Chapter 8 - Raegan
I throw up the moment Wyn parks in his driveway.
My stomach empties itself into the desert scrub beside his mailbox, and I barely manage to stay upright through the retching. The taste of bile and lingering chloroform burns my throat.
“Don’t,” I gasp when he moves to help me. “Just…give me a minute.”
He hovers nearby while I empty what little is left in my stomach. The man who kidnapped me and forced me into marriage is now playing the part of a concerned husband. The irony would be funny if I weren’t living it.
His house sits alone on several acres of desert land; a single-story adobe with a red tile roof that blends into the landscape. It’s exactly what one would expect from a man who values solitude over company, and it’s exactly as I remember it.
“Better?” he asks when I finally straighten up.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Peachy.”
The word comes out more barbed than I intended, but I don’t care. Sarcasm is about the only weapon I have left.
“Come on.” He reaches for my wrist to help steady me. “Let’s get you inside where you can—”
The moment his fingers close around my wrist, the world explodes.
Images flood my mind like a dam bursting—vivid, detailed, and all-consuming. I can see everything with crystal clarity, as if I’m watching a movie projected directly into my brain.
Bastian stands in the desert at night, but he looks different.
Harder. More dangerous. He’s talking to men I don’t recognize, whose faces are illuminated by the glow of tablet screens.
Maps spread across the hood of a truck show territory boundaries marked in red, resource locations pinpointed with GPS coordinates.
“The Amanzite reserves are here and here,” Bastian states. “Extraction begins at dawn, security changes shift at 0600. We’ll have a twelve-minute window.”
One of the men nods. “And the girl?”
“Leave that to me. Once the marriage is complete, she won’t be a problem.”
The scene changes. I’m wearing a wedding dress, but not at the simple ceremony I just experienced. This is elaborate, with hundreds of guests, formal decorations, and cameras recording every moment.
An officiant I don’t recognize asks if I take Bastian as my husband. The moment I say yes, pain shoots through my chest like lightning. My heart stutters, then stops. I collapse in the aisle while guests scream, and Bastian kneels beside my body with perfectly orchestrated grief.
But his eyes aren’t sad. They’re ecstatic.
The vision changes again, and this time, I see myself in a hospital bed with machines beeping around me while doctors shake their heads. Poisoned slowly, they tell my family. Nothing they can do. The marriage gave her husband legal rights to her inheritance, including mineral claims worth millions.
Oren stands at my bedside, holding my lifeless hand while Bastian signs papers that transfer my share of the Amanzite reserves to his name. My brother is too devastated by grief to notice the small smile playing at the corners of my new widower’s mouth.
More images flood in—Thornridge forces are moving through our territory while the pack is distracted by my funeral. Quick strikes, overwhelming force, resistance crushed before it can organize. Our prosperity stolen; our people scattered or dead.
All because I said yes to the wrong man.
The visions fade as suddenly as they came, leaving me gasping and shaking in Wyn’s arms. He caught me when I started to fall, and now he’s holding me against his chest while I try to convince myself that what I just saw isn’t real.
“What happened?” His voice sounds distant, muffled. “Raegan, what did you see?”
I struggle to separate reality from vision, to remember where I am and what’s real. Wyn’s house. His driveway. The marriage certificate in my purse that binds us together legally.
“Bastian,” I whisper. “He was going to kill me.”
“What?”
The details pour out of me in a rush; the maps, the coordinates, the timeline.
How my death would have looked natural, the result of some unknown poison that worked slowly through my system.
How Bastian would have inherited my share of the Amanzite reserves and used the chaos of my funeral to cover a full-scale invasion.
Wyn listens without interrupting, and his face grows darker with each detail I reveal.
“The marriage would have been my death sentence,” I continue. “And once I was gone, Thornridge would have had everything they needed to destroy the pack.”
“How do you know all this? Visions don’t usually—”
“The marriage bond.” I flex my fingers, studying them like they belong to someone else. “Something changed when you touched me. My abilities are stronger now, clearer. I can see things I never could before.”
The psychic flashes I’ve experienced in the past were fleeting, vague impressions that faded quickly. This was different. It was detailed, specific, and impossible to dismiss as imagination.
“There were backup plans, too,” I tell him. “If the marriage didn’t work, they were prepared to take me by force. Use me as leverage against Oren.”
Understanding passes between us, cold and sobering. For the first time since he kidnapped me, I see why he felt he had no choice.
“You saved my life,” I say quietly.
Relief moves across his face. “You believe me now.”
“I believe the visions. That doesn’t mean I forgive your methods.”
The relief disappears. Good. He needs to understand the distinction.
“You could have trusted me with the truth,” I continue. “You could have explained the danger and let me make an informed decision about how to handle it.”
“The intelligence is classified—”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You found a way to justify kidnapping me, but you couldn’t find a way to justify telling me the truth? That’s not about security clearance, Wyn. That’s about control.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again before he nods. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. You made unilateral decisions about my life because you thought you knew better than I did. Because you thought I couldn’t handle the truth.”
We stare at each other across the space between us, years of history and hurt crackling in the desert heat. I can smell his wolf beneath the human exterior, and it makes my own wolf pace restlessly.
“Come on,” he finally prompts. “Let’s get you inside.”
I follow him into his house, taking in the sparse furnishings and masculine decor. Everything is practical, functional, devoid of personal touches that might reveal who he really is beneath the professional facade.
