She didn’t come to me.
The realization stung more than I wanted to admit.After everything that had passed between us, after the barriers we’d stripped away with our hands and mouths and brutal honesty, she’d retreated.Rebuilt her defenses piece by careful piece.Decided that whatever existed between us wasn’t worth the risk of vulnerability.
Smart girl.
Except the wolf didn’t care about smart.The wolf only knew that our mate was frightened and alone, that someone was threatening what belonged to us, that she was being hunted by a predator she couldn’t see.And instead of coming to us for protection, she’d turned to her staff for comfort.To her general manager, Michael, who’d walked her to her car and held her in his arms for eleven seconds while I sat in my study like a coward.
Not his.Ours.
The jealousy was irrational.Michael was just an employee doing his job, being supportive during a crisis.But the wolf didn’t understand nuance.The wolf only understood that another male had touched what belonged to us.
I shoved back from my desk hard enough to send the chair rolling into the bookshelf behind me.The study felt too small suddenly, the walls pressing in, the familiar scent of leather and old paper mixing with the lingering ghost of her from when she’d stood in this doorway two nights ago.I needed air.Space.Something that wasn’t the endless loop of jealousy and rage and the sick certainty that I was about to destroy the only person who’d ever made the wolf in me go quiet.
The hallway was dim with early morning light, the February sun still hidden behind the eastern peaks.I could smell snow on the air, the sharp clean bite of winter that never quite left these mountains even as the calendar crept toward spring.
And underneath it, faint but unmistakable.Her.
She was awake.Already in the kitchen, probably, where Alice kept her supplied with the pastries and strong coffee she’d developed a taste for during her weeks under my roof.I could picture her there, shadows bruising the delicate skin beneath her eyes from another sleepless night, pretending to read whatever book she’d grabbed from my library while her mind churned through fear and suspicion and the weight of everything pressing down on her shoulders.
She shouldn’t have to carry that weight alone.
Then go to her.Protect her.Claim her.
The wolf’s solution was always so simple.As if I could just walk into that kitchen, pull her into my arms, and make everything safe through sheer force of possession.As if my protection didn’t come wrapped in secrets and lies, a trap disguised as shelter.As if loving her wouldn’t eventually destroy us both.
But maybe I could give her something.One day without the contract hanging between us like a blade.One day where I wasn’t her captor and she wasn’t my captive, where the transactional nature of our arrangement could fade into the background and something else could breathe.
Something real.
The idea terrified me.Which meant it was probably necessary.
I found Alice in the hallway outside the kitchen, her gray hair pinned back in its usual severe bun, her expression deceptively mild in that particular way that meant she was about to say something pointed enough to draw blood.
“She didn’t sleep.”Alice didn’t specify who.She didn’t need to.“Spent half the night pacing her room.The other half crying, I think, though she tried to be quiet about it.These old walls carry sound whether we want them to or not.”
“I know.”
“And yet you stayed in your study all night like a coward.”
I could have fired her for that.Should have, probably.Anyone else in my employ who spoke to me with such casual disrespect would have found themselves unemployed before the words finished leaving their mouth.But Alice had known my mother, had raised her from infancy, had stayed with this family through the worst years after my parents’ deaths when everyone else had fled or been paid off or simply looked the other way.She was the only person alive who remembered what my mother’s laugh sounded like.
“I have work to do,” I said.“The senator’s exposure drops any day now.I need to monitor the situation, prepare for the fallout?—”
“Your grandfather can wait another day.”Alice’s eyes were sharp, knowing, seeing things I preferred to keep hidden even from myself.“That girl in there cannot.She’s breaking, Raphael.And you’re the only one who can help her.Though lord knows you’re likely to make it worse before you make it better.”
“Your confidence in me is inspiring.”
“I’ve known you long enough.Confidence would require evidence.”She turned toward the kitchen, then paused, her weathered hand resting on the doorframe.“The greenhouse.Your mother’s sculptures.You haven’t been in there properly in months, and that girl clearly needs somewhere that isn’t the hotel or these suffocating rooms.Show her something that matters.Let her see there’s more to you than contracts and cruelty.”
She left me standing in the hallway, her words settling into my chest like stones dropped into still water.
The greenhouse.I hadn’t been there in months, maybe longer.Alice kept it maintained, the heating system running, the plants watered, my mother’s sculptures protected from dust and decay and the inevitable erosion of neglect.But I avoided the space the way I avoided thinking about the woman who’d made those shapes from stone and clay.Too many memories I couldn’t quite access.The faint echo of a laugh I could barely remember.The abstract forms she’d carved, each one a piece of her I couldn’t quite reach no matter how long I stared.
Maybe that was exactly why I needed to show Lena.
I found her in the breakfast room, not the kitchen.She sat at the small table by the window, a cup of coffee cooling at her elbow, steam no longer rising from its surface.An open book lay face-down in her lap, its spine cracked in a way that would have made any librarian wince.Her hair was pulled back in a messy braid, strands escaping around her face, and she wore a soft gray cashmere sweater that made her look young and fragile and entirely too vulnerable for my peace of mind.
Her scent hit me the moment I crossed the threshold.Apples and cream, yes, and also the bitter scent of fear, the salt of dried tears, the hint of exhaustion that had sunk into her skin overnight.She smelled like someone who’d been hunted.Like prey that had finally stopped running, not because the predator was gone, but because she was too tired to keep fleeing.
