Chapter 15 #2
I glanced back. He had stopped in the doorway, his head tilted slightly, nostrils flaring. His entire body had gone still in that way predators did when they caught a scent. Every sense locked onto a threat I could not see, could not smell. But he could.
“Raphael?”
“Something is wrong.” The words were barely a whisper. His hand moved to his side, where I knew he kept a knife concealed beneath his jacket.
The words froze me in place. I watched him move into the room, his steps silent, his body coiled with tension. He crossed to the bedroom door in three long strides and pushed it open.
For a moment, nothing happened. He stood in the doorway, perfectly still, his back to me.
Then his rage exploded into me.
I staggered back a step, nearly losing my balance. It was pure, white-hot fury, barely contained. His wolf was howling for blood beneath the surface.
“Lena.” His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came right before violence. “Come here.”
I crossed the room on unsteady legs, my heart pounding against my ribs.
The bedroom looked the same as always. The bed we’d slept in last night, still rumpled because neither of us had thought to make it.
The curtains drawn against the morning sun, now filtering the last gold of sunset. My robe draped over the chair.
And on my pillow, perfectly centered where my head would rest, sat a single white rose.
It was fresh and pristine. The petals were still dewy, cut just hours ago. The stem had been stripped of its thorns, trimmed clean.
There was no note. None was needed.
The message was clear. He had been here. He could reach me anywhere. And he wanted me to know it.
The rose had no scent. I realized that as I stared at it, my mind cataloguing details with strange clarity. It should have smelled like flowers, like garden soil, like life. Instead it smelled like nothing. Like the absence of something that should have been there.
“He was in our bedroom.” The words came out flat, distant, like someone else was speaking them. “He was here. In our home.”
Raphael’s hand closed around my arm, pulling me back from the bed like the rose might bite. “Do not touch it.”
“How did he get in?” I stared at the flower, my mind racing. The door had been locked. The windows were three stories up. Security had been watching the service entrance all day. “How did he know we wouldn’t be here?”
“Because he has been watching.” Raphael’s voice was cold, flat, deadly.
Through the bond, his wolf was howling, clawing at his control, demanding to hunt.
“He knows this building inside and out, our routines, when we leave and when we return. He has been circling, waiting for an opening. And we gave him one.”
The violation hit all at once.
How long had he been in here? Minutes? Hours? Had he stood over the bed where Raphael and I slept, watching us? Had he touched more than just my pillow?
My stomach lurched. For a moment I thought I might be sick, right here on the carpet of my own bedroom. Some rational part of my brain pointed out that Raphael would never judge me for that. The rest of me was too busy trying not to gag.
Then fury rose up beneath the nausea, hot and sharp and absolutely certain.
“He thinks this will break me.” My voice came out steady. Certain. “He’s wrong.”
Raphael’s gaze snapped to my face.
“He wants me scared.” I pulled my arm free of his grip, not to get closer to the rose but to stand on my own feet. “He wants me cowering. Jumping at shadows. Begging you to protect me.” My hands curled into fists at my sides. “That’s not who I am anymore.”
“Lena.”
“I am done being hunted.” The words burned in my throat, tasting like fire. “I am done being prey. If he wants to play this game, fine. But I’m not going to let him win by making me afraid to sleep in my own bed.”
“Pack a bag.” His voice was ice, a command rather than a request. “We are leaving. Now.”
“Raphael, this is my hotel. I’m not going to let him chase me out of my own—”
“You will not sleep in this bed tonight.” He stepped into my space, crowding me with his heat, his presence, the solid wall of his body between me and the violated bed.
The wolf blazed behind his eyes, barely leashed.
“You will not sleep in this building. Michael knows every entrance, every blind spot, every face on this staff. I cannot protect you here.”
“So I’m supposed to run? Hide? That’s exactly what he wants.”
“What he wants is you dead.” Raphael’s hand closed around my jaw, firm but not painful, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“Or worse. And I will burn this city to the ground before I let that happen. We go to the manor. Wolf security. Where he’ll be on unfamiliar ground.
My territory.” His thumb traced along my cheekbone, the gentleness at odds with the steel in his voice. “This is not a discussion, Lena.”
I wanted to argue. This was my hotel. My home. Every instinct screamed that running meant losing.
But beneath his fury, something else bled through our connection. Fear. Not for himself. Every scrap of it was for me. The primal terror of a wolf who had found his mate violated, his territory breached, his enemy one step ahead.
“Until we find him,” I said.
“Until I kill him.”
The promise was absolute. No hesitation, no doubt. Michael was a dead man walking. He just didn’t know it yet.
And underneath my defiance, underneath the fury and the violation, a small traitorous part of me unclenched. The manor. Wolves who would smell an intruder before he reached the property line. Raphael’s territory, where the walls knew his scent and the guards answered to his command.
I was giving ground. Letting Michael chase me out of my own hotel, my own bedroom. That should have tasted like defeat.
Instead, it tasted like relief.
When did I start thinking of the manor as home? The question surfaced unbidden, and I didn’t have an answer. Somewhere between the first night I had slept there and now, Raphael’s world had become mine too.
Raphael was already pulling out his phone, barking orders in rapid Russian to Petrov as he steered me toward the closet.
I moved around the bedroom while he talked, pulling clothes from drawers and shoving them into an overnight bag.
I didn’t look at the rose again. Didn’t need to.
Its image was burned into my mind, white petals against dark sheets, a violation made beautiful.
Michael had made his move. Shown his hand. Proven that he could reach me anywhere, that no security detail could keep him out.
He probably thought that would terrify me.
He was wrong.
I zipped the bag closed and slung it over my shoulder. Through the bedroom window, the October sky had darkened to purple, the mountains nothing but black shapes against the fading light.
Somewhere out there, Michael was watching. Waiting. Congratulating himself on his clever violation.
Enjoy it while you can, I thought. Because when Raphael finds you, there won’t be enough left to bury.
I walked out of the bedroom without looking back.