He couldn’t stand the study anymore. Couldn’t stand the collar glinting at him.
With a muttered curse, he snatched up the silver thing and hurled it into the fire. The metal struck the grate, sparks leaping up in protest. It didn’t melt right away, the metal carefully wrought, but the flames licked greedily at the velvet and ribbon. The smell was sharp and acrid.
“May she wear it well,” Dominic whispered, and watched the inscription blacken. “May you rot in hell, Leonid.”
The wolf under his skin stirred again, pacing, restless. He braced a hand on the mantle and closed his eyes, forcing it back down. Losing control wouldn’t solve anything. He was Alpha. Control was what kept him human.
But the silence pressed in harder. He waited for a whisper, a tug at the bond, an awakening of power within him. Nothing came. Only the sound of his own breathing and the slow, steady collapse of the collar into ash.
For the first time in years, Dominic Volkhov felt powerless.
He left the study before the fire finished its work. The corridors of the Anchor stretched long and narrow, and it occurred to him he hadn’t been home in days. In the bar below,patrons were trickling in, the earliest beginnings of the evening, members of the pack ready and keen to rejoin their community.
Dominic bypassed the entrance, ignoring the tempting lull of laughter and whiskey, instead turning to the door.
Outside, the sky had gone from gray to near-black. Rain gathered along the eaves, waiting to fall. The smell of salt carried up from the sea. He turned up the collar of his coat and started down the path that wound toward town, the one that led to the bookshop. He told himself it was for business, for routine inspection, for reassurance, but his wolf knew better.
He needed to see her. Needed to know that she was real, that the muted bond between them didn’t mean she had come to any harm.
As he walked, the tether between them flickered stronger, then weaker, like a heartbeat pulsing. He swallowed the discomfort of the feeling, focusing instead on the darkening street. Shifters, both Volkhov and Nordan alike, bowed their heads as he passed. Some of the humans, too, the ones who knew. Even those who didn’t give him a wide berth, something primal in them recognizing the predator in their midst.
When the bookshop finally came into view, the lights were out, the windows dark, the sign on the door hung crooked in the wind.
She wasn’t there.
He tried the handle. The new metal gleamed, the lock mocking him. He circled around the side to the back door, finding it similarly bolted. Lucky for him, Julian was an excellent spymaster. He knelt to the ground, shifting a few of the crumbling flowerpots until he found a rusting key.
The lock gave way with a heavy groan.
“Layla,” he called, pausing to listen, “Layla, are you here?”
No response. He walked through cautiously, scenting the air. Inside, it smelled of paper and tea and her. He stood in the middle of the main floor, waiting for her scent to grow stronger, for the sound of footsteps upstairs. Nothing.
The silence was settled, coated over the shelves and books, bedding into the cracks. Nobody had been here all day.
A quick inspection of her small apartment upstairs yielded a similar emptiness. It felt strange walking around her space. He felt too big for it, too animal. Surely a male like him didn’t exist in the same world as crocheted coasters, patchwork throws, or bowls of overripe oranges.
Her bedroom was the worst. It was uniquely her, bed unmade, piles of books haphazardly lining the floor, threatening to topple over at the merest hint of a breeze from the window left unlatched. Her scent clung to every pillow, every page, surrounding him in a maddening haze. He was an intruder here; his presence sat like a stone, heavy inside him.
Oddly cowed, he retreated.
Surely, as her mate, he should have some sense of peace in her small space. Some subconscious drift towards it.
Instead, he felt only her absence, and he felt it keenly.
Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through his contacts until her name glowed out at him. He blinked away a vague memory of putting it into his phone when he was all of nineteen, and she was nothing more than Theodore’s little sister.
It rang once, then twice, the electronic jingle scraping his nerves, until finally her voice appeared, perky and unbothered.
“Hi! It’s Layla here—"
“Layla, where the fuck—” he started to growl, before her voice continued.
“I can’t come to the phone right now. You know what to do!”
A long, mocking beep cut through the still shop. He stared, enraged at his phone, watching the little timer of his silent voicemail tick up, before ending the call.
He looked once more around the shop. There was nothing. No indication that she had left in any sort of hurry. Everything was neat and orderly and perfectly boring.
