Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The claw marks appeared on the cottage wall overnight.
I found them when I stepped outside at dawn, four deep gouges raked through the stone right beside the window boards, the rock dust still pale on the snow beneath. Erik had stood here in the dark. Close enough to hear us breathing. Close enough to touch the wall where I slept on the other side.
Dietrich was already in the clearing, staring at the marks. His face had gone blank in the way that meant everything underneath was moving too fast to show.
“He’s healed,” I concluded.
“Enough to mark territory,” Dietrich confirmed. “Enough to announce he’s coming back.”
“How long?” I pressed.
“Days.” He touched one of the gouges. “Maybe less.”
“Then stop going easy on me,” I demanded. “Full speed. Today.”
He didn’t argue.
The first time he came at me full speed I didn’t see him move. One moment he was at the edge of the clearing, the next his hand was on my throat, not squeezing, just there, demonstrating how fast a werewolf could close distance when it stopped pretending to be human.
“Dead,” he stated, removing his hand.
“Again,” I ordered.
He came again. I threw the threading — tight, focused, aimed where his feet were taking him. It missed by a foot. He was inside my guard before the blast dissipated, his palm flat against my sternum.
“Dead,” he repeated.
“Again.”
We went for hours. He stopped being gentle. Stopped telegraphing. Moved the way his father would move, fast, brutal, unpredictable, and I threw everything I had and missed and missed and missed.
By midmorning my nose was streaming blood and my hands were shaking and I’d landed exactly two hits out of maybe forty attempts.
“Not enough,” I gasped, bent over with my hands on my knees.
“You’re getting faster,” he observed, barely winded.
“Not fast enough,” I shot back. “Again.”
I broke open that afternoon. The anger I’d been using as fuel, the rage at his lies, at Erik, at everything, I’d been pouring it into every blast. But anger was wild. Anger scattered the threads.
I needed a steadier source.
Dietrich came at me from the left. Fast. I gathered the threads and instead of reaching for the anger I reached for what lived underneath it.
The thing I’d been refusing to name since the bath.
Since the shelf. Since the birch tree. The pull that made my body hum when he was near and my hands steady when he was watching.
I released the threading.
The blast caught him square in the chest. Tight. Focused. Precise enough to stop his momentum and send him back three full steps.
He looked at me. Breathing hard for the first time all day.
“What did you just do?” he asked, pressing a hand to his sternum.
“Found a better fuel,” I replied, and didn’t explain further.
We trained until I collapsed. I threaded a blast that cracked a boulder clean in half. The two halves steamed in the cold air and Dietrich stared at them with a look caught between pride and fear.
I swayed on my feet. He caught my arm. I leaned into him — my shoulder against his chest, my face near the hollow of his throat. His scent filled my lungs and my body tilted toward his warmth the way it always did.
I didn’t pull away. Not immediately.
His arm came up. Slowly. And wrapped around my shoulders.
We stood in the clearing with the cracked boulder steaming behind us and neither of us spoke. His heartbeat was too fast beneath my ear. Too hard for a man who’d just been moving at full werewolf speed.
I pulled away eventually. But not quickly. And not far.
The second set of claw marks appeared the next morning. On the door itself.
Deep grooves raked through the new oak he’d hung days ago. Erik had come while we slept, close enough to touch the door we’d built together.
“He’s not just circling,” I realized, tracing the gouges. “He’s announcing.”
“Testing how close he can get,” Dietrich corrected, his expression grim. “How much he can take before I respond.”
“Next time it won’t be marks,” I stated.
“Next time it won’t be marks,” he agreed.
We trained until dark. I landed one in three at full speed. The threading held tighter with each attempt. But it wasn’t enough and we both knew it.
That night, by the fire, I sat on the bed with the grimoire closed in my lap and watched him feed the flames.
“Claim me,” I suggested.
His hands stilled on the log he was placing.
“The claiming,” I continued. “The bite. The bond. Do it.”
He turned, and the expression on his face wasn’t what I expected. Not hope. Not desire.
Fear.
“I can’t do that to you,” he replied, and the stillness in him told me he’d been thinking about this for a long time.
“You told me what it means,” I challenged, standing from the bed. “The bond. The protection. Other wolves sensing it. You told me you wanted ...”
