Chapter 17 #2
“I want what I’ve always wanted. You.” The word dripped with possessiveness, with entitlement, with years of festering obsession.
“I’ve been patient, Lena. So patient. Waiting for the right moment, watching you build your little life with that monster, knowing that eventually you would see the truth. ”
“There is no truth. There’s just you, stalking me, terrorizing me, refusing to accept that I will never want you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” His voice hardened. “You don’t know what you want. You’ve been manipulated, controlled, kept in the dark about who your real family is. But I’m going to fix that. I’m going to show you everything.”
“I’m not coming to you.”
“Oh, I think you will.” His tone shifted, hardened at the edges like ice forming on a window. “Because I’m not stupid. But your cousin, or rather, our cousin, is.”
The breath left my lungs. Clara. He was talking about Clara. My sweet, sunny Clara who had held down the hotel while we ran for our lives. Who had never done anything to anyone.
“She really should have been more careful,” Michael continued, his voice light and conversational, as if he were discussing the weather. “Dismissing her driver to browse the boutiques alone. Anyone could have been waiting outside that fitting room.”
“If you hurt her—”
A scream cut through the phone. High and terrified and unmistakably Clara’s voice, raw with genuine fear. Not acting. Not exaggerating. Real terror from someone who had never known violence before tonight.
The scream cut off as suddenly as it had begun, silenced by something I did not want to imagine.
My knees nearly buckled. I grabbed the back of the chair to steady myself, my free hand white-knuckled on the leather.
Clara. Sweet, sunny Clara who had never hurt anyone in her life.
Who made terrible jokes and wore too much perfume and had dropped everything to help me when my world was falling apart.
She was with him. She was terrified. And it was my fault.
“She’s fine,” Michael said. “For now. A little shaken, but unharmed. That can change very quickly, though. It all depends on you.”
Fury and fear tangled together inside me until I could not tell them apart. Clara had nothing to do with this. She was innocent. She had done nothing except be related to me, except love me, except step up when I needed her.
“Let her go.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, steadier than I had any right to sound with my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest. “This is between you and me. She has nothing to do with it.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong.” Michael’s voice hardened, the mask of civility slipping to reveal the obsession beneath.
“Everything you love has something to do with this. Everyone you care about is leverage. Your hotel. Your staff. Your cousin. Even that beast you married. I want you to understand something, Lena. There is nowhere you can hide that I cannot reach. No one you can protect from me.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you. I want you. Come to me alone, and Clara goes free. Bring anyone else, and I’ll send her back to you in pieces.”
The threat hung in the air, cold and clinical. He meant it. I could hear it in his voice, that flat certainty of a man who had crossed every line and no longer cared about consequences. Michael had stepped over the edge, and there was no coming back.
“Where?” I asked.
“You remember my mother’s cabin, don’t you?” His voice was soft. Almost tender. “We had such a nice visit there last time. I thought we could finish what we started.”
My stomach dropped. The place where I had woken bound and terrified while Raphael tore apart the city searching for me. He was taking me back.
“You have two hours,” he said. “Come alone. No husband. No wolves. Just you. If I see anyone else, Clara dies first. Then I come for everyone else you love.”
The line went dead.
For a long moment I did not move. Could not move. The phone stayed pressed to my ear as if Michael might come back on the line, might laugh and say it was all a joke, might give me some way out of this nightmare that did not end with someone I loved in pieces.
But there was no laughter. No reprieve. Only the silence of a dead connection and the tick of the grandfather clock marking the seconds I had left.
I stood in the study, the phone pressed against my ear even though there was nothing left to hear. The clock ticked. Somewhere on the mountain roads, Raphael was racing toward me. I could feel him drawing closer, his fury burning like a wildfire, his determination like iron.
He was coming. And I had two hours to decide what to do.
Clara’s scream echoed in my mind, playing on repeat. My innocent cousin who had never asked for any of this. Who had done nothing except love me and trust me and step into my hotel to help when I needed her. Who was now terrified and alone with a monster because of me.
