“Not yours to burn.” His voice drops lower, anger making it rough. “Not when it affects everyone here.”
Heat flares inside me. “Is that what this is? Protecting the pack? Or is it that you can’t handle Faelan using our connection?”
His eyes flash fully gold. “What connection, Nova? The one you keep running from?”
The question slices through me. Around us, I can feel eyes. Ears. Pack presence at the edge of the clearing. Watching but not interfering.
I turn my back on him deliberately, walking toward my cabin at the edge of the property. Not running away. Pulling the fight somewhere private.
His footsteps follow immediately. No hesitation. No words.
Behind us, the unfinished circle sits like an open wound in the earth.
I slam the door open and don’t check if he followed me. I know he did. My cabin feels smaller, tighter, like the walls have moved in while I was gone. The air stirs as Dane follows, closing us in with a final click of the door.
“You don’t walk away from me,” he says, voice carrying the quiet authority that’s kept this pack together through hell. “Not when you’re about to do something that could get you killed.”
I spin around, hands already curled at my sides. “I’m not one of your wolves, Dane. I don’t heel.”
“No, you just make decisions that affect everyone without a word,” he says, stepping closer with predatory grace, filling the space between us like a storm front. His presence radiates the kind of power that’s been earned through blood and fire. “Like it or not, whatever Faelan put inside you is already bleeding into my pack.”
“Your pack.” I laugh, sharp and cold. “Always your pack. Not the magic that’s literally eating me from the inside. Not the fact that I’m trying to do something about it before it’s too late.”
He steps closer, filling the narrow space between us. “You think I don’t see that? You think I don’t smell the change on you?”
“What I think is that you care more about controlling the situation than fixing it.”
His jaw tightens. “There’s a difference between control and protection.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“Then maybe you’re standing in the wrong place.”
I move closer, anger burning through my veins. “You’re only mad because it’s me. If it were anyone else, you’d let them take the risk. You’d weigh the cost against the benefit and make the call.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. You don’t like that I make my own calls. That I don’t wait for your permission.”
He blocks my path when I try to move past him. “I don’t like that you hide things. Fight alone. Pretend what’s between us isn’t real.”
His presence fills the narrow space, broad shoulders blocking my escape route. Steel-gray eyes burn with frustration and something hungrier. The black shirt stretches tight across his chest with each controlled breath, and I catch the scents of cedar and rage rolling off his skin.
That hits too close. I shove him, hard enough that he has to step back. “Don’t talk to me about real when you can barely look at me most days.”
His hand catches my wrist as I push him again. Not painful. Just enough to stop me. His grip is firm, his skin hot against mine.
“I look at you,” he says, voice rough. “I never stop looking at you.”
We freeze there, suspended in the moment. My pulse hammers under his fingers. His eyes are dark, pupils wide, the anger in them mixed with something deeper. Something I can’t keep pretending I don’t recognize.
“Let go,” I whisper, but my body doesn’t move away.
“Tell me you don’t feel it,” he says. “Tell me you don’t know what this is.”
The bond between us pulses, invisible but undeniable. I hate it. Hate how it makes me vulnerable. Hate how much I want it.
“I feel a lot of things,” I say, my voice shaking. “None of them simple.”