“I know what I want,” he interrupted, the steadiness fraying. “I’ve wanted it since the night I carried you out of the forest. The wolf has been screaming for it every day since.” He pressed his hands against his face. Breathed. “But wanting and doing are different things.”
“I’m asking you,” I insisted, stepping closer. “I’m choosing ...”
“You’re choosing because Erik is coming,” he cut in, dropping his hands.
His eyes found mine — fierce and bright and full of pain.
“You’re choosing because you’re frightened and you think the bond will give us an advantage.
” He broke. “The claiming isn’t a strategy, Talia.
It’s permanent. It’s my teeth in your skin and my heartbeat in your chest for the rest of your life.
And if I do it because you’re scared instead of because you’re sure . ..”
“You think I’m not sure?” I stepped into his space.
“I think you’re brave and you’d do anything to survive,” he countered, and his composure finally broke. “And I love you too much to let you do this for the wrong reasons.”
Everything stopped.
He’d said it in pieces before. In the confession about the wolf and the man. In the way he’d wept during sex and carved Sophia’s name and placed the sage jar where Grandmother kept it. A hundred ways without ever saying it plainly.
I love you too much.
He didn’t say the wolf wants you. Didn’t say the instinct pulls.
I love you. So much that I’ll refuse the thing I’ve wanted my entire life because I’m afraid it isn’t what you truly want.
“I’ll die protecting you,” he went on, stripped down to nothing.
“If Erik comes tomorrow, I’ll fight him.
Without the bond, without the claiming, without anything except teeth and claws and the need to keep you alive.
” He swallowed hard. “And if he kills me, then at least I’ll die knowing I never took something from you that you might regret giving. ”
I stared at him.
This man. This impossible, infuriating man who would walk into a fight he couldn’t win, who would die on the forest floor with his chest torn open, rather than claim me without being absolutely certain I wanted it.
His father had caged a woman and claimed her by force because he couldn’t bear the thought of not having her.
His son was willing to die rather than put his teeth on a woman who was standing in front of him begging for it.
The anger, the last ember of it, the final coal I’d been keeping banked since the day I’d watched his bones reform, went out.
What replaced it was heat of a different kind entirely.
I reached for the laces of the white dress.
His eyes tracked my fingers. “Talia, what are you ...”
“Be quiet,” I told him, and pulled the first lace free.
The second. The third. The bodice loosened. I pushed it down over my shoulders, past my hips, and let it fall. The white linen pooled at my feet.
I pulled the shift over my head.
His whole body jerked. A shudder that ran from his shoulders to his boots.
“You’re not doing this because of Erik,” I stated, stepping toward him. “And neither am I.”
“Talia ...” He could hardly get it out. His eyes kept dropping from my face to my body and dragging themselves back up and the effort was visibly killing him. “I just told you I wouldn’t ...”
“You told me you loved me,” I corrected, closing the distance.
“You told me you’d die before you’d let anyone hurt me.
You told me you’d walk into a fight you can’t win and bleed out in the snow rather than claim me without my consent.
” I put my hands on his chest. Felt his heart slamming beneath my palms. “So here it is. My full, free, honest consent. Given by a woman who is not frightened and not desperate and not thinking about Erik at all.”
“Then what are you thinking about?” he managed.
“About the sage jar,” I replied. “About Sophia’s name carved into birch bark. About the way you wept the first time I touched you and the way you held the wolf back every single night and the way you just looked me in the eye and told me you’d rather die than take something I might regret.”
I rose onto my toes and put my mouth beside his ear.
“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you and I want you to claim me. Because I choose you. Both of you. Man and wolf. Tonight and every night after.”
His control broke.
His hands found my waist and his mouth found mine and the kiss was nothing soft, thirty years of wanting released in a single moment, his body pressing me backward toward the bed, his hands gripping me like I’d dissolve if he loosened his hold.
I pulled at his shirt. He tore it over his head. I ran my hands down his chest, feeling the ridges, the scars, the intense heat of him.
“Take what you want,” he breathed against my mouth, coming apart on every word. “Whatever you want. However you want it. I’m yours.”
I pushed him onto the bed.
He landed on his back, chest heaving, eyes blazing up at me. I climbed over him and straddled his hips and the sound he made, low and broken, sent heat flooding through me.
I stripped his trousers off him and then it was just us, skin against skin, the fire crackling, his body beneath mine.