A long pause. Then Kol’s dry chuckle. “Security purposes. Right. I’m sure that’s all it is.”
“Kol.”
“Understood, Alpha. I’ll keep the patrols tight.”
When he set the walkie aside, Winslet was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “You didn’t tell him about Bracken.”
“My clan doesn’t need to know about external threats unless they become immediate dangers.” The partial truth satuncomfortably on his tongue, but revealing that his human mate had brought organized crime to their doorstep would create complications he wasn’t ready to handle.
“External threats,” she repeated softly. “Is that what I am?”
Korrak turned to face her fully, his hands framing her face with gentle authority. “You are the furthest thing from a threat. You’re...” He paused, searching for words that wouldn’t reveal too much too soon. “You’re important to me, Winslet.”
The afternoon passed in a haze of growing intimacy—conversations by the fire where she asked about the jagged scar across his ribs, and he found himself sharing stories he’d never told anyone. The foolish mistake he’d made as a young Alpha, thinking dominance meant aggression, learning the hard way that true leadership required restraint and wisdom.
“I still can’t believe you became Alpha at just seventeen,” she said, tracing the line of his jaw. “That’s so young to inherit that much responsibility.”
“It’s old enough to learn that caring about people makes you vulnerable,” he replied, then caught himself. The words had slipped out without permission, revealing more than he’d intended.
“Is that what you think? That caring about me makes you weak?”
Korrak captured her wandering hand, pressing it flat against his chest where his heart thundered beneath her palm. “I think caring about you makes me dangerous to anyone who might try to hurt you.”
As the night deepened and exhaustion finally clawed at her, he carried her to bed with the reverence of a man handling something precious. When they were both bare beneath his sheets, skin against skin, the mate bond hummed with contentment.
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” she murmured against his shoulder.
“Because you’re finally safe,” he said, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “Your body knows it can rest now.”
Outside, the snow continued to fall, and inside his sanctuary, Korrak held his mate as she drifted into a deep sleep, already planning how he would protect this fragile peace they’d found in each other.
ELEVEN
WINSLET
Consciousness returned to Winslet like a slow sunrise, warmth seeping into her bones before awareness fully bloomed. The sensation was so alien—this deep, unguarded peace—that for a moment she didn’t recognize it as her own body responding to safety. The storm outside pressed against the cabin walls with muffled persistence, but the sound felt protective rather than threatening, as if the blizzard had wrapped itself around them like a cocoon.
Korrak’s arm draped across her waist, his chest rising and falling against her back in the steady rhythm of deep sleep. His warmth anchored her to the present, solid and real in a way that made her chest tight with an emotion she didn’t dare name.
This is the real danger,she thought, her fingers tracing the corded muscle of his forearm.How easy it would be to believe this could last.
But even wrapped in his bed, even surrounded by the evidence of their growing connection, she wasn’t naive enough to think the storm had solved anything. Reality would eventually crash back in with brutal efficiency—questions about what she was to him, and Bracken, always Bracken, hunting her withthe relentless patience of a predator who’d never learned the meaning of defeat.
The bond forming between her and Korrak didn’t exist in some magical vacuum where the past or consequences couldn’t touch them. But for this one suspended morning, with the world locked safely outside, peace felt tangible enough to hold.
Suddenly, a knock on Korrak’s front door shattered that peace. Not the hesitant rap of someone seeking permission, but the sharp, demanding rhythm of someone expecting immediate response.
Korrak was awake instantly, and Winslet felt the transformation ripple through him—the abrupt change from tender man to powerful Alpha happening beneath her palm like a switch being thrown. Every muscle in his body coiled with sudden tension, his breathing changing from the deep rhythm of sleep to the controlled alertness of a predator assessing threat.
“Stay here,” he murmured, already rising from the bed. He pulled on his jeans with economical movements, leaving his chest bare as he moved toward the door.
Winslet sat up anyway, reaching for his discarded thermal shirt and pulling it over her head. The fabric smelled like him—pine and cedar and something indefinably wild—and wearing it felt like armor against whatever was waiting beyond the bedroom door. Her bare feet made no sound against the wooden floor as she hovered at the edge of the room, close enough to hear but hidden from view.
She didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But something in the quality of that knock had set her nerves on edge, and every survival instinct she’d honed over the past six months screamed that she needed to understand what was happening.
When Korrak opened the door, freezing air rushed in along with a tension so thick it seemed to have physical weight. Kol stood at the threshold with two other clan members shedidn’t recognize, their expressions tight with barely restrained frustration. Then all three men went very still, their heads tilting slightly as if catching a scent on the wind.
Winslet didn’t need heightened shifter senses to understand what they were detecting. She could see it in the way their gazes flicked past Korrak toward the interior of the cabin. In the subtle tightening of their jaws. In the way the air itself seemed to bristle with annoyance and something darker—disapproval that felt personal.
