Page 53 of Warded By His Wolf

He kissed me hard, and the pressure built everywhere at once, the bond amplifying it until I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began, and when I came apart I said his name like a prayer. He followed seconds later, shuddering against me, and then we were both breathing hard in the wreckage of the narrow bed.

He stayed braced above me, one hand still covering the mark, his eyes shifting slowly back toward their usual dark.

“I stopped waiting,” I said.

“I know.” He kissed my forehead, gentle now. “So did I.”

We lay in the changed quiet, the bond humming like a second heartbeat, his arm solid across my waist. And for a moment, one whole borrowed moment, the rest fell away. Elias. The faction. The patient buyer above it all.

There was only this. This man. This choice.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Maddox went still. I felt it through the bond, the warmth banking down, the alertness surging up. He reached for the phone without letting go of me, one arm staying wrapped around my waist.

Jace’s text was three lines.

He came back for a last look. East ridge. I have eyes on him. He’s alone and he’s deciding.

The word deciding sat in the room like a held breath.

Maddox set the phone down and looked at me. His eyes had gone steady, the wolf present but channeled, heat converted to readiness.

“He came back,” I said.

“He came back.”

We both understood what it meant. A man with nothing left to lose, standing somewhere visible, making a choice.

“Whatever he decides,” I said, “we’ll be ready.”

His hand tightened on my waist. The bond blazed between us, not desperate. Not afraid. Settled.

Like something that had always been true, and was only now being tested.

Chapter 19

The Last Calculation

MADDOX

Jace’s transmission still hung in the air when I stepped onto the porch. The cold hit my face like a slap, but the temperature wasn’t what made my wolf go still. It was the quality of the night, too quiet, too patient. The silence of something watching and waiting for me to make a mistake.

I keyed the radio. “Position.”

“East ridge. Stationary.” Jace’s voice came through flat, the way it did when he was reporting something he didn’t like. “He’s not advancing. Not retreating. Just standing there. Looking.”

“How long?”

“Four minutes.”

I processed it. A man who had spent a career hunting seers didn’t stand on an open ridge unless he was running arithmetic. Elias Thorne had lost two operatives, taken my teeth in the dark, and watched his faction support evaporate the hour Gideon’s counter-file burned Miriam’s chain. He had nothing left except the trail he already knew and whatever was still driving him after the professional reasons died.

“Perimeter status.”

“Clean. Noah’s sensors live. South approach locked.”

I didn’t shift.