My throat tightened at that.At the simple certainty in Alice’s voice.At the image of Lena curled up in my space, breathing my scent, counting the minutes until I returned like I was something worth waiting for.
She doesn’t know what you are.What you’ve done.What you’re capable of becoming.
I should shower.Should scrub the blood from my skin and compose myself before I faced her.Should give her the version of me that was clean and controlled, the version that hadn’t just beaten a man half to death and enjoyed the sound of bones breaking.Not this raw, bloody thing with violence still singing in its blood.
My feet carried me up the stairs anyway.
The hallway stretched before me, familiar and foreign at once.Every step brought her scent closer.That particular sweetness that was just her, threading through the leather and woodsmoke that permeated my home, cutting through the lingering copper that clung to my clothes.Sweetness pushing back the darkness.Light invading shadows accumulated over a lifetime.
I stopped outside my bedroom door.The wolf inside me was pacing, urgent and hungry, clawing at my control with a desperation I’d never felt before.Not for sex.Not for violence.For her.Just her.The sight of her.The sound of her voice.The simple, impossible comfort of her presence in my space.
Mate, the wolf whispered.Ours.Home.Need.
I opened the door.
She was curled in the chair by the window, exactly as Alice had described.Soft clothes that looked like something she’d borrowed from my closet, hair falling in waves around her shoulders, her legs pulled up to her chest as she watched the driveway.The firelight painted her in gold and shadow.When she heard the door, she turned, and the relief that flooded her face at the sight of me was almost more than I could bear.
“You’re home.”
Two words.Just that simple statement of fact, spoken like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I stood frozen in the doorway, suddenly aware of everything wrong with this picture.The blood drying on my hands.The violence still thrumming through my veins like a second heartbeat.The monster I’d been all night, the monster I was every night, standing in the same room as this woman who smelled like innocence and looked at me like I was something worth waiting for.
“I shouldn’t touch you right now.”
Lena unfolded from the chair with a grace that made my chest ache.She crossed the room to me, bare feet silent on the carpet, her eyes never leaving mine.No hesitation.No fear.Just that steady, impossible certainty that she knew exactly what she was walking toward.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m—” I held up my hands, showing her the dried blood, the split knuckles, the evidence of what I’d done.“I’ve done things tonight.Bad things.And if I touch you before I wash this off, before I calm down, I might?—”
“Might what?”She stopped in front of me, close enough that I could count the faint freckles across her nose.Close enough that her scent wrapped around me like a lifeline, drowning out the copper and the death and the darkness.“Hurt me?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.”She reached out and took my ruined hand in both of hers.Her fingers were cool and soft against my bloody knuckles, pale against the blood staining my skin.She didn’t flinch.Didn’t pull away.Just held me like the violence meant nothing.Like she could see past it to whatever broken thing lived underneath.“I know you’d cut off your own hands before you’d use them against me.”
She’s right, the wolf growled, satisfaction rumbling through my chest.We would.We will.Whatever it takes to keep her safe.Even from ourselves.
“Lena.”Her name came out rough.Wrecked.Scraped raw by everything I couldn’t say.“You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“Then show me.”She turned my hand over and pressed her lips to my palm, to the one place the blood hadn’t reached.The gesture was so tender, so impossibly gentle, that I felt my resistance finally give way.Thirty years of control, undone by the softness of her mouth against the unmarked center of my violence-stained hand.“I want you, Raphael.All of you.Tonight.The blood and the darkness and whatever else you think you need to hide.I want all of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking for you.”She released my hand and reached up to cup my face, her palms warm against my jaw, her eyes holding mine with a certainty that stole my breath.“I’m asking for the man who holds me when I shake.The man who gave me something to hold onto when my whole world was falling apart.The man I?—”
She stopped.Swallowed.And I watched the flush creep up her neck, watched her gather her courage like it was something she could hold in her hands.
“The man I love.That’s what I’m asking for.Is that so impossible?”
The word hit me like a physical blow.Love.She loved me.This woman who should hate me, who should run screaming from everything I represented, who had every reason in the world to see me as the monster I was, loved me.
And God help me, I loved her too.Had loved her from the moment I’d caught her scent across a crowded lobby, my wolf howling recognition while my human mind tried to deny what it knew.
