I’m mustering up every ounce of strength I have, but I’m still crumbling inside while he stares at me with those sapphire blue eyes that once were the depths in which I could get lost. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
Damian opens his mouth, but before he can answer, a sound tears through the night. A high-pitched screech, sharp and terrifying, slices through the quiet in a way that makes my stomach drop. Damian’s head snaps toward the alley instantly, his body going rigid, every line of him suddenly coiled and ready. He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t apologize. He grabs my wrist again and pulls me forward so hard, my feet leave the ground as he darts around the corner toward the park, my protests ripped from me as fear finally eclipses anger. He stops abruptly, shoving me behind a thick tree, his hand clamping over my mouth as the air around us turns unnaturally cold.
I feel it then, the pressure, the sense of something closing in around us. But even as the source of the screech seems to fill the air with danger, there’s an even greater one between us when Damian leans in close.
His eyes hold mine firmly, as intense as I remember them, his breath a mixture of mint and masculinity and warmth that I’ve only ever found from his lips. My heart skips a beat as memories of the passion we shared come crashing into me. My heart races when he leans toward my ear, his voice low and steady when he whispers, “I’m sorry for what I’m about to do next.” And then he steps back, a stride long enough to put more than a meter between us.
I don’t understand what he means until the air itself seems to bend around him. Damian’s body goes unnaturally still, like the pause before a storm breaks, and something frightening coils in my gut as I stare at him, my thoughts scrambling for logic that refuses to come. His eyes change first, but not in color—not exactly—but depth, as if something far older than the man I once loved is suddenly looking out through the blue orbs.
I shake my head, a nervous laugh tearing from my throat as I take a step back. “Stop it…” I whisper, though I don’t know what I’m asking him to stop. The cold intensifies, pressing against my skin, and the night seems to draw inward, the shadows stretching and thickening as if they’re alive.
Then it happens.
Bones snap first. The sound is sharp and lewd and impossibly loud in the quiet park, cracking through me like a gunshot. I scream as Damian’s body convulses, his spine arching violently as his frame expands, tearing free of human limits in a way my mind cannot accept. His jacket shreds, and the pieces sink into his pores. His limbs lengthen, joints bending the wrong way, flesh splitting open as fur erupts in thick, pale waves.
I stumble backward, my heels catching on uneven ground as terror steals all sense from me. This isn’t a man changing clothes. This isn’t a trick or a hallucination. This is something primal and horrifying, something mystical that should not exist outside of nightmares and folklore. Heat rolls off him in suffocating waves, the scent of earth and river and wild animal flooding the air until I can taste it on my tongue.
Where Damian stood, a massive wolf now towers.
It’s enormous, far larger than any animal I’ve ever seen, his creamy white fur gleaming silver beneath the moonlight,muscles coiled beneath his hide like living stone. His eyes lock onto me, impossibly intelligent and aware, burning with something that feels achingly familiar and utterly alien all at once. He steps forward once, heavy paws thudding against the ground, and that’s it.
My vision cracks, and the world around me tilts violently, my heart slamming against my ribs as my knees give out beneath me. The last thing I register before darkness swallows me whole is the sound of his low, rumbling whimper, almost like my name, but in the most animal way, and the overwhelming certainty that nothing about my life will ever be the same again.
***
I wake up gasping, my body jerking upright on instinct, lungs burning as if I’ve surfaced from deep water. A hand flies to my forehead as I frown deeply, the remnants of a headache setting in as if to let me know that I’d been sleeping for too long, dreaming for too long. Only when I’m able to open my eyes and adjust them to the warm sunlight that kisses my cheeks do I freeze, unfamiliar surroundings coming into focus.
Wooden walls. The soft crackle of a fire somewhere nearby. The scent of pine and smoke, and something warm and grounding that makes my head spin. I’m lying in a bed that isn’t mine, wrapped in heavy blankets, my clothes still on but my shoes gone from my feet. Panic flares instantly, sharp and blinding. I scramble backward, heart racing, the events of the night slamming into me in disjointed flashes: dark alley, cold touch, Damian’s hands, that screech, that impossible sight…
“No,” I breathe, pressing my palms into my eyes as if I can physically push the memory away. I didn’t see that. I couldn’t have. People don’t turn into w—“Stop,” I whisper to myself,my voice shaking, the word trying to be final. “You passed out. That’s all. You fainted when you saw him after all that time. You imagined the rest.”
The door croaks open, and I whip my head around, fury and fear colliding as Damian steps into the room carrying a mug of something steaming. He looks…normal. Human. Fully clothed, his hair still damp as if he’d taken an ordinary, human shower. For one wild second, relief floods me so hard it almost hurts.
See? I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t have. I made it all up, just a figment of my wild imagination conjured up by the pain of my heartbreak, picturing Damian as a beast. Because he is. I hate him. He’s a beast for breaking my heart.
But then my eyes drop to his arm, wrapped tightly in bandages darkened with red, and the fear comes roaring back.
“What did you do to me?” I demand, my voice raw. “Where am I? Why am I here?”
“Sophie…” he says softly, taking a step toward me, and I recoil instantly, pressing myself into the headboard. His face tightens, regret flashing through his eyes before something darker surfaces.
I turn my face away, refusing to meet his eyes. Crossing my arms instead, I huff through my nostrils. “You have a lot of explaining to do,” I snap. “You dragged me off the street like a lunatic, and I wanna know why. I wanna know where I am, and what I’m doing here.”
“I was protecting you,” he says, and something in his tone makes my skin crawl. It’s not fear I’m feeling, but red, hot rage. “And I still am.”
“From what?” I laugh, sharp and hysterical. “From whom? You?” I swing my legs over the side of the bed, intent on leaving, on finding a door, any door, but his next words stop me cold.
“Do you remember what happened last night?”
Gulping hard, I look at him with a trained expression, a cool, calm, and collected one that gives nothing away—not even to myself. If I were looking into a mirror, I might have convinced myself that last night never happened, that Damian didn’t morph—
“No. I don’t remember what happened,” I respond bluntly, spinning on my heel and heading toward the only window in the bedroom, my breath catching in my throat when I see the vast expanse of stone and greenery that stretches for miles ahead, and I quickly catch on that we’re in some isolated mountainous region in God-knows-where.
“The only way I can keep you safe is if you stay here. With me. As my wife.”
The room spins, and my heart stops beating for a split second. I turn around slowly, staring at him, disbelief consuming me as my stomach drops.
“You’re insane,” I scoff. “I wanna go home.”
