You destroyed my family.
Her words wouldn’t stop, each one landing like a blow I couldn’t block.Couldn’t dodge.Because she was right.Apex Lending had been my weapon, carefully constructed over years of patient planning, designed to bring the Hughes empire to its knees.Her father had helped destroy my childhood, had been the Senator’s fixer when they had shipped a three-year-old boy off to boarding school hell.I had returned the favor with interest.
I hadn’t known she would be collateral damage.Hadn’t known she existed until I walked into that hotel and her scent hit me like a fist to the chest, until she became everything.
And now I was paying the price for that night.For touching her.Tasting her.Nearly marking her before I forced myself to stop.The ache of not claiming her had been agony for two months, a torment that left my wolf howling and my chest hollow.Every day without her made it worse.Every day the bond pulled tighter, demanding what I had denied it.
You took my virginity and threw me away like garbage.
That morning after.My greatest cruelty.My greatest mercy.
The wolf whined at the memory, the sound echoing through my chest.We had held her sleeping form all night, her body warm and solid against our chest, her breath soft and even against our neck, the way she had curled into us like she belonged there.Because I had known it might be the last time.
She didn’t know that the coldness in my voice was the only thing standing between her and a death order signed in my blood.
Tell her,my wolf demanded, surging against my control.She deserves to know.She’s our mate.Tell her what we sacrificed.
If I told her, her forgiveness would become debt.Gratitude wasn’t love.I needed her to choose me, not because I had saved her life, but because she finally saw a man worth choosing.
She’ll never see you,the dark voice answered, my father’s ghost laughing in the shadows of my mind.You made sure of that.You showed her exactly what you are.
The car climbed the winding road toward the manor, switchbacks carrying us higher into the mountains.I stared out the window and let her accusations replay, over and over, the penance I deserved.The torture I had earned.
The manor rose against the mountainside like a fortress.Twenty thousand square feet, built to withstand any assault.It had never been home.Just a place to conduct business and plot revenge and sleep alone in beds too large for one person.
For two months, she had made it feel lived-in.Her presence in my space, her scent soaking into my sheets, her voice echoing through hallways that had only ever known silence.I had told myself it was temporary.Told myself the contract would end and I would let her go, let her return to her normal life, let her forget she had ever belonged to me.
Then the Pakhan had delivered his ultimatum, and letting her go had never been an option.
Parsons pulled up to the front entrance.I climbed out of the car, my movements careful and controlled, fresh blood sticking my shirt to my skin.
I pushed through the front door.The manor swallowed me in silence.Too empty.Too still.Wrong without the faint notes of apples that had started to weave through the halls during her time here.The wolf paced inside my skull, agitated by her absence.
I knew exactly what she would be doing right now if she were here.Four-thirty on a weekday meant she would be curled in the library window seat with her tablet, reviewing the next day’s reservations, a cup of tea cooling beside her because she always forgot to drink it while she worked.She tucked her feet under her when she read.She bit her lower lip when the numbers didn’t add up.She hummed under her breath when she thought no one was listening, always the same melody, something classical I had never been able to identify.
I knew all of this.I had memorized every detail during those months she lived under my roof, cataloging her habits like a predator studying prey.Or like a man so desperately in love he couldn’t look away.
She should be here.She should be with us.Why isn’t she with us?
Because she hated me.Because I had made her loathe me.Because the only way to save her life was to destroy whatever fragile thing had started to grow between us.
I made it to my study before the need to move became unbearable.The room was dark, curtains drawn against the afternoon light, and I stood in the shadows for a long moment, just breathing in the familiar darkness of my own space.Underneath it, fading but still present, lingered the ghost of her scent.
She had been in this room.Weeks ago, before everything went wrong.I had kissed her against that bookshelf, her body arched into mine, and I heard the soft, surprised sound she made when I bit her neck.The sound that had made my wolf howl in triumph.
I stripped off my jacket and let it fall, then fumbled with the shirt buttons, my hands wanting to shake.The fabric was stuck to my back in places, dried blood cementing it to the wounds beneath.I peeled it away with a hiss, the pain sharp and gratifying.
I didn’t need a mirror to know what was there.I could feel every mark.The claw marks carved across my back and wrapping around my ribs like a grotesque embrace.Four of the Pakhan’s enforcers had held me down, their weight pinning my arms and legs while the Alpha watched from his chair with those cold, calculating eyes.Lower-ranking wolves, men I barely knew, chosen specifically because they had no loyalty to me.That was how Max operated.
They had used claws, not fists.The message clear, you are one of us, and we will remind you what that means.What loyalty costs.What weakness earns.
The wounds were still raw.Red and angry, some barely closed, others still seeping.Wolf shifters healed faster than humans, but these had been delivered with intent.The Pakhan had wanted me to remember.Wanted the scars to serve as a permanent reminder of what happened when a wolf let himself want something that wasn’t sanctioned by the pack.
As if I could forget.
I braced my hands on my desk, head bowed, breathing through the fire across my back.The price of wanting a human.Of needing her.Loving her.The price of choosing marriage over murder.
Worth it.Every mark, every scar, every drop of blood they’d taken from me.
