, a small outlet for the control I'm barely maintaining.
Inside the room, Iris cries out again. Not words this time, just a raw sound of need that makes my wolf howl in response.He claws at the cage I've built for him, snarling and snapping, demanding that I go to her. She's ours, he insists. She needs us. Why do we make her suffer?
I don't have an answer he would understand. The beast in me doesn't comprehend the value of surrender freely given. He only knows the instinct to claim, to mate, to fill her until she's round with my sons and daughters. To mark her so thoroughly that every wolf in this territory can smell me on her skin.
The man in me wants something more.
I want her to remember this. I want her to remember every hour she fought, every moment she told herself she'd never give in. And I want her to remember the exact instant she stopped fighting. When she comes to me, and she will, I want her to know that she chose it. That all her strength and stubbornness couldn't change what she is or who she belongs to. That's the victory I've been waiting years to claim.
Hours pass. The light filtering through the corridor windows morphs from gray to gold to gray again. Servants approach with trays of food and pitchers of water, but I wave them away with a snarl that sends them scurrying. No one enters that room. No one breathes near that door except me.
Signe arrives at midday, her silver-blonde hair pulled back in a severe braid, her healer's bag clutched in steady hands. She takes one look at me and stops several feet away, her nostrils flaring as she catches the scent of blood and rut and barely leashed violence.
"She needs water," Signe says, her voice carefully neutral. "And cool cloths for the fever. Basic care that doesn't require an alpha's touch."
I stare at her for a long moment, my wolf bristling at the suggestion that anyone else tend to what's mine. But Signe is pack. Signe is a healer. And Signe is female, which means she poses no threat to my claim.
"Five minutes," I growl. "Leave the door open."
Signe nods and approaches the room. I unlock the door and step back, positioning myself in the corridor where I can see the bed through the open doorway. The scent that pours out nearly drops me to my knees. Rich and ripe and overwhelmingly female, laced with desperation and need that calls to every primitive instinct I possess.
Iris lies in the center of the bed, her skin flushed and damp, her dark hair matted against her forehead. She's stripped down to nothing, the sheets twisted around her legs, her hands fisted in the pillows. When the door opens, her head turns toward the sound, and her eyes find mine through the gap.
"Stellan." My name comes out broken, half plea and half accusation. "Please."
The word almost undoes me. I grip the doorframe hard enough to splinter the wood, my claws sinking deep into the grain. My cock pulses against my thigh, weeping with the need to answer her call as the knot begins to swell. Every cell in my body screams at me to go to her, to end her suffering, to take what we both want.
I don't move.
Signe works quickly, pressing cool cloths to Iris's forehead and throat, coaxing water between her cracked lips. Iris drinks greedily, her eyes never leaving mine, and the hate in them wars with raw, naked need. She doesn't ask again. Pride won't let her, even now, even with her body tearing itself apart from wanting.
That pride is part of why I want her. Part of why I've waited so long.
