Arthur stood a few paces away, shoulders heaving, chest expanding with each barely contained breath. His eyes weren’t blue anymore.
They were ice.
His voice was a snarl. “Get. Away. From. Her.”
Fenred swallowed, stepping back only when Arthur took a single, lethal stride forward.
“Easy,” he said weakly, attempting a smirk, “we were just talking—”
Arthur’s growl deepened, vibrating through the ground beneath them. “Touch her again, and I swear on Lunarion’s name, I’ll rip your throat out.”
Fenred paled.
Arthur’s fists were shaking, not with fear, but with the kind of fury that could only come from something primal. Possessive. Instinctive.
The kind that terrified Dani almost as much as it relieved her.
Fenred swallowed. Dani could see him weighing up his chances. Arthur snarled sharply, baring his teeth, and Fenred reared back, jerking his head at the others. “Come on. Let’s go.”
The three wolves retreated into the shadows, tails tucked in invisible submission.
The moment they vanished, Arthur spun toward her. His voice was rough, breathless. “Dani. Are you hurt?”
She flinched.
Just barely, just enough for him to notice.
Arthur froze, pain slashing across his expression.
She opened her mouth, closed it again, her voice a raw whisper when she said, “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
“I’m glad I did. What the fuck was that?”
Dani swallowed, “Nothing.”
He let out a bark of laughter, utterly devoid of humor. “It didn’t seem like nothing. Thosefucking—how long has this thing been going on?”
“Arthur…”
“Was this the first time?” he stepped towards her, arms extended, hovering. The space between them felt endless. She couldn’t do anything, just blink, lips pressed together tightly as tears welled in her eyes. His expression hardened. “This wasn’t the first time.Fuck.”
She squeaked as he whirled round and swung his fist into a tree. The wood groaned in protest and cracked, splintering bark falling to the floor. When he pulled his fist away, a hollow in the trunk gaped like a wound, the soft, light wood within a shock of brightness against the moss.
His shoulders heaved, rage written into every tremble of tense muscle. “I should have known,” he ground out, fists still clenched. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye, a thousand confessions ramming at her throat, desperate to be released.
She could tell him. All of it. How long she’d been bullied. How small she felt. How lonely in the pack. How abandoned by him.
How she really felt.
But in that moment, it was all too much. So instead of speaking, she gave in to her yearning desire and wrapped her arms around his middle, burying her face in his shirt so that he wouldn’t see the tears.
For one terrifying moment, he stood still and silent.
And then he melted around her, arms wrapping around her, cradling her against the expanse of his chest. His face pressed into her hair, one hand tangling into her riot of red curls, his heavy breaths barely restrained.
“If anyone ever hurts you again,” he said, his muffled voice dark, “I’ll rip them limb from limb.”
