I settle back against his chest and let my eyes drift closed. His heartbeat is a steady drum beneath my ear, slow and soothing, and exhaustion is pulling at the edges of my consciousness with insistent fingers.
I’ll leave before dawn. I’ll sneak back to Sera’s house and climb into the guest bed and pretend this night never happened. I’ll return to my life in Llewelyn territory and probably never see Patrick again.
But for now, just for these few stolen hours, I let myself pretend that I could have more than one perfect night with a man whose secrets don’t matter and whose arms feel like home.
Sleep takes me before I can decide if that makes me brave or foolish.
Chapter 4 - Patrick
I wake up alone, and my wolf starts howling before I even open my eyes.
The space beside me is empty. The sheets are cold. Caelan’s scent lingers on the pillow like a ghost, sweet and floral and absolutely maddening, but the woman herself is gone.
I sit up and look around the room, hoping to find her in the bathroom or standing by the window or anywhere that isn’t completely absent. The bathroom door is open, but there’s nothing but darkness inside. Her dress is gone from the floor where it landed last night. Her heels are missing from the spot by the door.
She left. She actually left.
My wolf throws himself against the inside of my skull, snarling and snapping with a fury I’ve never felt from him before. Last night, I thought the connection between us was just the alcohol and the adrenaline and the fact that I hadn’t touched a woman in longer than I cared to admit. I told myself the pull I felt toward her was nothing more than lust, that the way my wolf perked up when she walked into that bar was simple attraction and nothing deeper.
I was wrong.
She’s my mate. The realization crashes through me with the force of a breaking wave, undeniable and overwhelming. My wolf knew it from the moment her scent hit us across that crowded room. He knew it when I kissed her, when I took her to my bed, and when I buried myself inside her and felt something click into place that I hadn’t even known was missing.
And now she’s gone, the bond between us sits incomplete in my chest, and my wolf is losing his goddamn mind.
I throw the covers off and tear through the room like a madman. I check under the bed, inside the dresser drawers, behind the single chair in the corner. I’m looking for something, anything, that might tell me where she went. A note jotted down on the back of a receipt. A phone number scratched into the dust on the nightstand. A clue about where she’s staying or how to find her again.
There’s nothing. She left nothing behind except the lingering smell on my sheets and a pain in my chest that makes it hard to breathe. The absence feels like a wound, fresh and throbbing, and I don’t understand how someone I’ve known for less than twelve hours can leave such a gaping hole in her wake.
I rub the heels of my palms against my eyes and tell myself to think. Panicking won’t help. Tearing this room apart won’t help. My wolf wants me to burst out that door and track her through the streets of Grayhide territory until I find her, but that’s not a plan. That’s just a suicide mission.
She’s Llewelyn. She told me that much last night. She mentioned a sister, someone she was visiting in Grayhide territory. Someone she didn’t want to worry.
That’s not a lot to go on, but it’s something.
My wolf paces beneath my skin, restless and agitated and demanding action. He wants to track her down right this second. He wants to claim her, to sink my teeth into the soft skin where her neck meets her shoulder and mark her as mine forever. He wants to make sure every male in the territory knows she belongs to me and that touching her means death.
The possessiveness of it shocks me. I’ve never felt anything like this before, this all-consuming need to find andprotect and possess. Thornridge wolves don’t believe in true mates. Mordaunt calls it a fairy tale, a weakness that other packs indulge in because they’re too soft to make rational choices about their futures. I’ve spent sixteen years believing him, accepting his word as gospel, because questioning him meant pain.
But there’s nothing rational about what I’m feeling right now. Nothing soft about the way my wolf is clawing at my insides, demanding I go after her. This feeling is primal and ancient and completely beyond my control, and I don’t know whether to be terrified or grateful that it exists.
I draw in a deep breath and convince myself to calm down. I can track her scent. I can find her. I can explain what we are to each other and figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do about it.
But first, I need to get back to Thornridge territory before anyone notices how long I’ve been gone.
I’ve been away for two days now. That’s longer than I intended, longer than I can reasonably explain away if someone asks where I’ve been. Mordaunt has eyes everywhere, and the last thing I need is to draw attention to myself while I’m still figuring out how to extract myself from this pack without getting killed in the process. Disappearing for days without permission is exactly the kind of behavior that gets wolves dragged before the alpha for questioning.
I dress quickly and pull on the same clothes I wore last night because they’re all I have. The shirt smells like Caelan. Like us. My wolf rumbles with satisfaction at the scent, and I have to grit my teeth to keep from burying my nose in the fabric like some kind of lovesick pup.
Focus. I need to focus.
I leave the room key on the dresser and slip out the back entrance of the tavern to avoid being seen. The morning is cool and gray, with clouds hanging low over the Grayhide landscape and threatening rain. I keep my head down as I walk through the empty streets, following the route I memorized when I first arrived. A few early risers are out walking their dogs or heading to work, but none of them give me a second glance.
My plan is simple. Get back to Thornridge territory, check in with whoever’s keeping tabs on my whereabouts, and then find an excuse to return to Grayhide as soon as possible. I’ll track Caelan’s scent from the bar, figure out where her sister lives, and find a way to talk to her without scaring her off. She agreed to see me again. That has to mean something.
I need to tell her the truth. About what we are to each other. About who I really am.
That second part terrifies me more than I want to admit. She thinks I’m just some troubled Grayhide wolf drowning his sorrows in whiskey, running from my problems. She has no idea I’m Thornridge and that I’ve spent years doing the bidding of a pack that wants to destroy everything she holds dear. When she finds out the truth, she might never want to see me again.
