Chapter 22 #2
“Clara,” she said. “Check on Clara.”
I glanced toward the corner where Clara was bound to a second chair.
Lena’s cousin was pale and shaking, mascara streaked down her cheeks in dark tracks, her eyes red from crying.
But no serious blood, just a scrape on her wrist from the ropes.
Terrified but uninjured. Michael had kept her intact as leverage.
At least he had been smart enough not to damage his only bargaining chip.
Outside, I heard Viktor’s truck door close.
Heard footsteps crunching on frost-hardened earth, the controlled approach of wolves who knew how to move quietly when the situation demanded it.
Help was here. Viktor and Dmitri would secure the perimeter, would cover the exits, would make sure Michael had nowhere to run.
This was almost over.
I started to move toward Lena, intending to tear the ropes from her wrists with my teeth.
Intending to free her, hold her, assure myself with physical contact that she was truly safe.
The need to touch her was absolute, a compulsion that had nothing to do with thought and everything to do with the bond that connected us.
But Michael moved.
He rolled, faster than a man who had just been slammed into a wall should have been able to move, adrenaline giving him strength that his battered body should not have possessed.
He scrambled across the floor toward the couch, his movements frantic, desperate, the scrabbling retreat of a cornered animal.
Toward where the gun had disappeared.
I lunged after him but I was a fraction of a second too slow. My attention had been on Lena, on the bond, on the sheer relief of finding her alive. I had taken my eyes off the threat for one crucial moment, and that moment was all Michael needed.
My jaws snapped closed on empty air as he dove behind the couch. His hand closed around metal, the gun scraping against the wooden floor. And then he was rising, turning, the weapon clutched in his shaking grip.
He did not point it at me.
He pointed it at Clara.
The barrel pressed against her temple as he crouched behind her chair, using her body as a shield between himself and me. His hand was shaking, his eyes wild with desperation, but his finger was on the trigger and that made him dangerous regardless of his fear.
“Stay back.” His voice cracked on the words. “Stay back or I kill her.”
I froze.
The wolf wanted to attack anyway. Every instinct screamed to lunge, to trust my speed, my reflexes, my ability to cross the distance and tear out his throat before his finger could tighten on the trigger.
But the gun was not pointed at me. It was pressed against Clara’s temple, the barrel dimpling her skin, her pulse hammering visibly in her throat.
If I moved, Clara died. If I hesitated too long, Lena might die. If I did nothing, we had a standoff that could end any number of ways.
The room stank of fear. Michael’s terror, bitter and rank.
Clara’s panic, higher and sweeter. And beneath it all, Lena’s controlled dread, the fear of someone who was holding herself together by will alone.
The scents layered over each other, thick and cloying, mixing with the copper of blood and the sulfur residue of gunpowder.
The cabin door banged open and Viktor’s bulk filled the entrance, already partially shifted, claws out and ready. He took in the scene in an instant: me frozen mid-lunge, Michael with a gun to Clara’s head, Lena still bound to her chair. His eyes met mine, a question in them.
I shook my head, the smallest movement. Not yet. Not while he has the gun pressed against her skull.
“Raphael.” Viktor’s voice was carefully controlled, the calm of a man who had been in situations like this before. “We have the cabin surrounded. Dmitri is covering the back.”
“Get out.” Michael’s voice was rising, panic bleeding through the thin veneer of control. “Get out or she dies. I swear to God, I will pull this trigger.”
Viktor did not move. He stood in the doorway, solid and patient, blocking the only exit. Dmitri would be outside the back window by now, gun drawn, waiting for a clear shot. Michael was trapped, and somewhere in that broken mind of his, he had to know it.
“Michael.” Lena’s voice again, calm despite everything. I marveled at her composure, at the steel in her spine even now. “Let Clara go. She’s not part of this.”
“She’s part of it now.” Michael’s laugh was ragged, broken. “You’re all part of it. You made me part of it, Lena. All I ever wanted was for you to see me. To choose me. Is that so much to ask?”
Lena’s grief bled through our bond. Not for herself. For him. For the brother she might have had, the relationship that could have been, if only he had made different choices along the way.
“I see you now, Michael,” she said softly. “I see you.”
“No.” He shook his head, the gun trembling against Clara’s temple. “No, you don’t. You never did. Even when I was standing right in front of you, you looked through me like I was nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” Lena said. “I’m sorry our father made you feel that way. I’m sorry I didn’t know what you were going through.”
“Don’t.” Michael’s voice cracked. “Don’t you dare pity me. I don’t want your pity, Lena. I want your love. I want what he has.” He jerked his chin toward me, hate burning in his eyes. “I want what that monster has. The way you look at him. The way you chose him over your own blood. Over me.”
I held myself still, every muscle locked against the urge to attack. The standoff stretched between us, fragile as glass. One wrong move. One flinch. One instant of lost control and Clara would die.
Viktor stayed in the doorway, a silent threat. Outside, Dmitri shifted position, his footsteps careful on the frozen ground as he worked to find an angle. But there was no angle. Not with Michael using Clara as a human shield.
This was going to end one of two ways. And right now, I could not control which one it would be.
“You’re not a monster,” Lena said to me, her voice steady even as tears continued to track down her cheeks. “You never were.”
Her love flooded through our bond. Her absolute certainty. Her faith in me despite everything Michael had said, everything he had done.
“She was mine first.” Michael’s voice had gone flat, dead. The panic was fading, replaced by something colder. More dangerous. “I found her first. I watched her first. I loved her first. And you took her from me.”
I held his gaze, wolf eyes meeting human eyes, and I let him see exactly what I was.
What I would do to him if he hurt anyone else in this room.
What I would do to him even if he did not.
I let him see the wolf beneath the restraint, the predator waiting behind the patience, the violence that would be unleashed the moment I had an opening.
His fate was sealed. Whether he released Clara or not, whether he dropped the gun or kept pointing it, whether he surrendered or fought.
None of it would change the outcome. The moment he had taken my mate, he had signed his own death warrant.
The only question now was how much pain he would experience before I ended him.
“Michael.” Lena’s voice sharpened. “This ends one of two ways. You let Clara go, and we talk. Or you don’t, and everyone in this room watches what happens next.”
“What happens next,” Michael repeated, and smiled.
It was the smile of a man who had nothing left to lose.
The smile of someone who had already accepted that he was not walking out of this cabin alive, and had decided to take as much of the world with him as he could.
“What happens next is that your husband learns what it feels like to lose someone he loves.”
Clara sobbed, a broken sound of pure terror. Viktor shifted in the doorway, ready to move. Dmitri’s shadow passed by the window, still searching for an angle that did not exist.
And Michael started to shift the gun. Away from Clara. Toward Lena.
Time slowed. The barrel swung in an arc that would end with my mate. Michael’s finger tightened on the trigger. Hatred and desperation burned in his eyes as he prepared to destroy the one thing that mattered most to me.
My wolf coiled, ready to spring.