“It’s very…lonely,” I comment.
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
The house tour is brief—living room, kitchen, bathroom, his bedroom, and finally, the guest room where I’ll be staying.
“This is yours,” he tells me. “There are some clean clothes on top of the dresser. They’re mine, so they’ll be a bit big, but we can go grab some of your things tomorrow. You’ll have complete privacy. I won’t bother you unless there’s an emergency.”
I survey the space. Double bed, dresser, nightstand with reading lamp. Clean but impersonal, like a hotel room.
“What about my things? My classes, my research, my entire life that you’ve torn me away from?”
“We can arrange for everything to be shipped here. Your education can continue remotely.”
I snort and reply, “How generous of you to allow me to finish my degree.”
He doesn’t respond to the sarcasm. Smart man.
“What happens now?” I ask. “Do I stay locked up here while you go back to your job like nothing happened?”
“You’re not locked up. But you can’t go back to your old life, at least not yet. There are still Thornridge operatives out there.”
“And Bastian?”
His face goes cold. “We’ll handle it.”
“You’re going to kill him.”
“He’s a terrorist operative who infiltrated our territory with plans to murder you and steal our resources. Yes, I will kill him.”
I should feel something: shock, horror, maybe even grief for the man I thought I was going to marry. Instead, I feel nothing but grim satisfaction.
Wyn studies my face like he’s seeing me for the first time. Maybe he is. The naive girl who left for Llewelyn is gone, replaced by someone harder and more experienced.
“Understanding your motivations doesn’t erase what you’ve done,” I tell him. “You stole my choices, Wyn. All of them. And now I’m supposed to be grateful because it turned out you were right?”
“I’m not asking for gratitude.”
“Good, because you’re not getting it.”
I walk to the window and look out at the desert landscape stretching toward the horizon. “Oren is going to be furious when he learns what you’ve done,” I say without turning around.
“I know.”
“I’m not talking about just angry. I’m talking about the kind of rage that ends careers and destroys friendships.”
Wyn is quiet for a long moment. “He trusted me with your safety.”
“And you interpreted that as permission to kidnap me and force me into marriage.”
“He’ll understand that I saved your life.”
“You also destroyed it.” I turn to face him now. “My independence, my autonomy, my right to make decisions about my own future…. It’s all gone because you decided you knew better.”
He doesn’t deny it, which is something, at least.
“When Oren finds out about this marriage, there’s going to be hell to pay,” I continue. “For both of us, but especially for you.”
“I’ll face whatever consequences come.”
“Will you? Because those consequences include losing everything—your job, your reputation, your place in the pack. Maybe even your life, depending on how angry my brother gets.”
I watch him consider this, weighing the cost of his actions against whatever drove him to make them.
“Yes,” he says finally. “I’m prepared for that.”
“Why? What’s worth throwing away everything you’ve worked for?”
His gray eyes hold mine for a long moment, and I see something there that makes my stomach flutter.
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
It’s not the whole truth. I can hear the lie in his voice, see it in the way he won’t quite meet my eyes. But I don’t push. I’m not ready for whatever truth he’s hiding.
“I should let you get some rest,” he tells me as he backs toward the door. “It’s been a long day.”
“That’s an understatement.”
He pauses in the doorway and glances back at me. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry it came to this.”
“I know you are. But sorry doesn’t undo what you’ve done.”
The marriage certificate in my purse crackles when I move, reminding me of the legal bonds that now tie our lives together. Mrs. Raegan Lemay. Once upon a time, that would’ve thrilled me.
“The visions showed me something else,” I tell him. “This marriage isn’t just paperwork. There’s something supernatural about it, something that’s changed my abilities.”
His face goes carefully blank, but I catch something in his eyes.
“You knew,” I breathe. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
He doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.
“That’s why you were so insistent on the marriage. Not just for legal protection, but because you knew it would change me somehow.” My voice rises with each word. “What else haven’t you told me, Wyn? What other surprises am I going to discover about this bond you’ve forced on me?”
Still nothing.
“Get out.” The words come out low and deadly. “Get out of my room. Now.”
He lets out a long breath, spins on his heel, and walks out. I rush over and slam the door between us.
The guest room feels like a cage despite his assurances about privacy and freedom. Not because of locked doors or barred windows, but because of circumstance. I’m trapped here by the very real danger that still exists beyond these walls.
This morning, I was Raegan Blacklock, engaged to a gentle academic and planning my future in diplomatic relations.
Now I’m Raegan Lemay, married to a man who rejected me once and kidnapped me to keep me alive. My psychic abilities have been enhanced by supernatural bonds I don’t understand, and somewhere in the desert, people want me dead for resources I never knew I had a claim to.
The debt between Wyn and me is real and complex. He saved my life, but he also stole my choice. The marriage protects me, but it also binds me to a man who thinks he has the right to make unilateral decisions about my future.
And when Oren learns what his most trusted advisor has done, there’s going to be a reckoning that none of us are prepared for.
I pull out the marriage certificate and study our signatures—his bold and confident, mine angry and resigned. Whatever supernatural bond exists between us now, it started here, with ink on paper and vows spoken under duress.
Mrs. Raegan Lemay.
The name still sounds wrong, but maybe I’ll get used to it. I have a feeling I’m going to have to.