Chapter Seven #2
But telling her the truth, telling her about fated mates, lycan bonds and the way my wolf recognized her the second our eyes met, that conversation belongs somewhere other than a reinforced cell with her pupils blown wide from hunger and fear in equal measure.
“Because you asked,” I say instead. “And because you’re not nothing to me, Charlotte. You’re never going to be nothing to me.”
I watch it happen in real time, the flicker that moves across her face, confusion first, then something sharper underneath it. Her body stills fractionally, like some deeper instinct recognizes the truth of it before her mind does.
The pull between us tightens. I feel it in the way her eyes lock on mine and don’t let go.
In the way her hunger eases back just enough for something else to break through it—wariness and want.
That sharp flicker of recognition that makes no fucking sense when we met less than twenty-four hours ago.
But it’s there anyway.
Every time her gaze catches on my mouth, my throat, my eyes, the air between us pulls tighter. Like one wrong move could either start a fight or end with me dragging her against my chest to find out what she tastes like beneath all that blood and fury.
And she feels it too. I see it in the slight hitch of her breath. The way her pupils widen when I take a step closer. The way her attention keeps snagging on my mouth before she forces it back to my eyes like she’s pissed at herself for noticing.
And somehow, she understands anyway.
There’s a truth sitting heavy in my chest that I should tell her.
The real answer to why this feels like standing too close to live wires.
The word for what she is to me. What I knew the second our eyes locked outside the gates.
But she’s shaking on her feet, and running on instinct, and that conversation belongs somewhere when she’s got solid ground under her first.
“I’ll explain that properly when you’re not one missed beat away from losing control.”
Her eyes hold mine for a long second, long enough for something hot and dangerous to spark low in my gut when her attention drops briefly to my mouth before dragging back up again.
“That’s not a nothing answer,” she says softly.
“No,” I agree, my voice rougher now. “It’s not.”
She studies my face like she’s trying to peel the truth straight out of me, looking for lies, looking for angles, looking for the catch. But there’s something else in it now too—curiosity and heat. The kind that pulls people closer even when every survival instinct says run.
Whatever she finds, it’s enough to ease some of the fight out of her stance. Her shoulders lower slightly, her fangs slide back slowly, and her lips part on a shaky breath as her eyes catch on mine again.
“I don’t trust you,” she whispers.
My gaze drops to her mouth before I can stop it. The need to close the distance between us hits hard enough to feel violent. “I know.”
“But I’ll go. Because staying here is worse.”
I nod once, sharp and final. “I need to sedate you. Hades can do it with his death magic, no pain. You’ll wake up at the cabin, and this part will be over.
If I don’t, if you’re conscious for the drive, there’s too much risk.
The hunger gets stronger around people, and we’ll pass through populated areas before we hit the wilderness.
I can’t risk you losing control in the truck. ”
Her jaw tightens, fear spiking sharp enough I can smell it over the other emotions roiling off her in waves, but she nods. The gesture of someone who knows they don’t have better options.
“You want to knock me out?”
“The drive passes through towns. If you’re awake, you’ll kill someone. Probably multiple someones. This is the cleanest way.”
Charlie studies me, eyes flicking across my face, searching for the lie. “And if I say no?”
“It means we stay here.”
She shakes her head slightly, not refusing, just processing. “Stay here and die or go with you and maybe live? Not much of a choice.”
“But you do have a choice.”
She meets my eyes and nods slowly. “O-okay.”
I get to my feet and hold my hand out to her. She eyes it for a second like she’s still deciding whether trusting me is a spectacularly bad idea, but then finally takes it.
Hades is waiting in the hallway exactly where I figured he’d be, all quiet stillness and graveyard energy.
He doesn’t ask questions, or need the explanation either.
He simply moves past me into the room, his power unfurling, wrapping around Charlie with the kind of precision that comes from centuries of practice.
She goes down without a sound, her body relaxing into unconsciousness so smoothly it looks like sleep rather than magical intervention.
I catch her before she hits the floor, her weight settling into my arms with the kind of trust she can’t offer consciously but her body gives anyway, every instinct recognizing safety even when her mind can’t process it yet.
Hades steps back, his black eyes meeting mine with understanding that doesn’t require words. “She’ll sleep until you wake her. No dreams. No pain. It’s clean.”
