Finally,the wolf sighed with something that sounded almost like relief.You finally see what I’ve known from the first breath of her scent.She’s ours.We love her.Stop running from it.
The acknowledgment hit me like a physical blow.Knocked the breath from my lungs.Made my hands shake where they rested against her sleeping body.
My mother had loved my father, and he’d torn out her throat in a shift he couldn’t control.My grandparents should have loved me, blood of their blood, their daughter’s only child, and they’d paid to make me disappear into a school where children were forgotten and broken and sometimes died.Everyone I’d ever loved had been destroyed or had destroyed me.Love was a death sentence.Love was a promise of loss.Love was the moment before the wolf emerged and everything turned to blood.
And now this woman.This fierce, stubborn, beautiful woman who handled crises at her hotel and stood up to me and melted in my arms like she’d been made for them.This woman who looked at me like I was something more than a monster in an expensive suit.
I loved her.
Which meant I would destroy her.
No.The wolf’s denial was immediate and vicious.We protect what’s ours.We don’t destroy.That was him.The father.We are not him.
But I was my father’s son.I carried his wolf, his blood, his capacity for violence.And when the claiming instinct rose during intimacy, when the wolf demanded the bite that would bond us forever, I didn’t know if I could stop myself.Didn’t know if I would become exactly what I feared.
Somewhere distant, the phone buzzed again.It had been buzzing for hours, ignored on the nightstand while I held her.Viktor.The scandal.The world demanding attention while I pretended it didn’t exist.
I didn’t move.Didn’t want to break this moment, this fragile bubble where she was mine and the consequences hadn’t arrived yet.Where I could pretend that loving her wouldn’t end in fire.
But they would.The consequences always did.
The phone buzzed again, insistent, and Lena stirred against my chest.Her breathing changed.Her eyelashes fluttered.Still asleep, but lighter now, rising toward waking.
Protect her,the wolf demanded, suddenly alert.The world can wait.Stay.Hold her.Keep the threats away.
The world couldn’t wait.And protecting her meant dealing with everything that threatened her.Including myself.Including the secrets I was keeping.Including the Bratva that was watching us both.
I eased out from under her carefully, inch by inch, holding my breath each time she stirred.The bed was warm from our combined heat, the sheets tangled around her body in ways that made me want to climb back in and forget about everything else.She murmured something soft and reached for the warm space I’d left, her fingers curling in the sheets where my body had been.
I almost climbed back in.
Instead I grabbed my phone and padded barefoot to the study, closing the door behind me before checking the screen.The numbers glowed in the dim room.Fourteen missed calls.Twenty-seven messages.Viktor’s name repeated like a warning.
I called him back.
“Vor.”His voice was cold, professional.The voice of the Bratva, not the man who’d trained me to fight when I was eighteen and feral with grief and rage.“You didn’t answer.”
“I was occupied.”
A pause.Viktor knew better than to comment on what occupied meant.He’d seen me with women before, had covered for my indiscretions when necessary, had never questioned the appetites that came with being a wolf in a world of humans.But this was different.He knew it.I knew it.The silence between us acknowledged what neither of us would say.
“The Senator is done.”Viktor’s voice shifted to business, the comfortable territory of destruction and power.“The network investment evidence alone would have destroyed him, but the personal file sealed it.His own party is abandoning him.The other investors are scrambling to distance themselves.He’s already losing committee seats, and there’s talk of resignation before the inevitable subpoena.”
Good.The word should have tasted like victory.Should have been vindication after thirty years of planning and patience.Instead it sat heavy on my tongue, bitter and insufficient.
“And Andrew?”
“Distancing himself publicly.Gave a statement condemning his grandfather’s actions, expressing shock and disappointment.The usual political theater.”Viktor’s tone carried a note of contempt.“He’s clinging to his office, but the taint will spread.Give it time.”
Give it time.I’d waited thirty years.I could wait a little longer for the complete destruction of the Prescott name.
Another pause, longer this time.Heavy with something Viktor wasn’t saying.“Raphael, there’s something else.”
I waited.Let the silence stretch.Viktor would get there in his own time, and pushing him would only make him more cautious.
“The Bratva is watching how you handle your attachment.”Viktor’s tone dropped, became careful in a way that raised the wolf’s hackles.“Sentiment is weakness.Max has noticed your distraction.The other Vory are talking.They’re wondering if the legendary ice has finally cracked.”
My grip tightened on the phone until I heard the case creak.“She’s an asset.Nothing more.”
