I was good at waiting.
I have centuries of practice that most beings would never accumulate. I’d waited outside prison cells in Veyndral while traitors decided whether to talk. Or in frozen trenches during the border wars while enemy scouts passed overhead.
Waiting for her to process the fact that I turn into a wolf was, comparatively, manageable.
What wasn’t manageable was the silence.
The absence of her voice in the cabin, the missing sound of her bare feet on the stairs, the gap where her laughter should have been.
The cabin felt wrong without her filling it. Which is weird since we lived in this world with just us for almost a year before we found her.
This morning, Lucian left at five. Captain’s shift. Wherever he goes, he was just meant to lead. But it also meant more hours at the station and distance from her. I could feel the strain of it through the bond, his reluctance to leave when things were so fragile. Percy followed at six, covering the day rotation. He’d hesitated at the door, looking back toward the stairs.
“If she comes out...”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Don’t scare her.”
“When have I ever scared her?”
Percy opened his mouth and closed it then he left.
The cabin settled into quiet. I made coffee. Black, strong enough to settle my thoughts. I stood at the counter and let the silence do what silence does best: give me room to think.
Hudson was the problem I could solve, and solving problems was what I did.
The lycan revelation, the mate bond, Mira’s trust... those required patience.
They called me the King’s Blade in Veyndral.
The title wasn’t ceremonial. Centuries of enforcer work had given me the bloodiest hands out of the three of us, bloodier than Lucian’s despite him being the one who wore the crown. That was the point. A king’s hands stayed clean because mine didn’t.
I’d dragged traitors from their beds at midnight, extracted confessions in rooms built specifically to contain screaming, and executed sentences that the court records described in single, sanitized lines.
All of it was duty.
For Mira, I would take pleasure in it.
The thought didn’t disturb me even though it should have.
A man who enjoyed violence was a liability. But when I pictured Hudson’s hands, the ones that left bruises on her arms, that trapped her and struck the woman who was mine, duty evaporated and left behind a desire so pure and savage it rewrote every rule I’d built for myself.
For my king, I killed clean. For my mate, I’d make it last until he begged me for the mercy I’d never give him.
But the human was too elusive, and that fact gnawed at me worse than the rage.
I’d spent weeks tracking him. His scent trail went cold within blocks, every time. No pattern to his movements or trace of the sloppy desperation that defined human stalkers.
Hudson didn’t make mistakes.
He was calculated, methodical. Vanishing in ways that didn’t track with a civilian, even a dangerous one. I’d tracked warlords across the frozen borders of Veyndral who left more evidence than this man.
Either he had training I hadn’t accounted for, or he had help. And whoever was helping him knew how to hide from our senses.
The footsteps above broke my thoughts. Light, careful, testing whether anyone was home.
My hand was already reaching for a second mug before my brain registered the decision. I filled it with coffee, added two sugars, and set it on the counter.
