The hope drained away, replaced by confusion, then hurt, then rage.I watched the transformation happen in real time, watched the wounded boy become something far more dangerous.The muscles in his jaw jumped.His hands curled into fists at his sides.
“You were supposed to understand.”He stood abruptly, backing away from me like I had burned him.“I showed you everything.I told you the truth.I explained why I did what I did.You were supposed to choose me.”
“Michael…”
“Father loved you.”His voice rose, filling the small room, bouncing off the religious imagery and the faded wallpaper.“Only you.I was nothing.His dirty secret.His mistake.The son he paid fifty thousand dollars to forget about.”He was pacing again, but faster now, more erratic, his movements sharp and unpredictable.His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.“I gave you everything.I protected you.I was more of a family to you than anyone.And you still don’t see me.You still look at me like I’m a stranger.Like I’m nothing.”
Raphael’s presence exploded into clarity along our connection.He was here.Somewhere outside this house, somewhere in the cold darkness beyond these walls, my mate had arrived.I could feel his wolf howling, his human mind calculating entry points and threats, his love for me burning like a sun that would scorch anything standing between us.
Michael grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me to look at him.His fingers dug into my jaw hard enough to bruise.His eyes were wild, all pretense of the gentle brother stripped away, and I could see the killer underneath.The man who had strangled Stephanie to stop her screaming.The man who had killed Maya’s dog and left it for me to find.The man who would do anything, hurt anyone, destroy everything, to make me see him.
“If you can’t love me as a brother,” he whispered, and his voice was colder than the empty house around us, colder than the winter night pressing against the windows, “then maybe you should have never existed at all.”
A car door slammed somewhere outside.
Michael’s head snapped toward the window.His grip on my face loosened for one frozen moment.
Raphael’s fury crashed against my consciousness.He was here.He had found me.And he was coming for blood.
“No.”He released my face and stepped back, his expression cycling through fear and rage and frantic calculation.“No, no, no.That’s impossible.How did he find us so fast?”
I did not answer.I did not need to.
The bond vibrated with his approach, filling me with hope and terror in equal measure.My mate was coming.The wolf who had claimed me, the man who had defied his Alpha to save me, was seconds away from crashing through whatever barrier stood between us.And when he arrived, there would be a reckoning that Michael could not survive.
Michael looked at me with hatred now.Pure, undiluted hatred.The brother who wanted my love had vanished, and in his place stood the monster who would destroy what he could not possess.
“This isn’t over.”He backed toward the door, his movements jerky and panicked.“He can’t protect you forever.Sooner or later, you’ll see.You’ll understand what I’ve done for you.And then you’ll come to me.You’ll choose me the way Father never did.”
Heavy footsteps thundered on the porch.The sound of wood splintering as someone hit the door with the force of a freight train.
Raphael roared, the sound tearing through our connection.
Michael fled into the darkness of the house, and the front door exploded inward.
28
RAPHAEL
The door exploded under my weight as I crashed into it, splinters flying into the darkness beyond.Wood shattered against the frame, never having been meant to withstand a wolf’s fury.I was through before the pieces finished falling, my wolf surging beneath my skin with a rage that threatened to split me open from the inside.
And then I saw her.
Lena.My mate.Bound to a chair in the middle of some dead woman’s living room, surrounded by saint candles and crucifixes and the sickly-sweet smell of old perfume that had soaked into every surface over decades.The Virgin Mary watching from a frame on the wall with sorrowful eyes that seemed to accuse me of every failure that had led to this moment.
Her wrists were raw and bleeding where zip ties had cut into flesh.Hours of struggling, hours of pain, hours I should have been here to prevent.Her face was bruised, fingerprints visible on her jaw where someone had grabbed her hard enough to leave marks.
Her consciousness crashed into mine like a wave breaking against rocks.The connection roared to life between us.Terror flooded through first.Then relief so sharp it cut like a blade.Then love, burning beneath everything else, steady and fierce and aimed directly at me.
She was alive and afraid, looking at me like I was the answer to every prayer she had never learned to speak.
Mate.Safe.Ours.
My wolf’s thoughts bled into mine, primal and possessive and barely coherent with rage.We had found her.She was still breathing.But the man who had touched her, who had bruised her, who had dared to tie her to a chair in his dead mother’s living room…
Movement in my peripheral vision.A figure disappearing into the dark hallway at the back of the house.
Michael.
