Four words.No threat in his tone.No anger.Just that calm certainty that was somehow worse than any ultimatum he could have delivered.
Because I knew what those words meant.I knew the rules.No attachments.No weaknesses.No vulnerabilities that enemies could exploit.A Bratva wolf with a human woman in his bed was a liability.A distraction.A target waiting to be painted on her back.
And the penalty for breaking that rule was clear.Had always been clear.
End it yourself, or we end it for you.
“Of course, Pakhan.”The words felt like razors in my throat, scraping raw as I forced them out.
He nodded once, then turned and walked toward the warehouse door.His footsteps echoed in the silence, steady and unhurried.A man with nothing to prove and everything to protect.Viktor and Dmitri had finished their work.The plastic was being rolled.The evidence was disappearing into the back of a van that would never be traced.
Just another night in the life I’d chosen.
I stood there until I was alone with the stench of blood and the weight of borrowed time pressing down on my chest like a stone.
The drive back to the manor took forty minutes.Forty minutes of darkness and silence, Parsons’s steady hands on the wheel, the headlights cutting through blackness as the city lights gave way to forest.The road climbed into the hills, winding through pines that pressed close on either side, and I watched the shadows slide past the window without really seeing them.
I didn’t wash the blood off my knuckles.Some part of me wanted her to see it.Wanted her to understand what she was choosing.What I was beneath the suits and the money and the careful control I wore like a shield.
We’ll talk soon.
The Pakhan’s words circled in my skull like vultures waiting for something to die.He knew.Of course he knew.Men like Max always knew.He had eyes everywhere, ears in every room, a network of loyalty and fear that stretched across three continents.The moment I’d started spending nights with her instead of working, the moment I’d given her that collar, the moment I’d started thinking of her as something other than a means to an end, he’d known.
And now the clock was ticking.I could almost hear it, each second falling away like drops of blood hitting concrete.
I stared at my hands in the darkness of the car.The blood was drying, turning brown and flaky at the edges, cracking in the creases of my knuckles.Violence.That’s what I was built for.What I’d been trained to do since I was old enough to throw a punch.My father had been violent too.Had loved violence, craved it, needed it the way other men needed air or water or touch.
My father had killed my mother.
Different, the wolf in me insisted, pacing behind my ribs.We would never hurt her.We would die first.Tear out our own throat before we let the beast touch her.
But my father had probably thought that too.Before the rage took over.Before the shift came without warning during a fight that should have been nothing, just words, just anger, and the beast inside him did what beasts do when they feel threatened.
I remembered the blood.I’d been three years old, hiding in the closet, watching through the slats as the wolf that was my father stood over what was left of my mother.I remembered the sound he’d made when he shifted back and realized what he’d done.A howl of such utter devastation that it had haunted my dreams for thirty years.
Then the gunshot.Then silence.
Then me, alone with the bodies, for three days until someone finally came.
The manor lights appeared through the trees, warm and golden against the darkness.Warm against the dark.I could see the glow from my bedroom window, soft and steady, and the knowledge that she was there, waiting, exactly where I’d told her to be, made something in me give way.
Home, the wolf whispered.
The word rose unbidden, and I didn’t push it down.Didn’t have the strength for it anymore.
If this was borrowed time, then I would take every second.Every touch.Every night.Until the Pakhan called my bluff and everything fell apart.Until the talk he’d promised came and forced me to choose between the pack that had saved my life and the woman who’d given it meaning.
Parsons pulled up to the front entrance and I was out of the car before he’d fully stopped, my feet hitting the stone driveway while the engine was still running.Through the front door, the familiar scent of my home rushing over me.Into the foyer, where the grandfather clock ticked away borrowed seconds.Alice appeared from the direction of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her knowing eyes taking in the blood and the tension radiating off me in waves.
“You look like you’ve had a rough night.”
“Where is she?”
Alice didn’t pretend to misunderstand.She never did.She’d been with me too long, knew too much, loved me despite it all.“Your room.She’s been waiting.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to know she’s staying.”