“Thank you, brother.”
He inclines his head, the gesture carrying acknowledgment, then disappears back into shadow with the efficiency of someone who’s learned not to linger in places where his presence reminds the living of their mortality.
I carry Charlie upstairs, through the clubhouse where brothers watch with expressions ranging from concern to skepticism, past Sloane whose crimson-gold eyes track my movement with the kind of knowing that makes me wonder what her blood magic sees when she looks at us.
Crave stands near the bar, his gaze heavy with the weight of ultimatums and the bond between us that’s been fraying since the moment I recognized my mate.
Our eyes meet, and something passes between us that doesn’t fit into language—the acknowledgment of what this costs him, what it costs me, what we’re both sacrificing to different altars because fate doesn’t care about oaths sworn or loyalties built when it decides to rewrite the rules.
His jaw tightens, but he nods.
Permission. Reluctant and painful. Given anyway because he understands better than anyone what it means to have your world fractured by a woman you didn’t choose but can’t abandon.
The bond with Crave aches as the distance grows. Still present and real, but quieter now, in the background where it used to be primary. My wolf whines, confused by the competing loyalties, unable to reconcile serving two masters when instinct screams that mates come first, always first.
Before presidents.
Before pack.
Before anything.
I load Charlie into the truck’s passenger seat, securing her with the seatbelt, even though I know it’s unnecessary. An old habit, human gestures that provide comfort even when logic says they’re pointless. The engine turns over with a rumble that vibrates through the cab.
In the early hours of the morning, with darkness still surrounding us, I pull out of the compound’s lot, watching the clubhouse shrink in the rearview mirror, watching my brothers standing in formation outside the main doors like sentinels guarding territory I’m driving away from.
The bond with Crave aches.
Not broken or severed, but distant in ways it’s never been before, a phantom limb I can still sense but can’t quite reach. Still there, but not primary, not commanding, not the compass my wolf uses to orient himself in the world.
She’s the compass now.
Sleeping.
Dangerous as hell and fragile as glass.
Mine.
The drive north starts in tense silence, my hands tight on the wheel, my awareness split between the road ahead and the woman beside me whose stillness presses at my instincts, no pulse, no living rhythm, only the quiet hum of the mate bond beneath her skin.
Transformed into a creature that needs blood to survive and hasn’t learned yet that survival doesn’t require killing.
An hour passes before I stop.
The butcher shop sits on the edge of a town too small to matter, the kind of place hunters use when they don’t want to haul carcasses home whole.
Most nights it’s dark. Closed.
Tonight there’s a light on.
Relief slides through me. A single bulb glows behind the front window, cutting through the pre-dawn dark. I hadn’t been certain ‘The Butcher’ would be here and hadn’t wanted to drive farther with the clock working against me.
I kill the engine and step out. Cold air bites at my face while the world feels suspended.
Inside, the place smells of iron and bleach.
He’s alone.
Apron soaked through, stiff with dried blood. Fresh streaks stain the front, darker and still wet. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, forearms corded and smeared red. Hair flattened to his skull from sweat. Eyes rimmed in exhaustion.
He looks up when the door shuts behind me. “Rogue,” he says, voice sounding like gravel dragged over concrete.
I nod once. “You’re open early.”
A man, known only in our circle as ‘The Butcher, ’ snorts, scrubbing a hand down his face, leaving a diluted smear across his cheek.
“Group of hunters staying up at the cabins. Came in late with a truck bed full of elk and two deer. Wanted everything broken down before sunrise so they can pack out and head home.”
His gaze drops to my hands, then back to my face. He knows what I am. Knows better than to ask more than he needs.
“Lucky for me,” I say.
He leans back against the scarred wooden counter. There’s no one else here. So no need to move away from prying ears. The fluorescent light hums overhead.
“What’ll it be?”
“Five gallons of cow’s blood,” I tell him. “Fresh.”
A flicker passes through his eyes, curiosity maybe, but he keeps it to himself. He pushes off the counter and disappears into the back.
I wait, listening to the metallic clatter of lids and the slosh of liquid as it fills containers.
He returns with sealed jugs, dark red shifting inside thick plastic.
Cash changes hands with no receipt and no unnecessary words.
He looks more tired up close. His shoulders are slumped.