But the surveillance report from earlier troubled me.The pressure valve hadn’t failed on its own.Someone had tampered with it.Someone with building access, someone who knew the mechanical systems, someone who’d deliberately created a crisis designed to break her.
The dead corgi.The tampered valve.The pattern was forming, and it pointed somewhere inside her hotel.Someone she trusted.Someone who smiled at her every day while plotting her destruction.
I should tell her.The thought surfaced and I crushed it immediately.
Information was power.Her fear, her vulnerability, her need for protection from threats she couldn’t see?Those kept her dependent on me.Those ensured she’d come running back every time the world turned hostile.
Coward, the wolf snarled.She handled a crisis today without us.Proved she doesn’t need our protection.And instead of admiring that, you’re already planning how to use her ignorance against her.
I stared at the falling snow and said nothing.
Viktor was watching me in the rearview mirror, his expression carefully blank.He’d seen me checking my phone.Seen the way my jaw had tightened at certain moments.He was too good a wolf not to notice.
“The hotel situation?”he asked quietly.
“Handled.”My voice was ice.“She handled it.”
Something passed through Viktor’s eyes.Surprise, maybe.That I would admit a woman had managed something without my intervention.
“And Michael?”Viktor’s eyebrows rose fractionally.“You want him removed?”
The wolf liked that idea.Liked it very much.
“Not yet.”I forced the words out through gritted teeth.“He’s useful.For now.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, the snow falling heavier now, blanketing the world in white.I thought about the texts I’d sent her.About the way she’d probably read them, her stomach dropping as she realized the extent of my surveillance.About the heat I’d promised her tonight, the reward for her clever performance.
She’d handled the crisis brilliantly.She’d proven herself capable, competent, worthy of the legacy she was fighting to save.
And tonight, I would remind her exactly who she belonged to.
The rest of the drive passed in silence.Viktor dropped me at the gates without a word, and I walked up the long driveway alone, the snow crunching under my shoes.
But I didn’t go inside.Not yet.
The wolf was too close to the surface, too agitated from vampires and sabotage and the knowledge that someone had threatened her while I’d been negotiating with corpses.If I went in now, if I caught her scent, I’d do something I would regret.
I veered off the driveway and into the treeline.
The snow was ankle-deep here, untouched by groundskeepers.I waded through it until I reached the familiar clearing where I’d run before.My fingers were already working the buttons of my coat, my shirt, letting them fall into the white powder.
The cold bit at my skin, but wolves ran hot.I barely felt it.
The shift came hard this time, fueled by rage and possession and bloodlust I didn’t want to name.Bones cracked.Muscles tore.The pain was almost welcome, a distraction from the fury howling through my blood.
Then I was on four legs, and the snow-covered forest became my hunting ground.
I ran through the falling snow, a massive black shape cutting through the white like a blade.The vampires’ unnatural stillness had left my instincts screaming, and now the wolf finally had release.Tree trunks blurred past.Snow flew up behind my paws.The cold air burned in my lungs, sharp and clean, washing away the death-scent that had clung to me since the warehouse.
Someone hurt her, the wolf snarled as we ran.Someone threatens what is ours.
The saboteur.The dead corgi.The hang-up calls.A pattern.A threat.
Find them.Kill them.
I would.But first I needed control.First I needed to burn off this feral energy before I did something stupid, like track her scent through the manor and pin her against the nearest wall.
At the edge of my property, I paused, chest heaving.Snow settled on my black fur like ash.The manor glowed in the distance, warm light spilling from windows.Somewhere in there, she’d come back from her crisis.Handled it herself.Proven she didn’t need me.
