The door opened immediately, and relief hit him like a physical force. Electra stood there whole and unharmed, though her face was pale and her green eyes wide with fear. She wore the same sundress from this morning.
Alive. Safe. His.
But the relief was immediately followed by a colder, more controlled rage as he took in her shaken state.
“Was anyone here?” he demanded, his gaze already scanning past her into the cabin’s interior.
She held up a small piece of paper with trembling fingers. “Someone left this taped to my front door.”
The note was written in careful block letters, each word precisely formed:The Alpha did not claim his mate by force. He waited. And when she finally chose him, he knew the world had just become more dangerous—for them both.
Rune’s blood turned to ice. This wasn’t Birch’s style—too literary and too personal. Birch dealt in direct threats and territorial challenges, not psychological games with romance novel quotes.
“Stay inside,” he ordered, his voice carrying the full weight of Alpha command. “I’m checking the perimeter.”
He circled her cabin with predatory precision, every sense straining for traces of the intruder. The forest whispered its secrets—deer tracks, bird calls, and the lingering exhaust from his own cruiser. But no human scent beyond Electra’s. Whoever had left the note was long gone and masked his scent somehow.
His radio crackled as he keyed the mic. “Forrest, I need a full sweep team at Electra’s cabin. Now.”
“On our way,” came the immediate response.
When he returned to the cabin, Electra was pacing her living room like a caged animal. The moment she saw him, she moved into his arms without hesitation, and he wrapped her against his chest with careful strength.
“You’re safe now,” he murmured against her hair. “I’m here. Forrest and the pack are on the way.”
She pulled back to look at him, and the fear in her eyes made his wolf snarl with helpless rage. “I know who wrote it.”
The words dropped between them like stones into still water.
“Tell me,” he said, though part of him already dreaded the answer.
“Tyr Grodin.” Her voice was steady now, but he could feel the tremor in her hands where they rested against his chest. “He’s been stalking me for over a year. I had to get a restraining order after he...” She swallowed hard. “After he assaulted me at a book signing. He got jail time. I thought he was still locked up, but he must have gotten out.”
Rune’s world narrowed to a single, crystalline point of rage. Not Birch. Not pack politics or territorial disputes.
A human male. Hunting his mate. Terrorizing her with twisted fantasies about bonds he could never understand or claim.
His wolf reacted with lethal clarity, demanding blood and violence and the absolute elimination of the threat. But Rune kept his voice calm for Electra’s sake, even as every muscle in his body coiled with barely leashed fury.
“He found you somehow,” he said, the words coming out flat and certain. “This isn’t coincidence. He tracked you here.”
“But how?” Electra’s voice cracked. “Only Gerri and Cosette knew where I was going. I didn’t tell anyone else, didn’t post anything online. I was so careful?—“
“We’re going to figure it out,” he interrupted, his tone carrying undeniable authority. “But first, we’re going to the station. We need to document this, contact the Hartford authorities, and make sure that restraining order is still active.”
It wasn’t a request.
Thirty minutes later, the fluorescent lights in his sheriff’s office cast harsh shadows across the stack of paperwork that grew thicker with each phone call. Rune’s jaw tightened as he hung up with the Hartford Police Department, theirbureaucratic indifference grinding against his wolf’s demand for immediate action.
“Restraining order is still active,” he told Electra, who sat rigidly in the chair across from his desk. “Tyr Grodin was released three weeks ago on good behavior. Hartford PD confirms he’s in violation, but since it’s out of their jurisdiction...” He let the sentence hang, his fingers tapping once against the metal desk before stilling completely.
Their hands are tied. Mine aren’t.
“Thank you for trying,” Electra said quietly.
Rune pulled Tyr Grodin’s file from the system, his expression darkening with each page that loaded. The red flags didn’t just stack—they screamed. Multiple complaints from different women over the past five years. Escalating patterns of harassment. Two sexual assault charges that had been reduced to misdemeanors through plea bargains.
And Electra. Page after page of documented obsession spanning eighteen months. Photos taken without consent. Letters intercepted by postal inspectors. The assault at the book signing that had finally landed him behind bars.