Michael had taken her because of me. Because I was his target, and everyone I cared about was a weapon he could use against me.
The guilt rose like bile in my throat. But beneath it, beneath the fear and the horror and the self-recrimination, a different feeling surfaced. Cold and clear and absolute.
This ended tonight.
I was done being prey. Done letting Michael terrorize the people I loved. Done waiting for Raphael to handle this while I hid in his manor surrounded by guards like a princess in a tower.
Michael wanted me? Fine. He could have me.
But I would not go alone. And when I walked into that cabin, I would not be a victim walking to my slaughter.
I would be a woman who had made her choice.
I grabbed my coat from where I had draped it over the chair earlier.
Found my phone. Checked the address Michael had given me and committed it to memory.
The cabin in the mountains where he had taken me before.
The place where Raphael had found me bound and terrified, where he had killed to protect me.
Michael wanted me to remember that. Wanted me to walk back into that nightmare knowing exactly what awaited me.
He did not know how much I had changed since then. He did not know what Raphael and I had become together. And he certainly did not know that I was no longer the frightened woman who had woken up on that cold floor, praying someone would save her.
This time, I would save myself. And Clara too.
Tires screeched on the manor’s long drive. Headlights swept across the front windows, and his urgency hit me like a wave, his wolf howling to protect what was his.
I met him at the front door, my coat already on, my phone in my hand with the address Michael had given me.
His eyes found mine immediately, golden in the dim light, inhuman and wild with barely contained rage. He smelled like violence and cold night air.
“Michael called,” I said before he could speak. “He has Clara.”
The growl that tore from his throat was more wolf than man, a sound that made my bones vibrate. His hands found my shoulders, pulling me against him, his scent surrounding me like a shield.
“I will get her back,” he said, his voice rough with violence, with promise. “I will tear him apart and bring your cousin home.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He went still against me. His resistance pulsed between us, his wolf’s desperate need to lock me away somewhere safe while he hunted, every instinct in him screaming to protect me from danger at any cost.
“Lena—”
“No.” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes, to let him see what I had become. “He threatened me. He took my cousin. This is my fight too.”
“He wants you there. That is exactly what he is counting on.”
“I know.” I held his gaze, letting him read the fury and the fear transformed into certainty. Into purpose. “But he’s expecting me to come alone. Terrified. Easy to control. He’s not expecting what we’ll bring instead.”
Raphael stared at me for a long moment. The war raging inside him bled into my awareness, the primal protective instinct of his wolf slamming against the walls of his control.
His wolf wanted to throw me over his shoulder and carry me to the deepest room in the manor, to stand guard at the door with teeth bared while he sent Viktor and Dmitri to handle the threat.
Every fiber of his being screamed that his mate belonged somewhere safe while he hunted.
But his human side understood. He had watched me grow from the frightened woman who had agreed to marry a stranger into someone who could stand beside him and face whatever came. He respected who I had become.
I was his partner.
“We go together,” he said finally, each word carved from granite. “And when we find him, I kill him.”
I reached up and touched his face, felt the tension in his jaw, the barely leashed violence beneath his skin. “First we save Clara. Then you can have him.”
His hand covered mine, pressing my palm against his cheek. Through the bond, his love surged beneath the rage. His pride in my strength. His terror at the thought of losing me.
“You stay behind me,” he said. “When we reach the cabin, you do exactly as I say.”
“When it comes to killing him? Yes. But Clara is my family. I’m not hiding while you rescue her.”
He kissed me then, hard and desperate, his mouth claiming mine with all the fear and fury he could not put into words. I tasted his determination, his love, his absolute refusal to let Michael take anything else from us.
When we broke apart, his eyes had gone fully gold. The wolf was at the surface now, ready for blood.
“Then we hunt together,” he said.
The words settled over me like a benediction. Not permission. Not concession. Partnership. The acknowledgment that we faced this threat as one, that my place was beside him no matter how much his wolf howled in protest.
I nodded once and followed him into the night.