I walked out of the warehouse with blood on my knuckles and fresh blood soaking through my shirt.Sat in the car for ten minutes before I could make myself drive, breathing through pain that made my vision swim.
Then I went home.Showered.Changed into a suit that hid the bandages.
And married the woman I loved while my back wept red beneath the fabric.
The Pakhan had wanted me to feel it.The cost of choosing her.The reminder that sentiment made you weak, and weakness had consequences.
I felt it.Every second.
I would keep feeling it for as long as it took.
I turned on the water, let it run until steam rose from the basin.Alice had left the medical supplies laid out.Antiseptic and fresh bandages and the numbing cream I had refused to use.
The antiseptic burned.I let it.Each sting was a reminder of why I was here, why she was sleeping alone, why the wedding night I could have claimed would remain unconsummated.
My hands moved through the motions of wound care with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this before.Too many times before.The bratva life left scars, inside and out.I had been collecting them since I was eighteen, since the Pakhan had found me on the streets and offered me a pack when I had no one.Every lesson.Every punishment.Every reminder that in the Ivankovskaya, attachment was weakness and weakness was death.
But these scars were different.These I had chosen.
Kill her or marry her.
I could have killed her.In the abstract, it would have been simple.I had killed before, in the Pakhan’s name, in the pack’s defense.One more death wouldn’t have troubled my sleep.
But the thought of my hands around her throat, of the light leaving those blue eyes, of her scent going cold and empty instead of warm and alive with the pulse of her blood beneath her skin…
No.
The wolf’s response was immediate and absolute.The human agreed.
So I had chosen marriage.Chosen the beating.Chosen to take the punishment for my weakness and turn that weakness into a legal shield.Pack law said mates were protected.Even human mates.Even mates you’d trapped and manipulated and destroyed in the process of claiming.
Fresh bandages went on.The wounds would heal.The scars would fade to silver lines that she might see someday, if she ever let me close enough to undress in front of her again.
She had noticed my stiffness at the courthouse.I had caught her watching, those blue eyes sharp with observation before she had schooled her expression back to hatred.She had noticed and she had dismissed it.Good.She shouldn’t care about my pain.I didn’t deserve her concern.
I pulled on loose sleeping pants and moved toward the bedroom.
That was when I heard it.
Faint.So faint a human wouldn’t have caught it.But my hearing had never been human, and the sound of her crying on the other side of the house hit me like a physical blow.
She’s hurting.Our mate is hurting.Go to her.
My feet carried me down the hall before my mind caught up.Past the study, toward the staircase.The wolf knew exactly where she was.Could track her through the walls, through the floors, through the physical distance she had put between us.
Her scent, layered with salt.So much salt tonight.She was weeping, alone in her room, probably curled on her left side the way she always slept, knees drawn up, one hand tucked under her pillow.I knew that about her.Knew she favored her left side, knew she kicked the covers off by midnight no matter how cold the room, knew she reached for the empty space beside her in the darkest hours of the night.I had watched her sleep for weeks.Had memorized every unconscious habit, every small surrender of the woman who never surrendered while awake.
She was mourning the name she had just lost.The life she would never have.The future I had stolen from her when I had engineered her father’s debt and trapped her in a contract she couldn’t escape.
The hallway stretched before me, all Persian runners and antique wall sconces and closed doors hiding empty rooms.Her room was at the far end, the same room she had occupied during the first weeks of her contract.The place she had chosen to retreat rather than share a bed with me.
I stopped outside her door.
The crying was clearer here.Quiet, muffled, the sound of someone trying to break in private.She probably had her face pressed into a pillow.Probably thought no one could hear her.
But I could hear every hitched breath.Every swallowed sob.Every moment of grief she was trying to hide from a household she didn’t trust.
My hand rose to knock.
