Chapter Nine
ROGUE
Day one establishes the pattern, and Charlie fights everything like the feisty vampire she is.
Not aggressively, not always, but with a brand of resistance that involves equal parts genuine effort and deliberate sabotage, as if some part of her has decided that succeeding at my instructions too easily would constitute a concession she’s not ready to make.
We work in the shade. The sun is one more thing her body is fighting, and I’m not adding to it.
She sits where I tell her to sit.
She breathes the way I demonstrate.
Charlie closes her eyes when I ask. Then, three minutes later, she opens them with an expression of theatrical despair and announces that meditation is a concept invented by people who had never experienced a genuine problem.
By the second morning, we’ve found our rhythm, which is to say Charlie has found new registers of complaint.
“I’m sitting on a forest floor…” She groans, both palms flat against the cold earth, the way I showed her, pine needles pressing into her hands with the quiet insistence of something that doesn’t care about the supernatural crisis occurring above it.
The mountain air moves through the clearing in slow currents, carrying the smell of pine resin and creek water, and there is the stillness that exists in pack territory, where the land has learned, over generations, to be quiet and watchful.
“I’m sitting on a forest floor in the middle of nowhere, breathing in a pattern you described using the words ‘find the center’ three separate times as if that phrase has any content whatsoever, and I would like you to know that I am not centered.
I am, in fact, profoundly decentered. I am so far from centered that centered is a rumor to me. ”
“Try again,” I say.
She gives me a look that contains multitudes, most of them unfavorable.
But then she huffs dramatically and closes her eyes.
The hunger moving through her is visible even from where I stand, ten feet away, leaning against the trunk of a Douglas fir with my arms folded and my attention on every micro-expression crossing her face.
Two centuries of Bloodguard training means I read bodies the way some people read text, involuntarily and with a completeness that misses very little.
The tension in her jaw, the slight flicker of her throat working against the need, and the way her hands press harder into the earth when the hunger surges, as if she’s anchoring herself to the only solid thing available.
She’s trying.
She’s trying with everything she has, and the fact that it doesn’t look like conventional effort is beside the point, because I understand what it costs her to maintain composure when every new instinct she possesses is demanding she do the opposite of composure, every second of every minute of every hour since she turned.
The sun filters through the canopy in fractured gold, touching her skin without burning, but I can see the way she fights it anyway, the faint tightening around her mouth, the subtle shift of her shoulders as if she wants to lean away from the light and refuses to let herself move.
For a newly turned scion, the first months are a lesson in irritation, a constant hum beneath the skin, like a low-grade sunburn.
Add hunger to that, and meditation becomes less about peace and more about endurance.
Watching her try is not helping me maintain the professional distance this situation requires.
She’s got pine needles in her hair, which I’m choosing not to mention.
Her eyes are closed tight enough to wrinkle the corners, the way a person closes their eyes when they’re not relaxing but simply refusing to look at the thing threatening them, which is close enough to the actual technique that I’m going to count it.
Her jaw sets and releases in a rhythm she’s probably not aware of, working through the hunger in increments while the sunlight brushes her skin again and again, each touch something she has to ignore consciously.
The early morning light catches the sharp line of her cheekbone in a way that makes my chest do something I’m categorically not going to examine right now.
Four minutes pass.
Four and a half.
Then five, and something shifts in her posture, a fraction of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders.
Her hands go from actively pressing into the earth to simply resting there, grounding instead of bracing, and for the space of five seconds, she looks like a person who has found something approaching stillness, who has managed to wedge a sliver of calm between herself and the twin irritations of hunger and sunlight.
“Five minutes,” I say quietly.
Her eyes open. Something moves through them, surprise, then a complicated satisfaction, then the immediate work of containing that satisfaction before it becomes anything too obvious.
“Don’t,” she growls, preemptively.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were about to be encouraging in a very Rogue way, and I’d like to maintain my dignity, thank you.”
“Your dignity is intact,” I tell her. “Five minutes is real.”
She plucks a pine needle out of her palm, and I say, before I can stop myself, “There are still two more… in your hair.”
Her eyes lift to mine immediately, wary and curious all at once. “Where?”
I step toward her before I think better of it, and the bond reacts instantly.
Something tightens low in my chest as I close the distance between us, awareness sharpening until the rest of the clearing starts to blur at the edges.
The fire crackles somewhere off to our left.
Wind moves through the trees overhead. But none of it matters as much as the fact that Charlotte stands perfectly still when I reach for her.
My fingers slide carefully into her hair near her temple, searching through blonde strands until I find the first pine needle caught there.
The backs of my knuckles brush her cheek.
Heat rolls through me so fast it almost feels violent, and for one suspended second I forget entirely what I’m doing.
My attention locks onto the feel of her under my hand, the coolness of her skin, the way her eyes stay fixed on mine with that sharp, uncertain focus that’s been getting harder and harder to ignore every hour we spend together.
I slowly pull the first needle free.
Neither of us moves.
The second one sits farther back in her hair. I step in closer to reach it, my other hand settling lightly against her shoulder to steady her while my fingers slide through silk-soft strands again.
Now there’s barely any space left between us.
The scent of her wraps around me completely at this distance, vampire hunger tangled with the smell of pine, cold air, and something underneath both that my wolf reacts to immediately.
Mine.
The thought hits hard enough to tighten every muscle in my body.
Charlotte’s gaze drops to my mouth while my pulse kicks brutally against my ribs.
The clearing narrows around us until it feels like there’s nothing left in the world except her standing in front of me wearing my clothes, looking at me as if she’s trying to figure out whether this thing between us is dangerous or inevitable.
Probably both.
My thumb shifts against her shoulder. It’s a tiny movement, barely anything, but Charlotte’s breath catches anyway.
Her lips part on a soft inhale she doesn’t need, and the bond snaps tight between us hard enough to light my entire chest on fire.
My wolf surges forward instantly, possessive and starving for more of her.
More touch.
More closeness.
Just… more.
I step in without meaning to.
She doesn’t step back.
Now she’s right there, close enough that I can feel the cold of her skin beneath my hand, unnatural and sharp against my heat. Close enough that her gaze drops to my mouth again, lingering this time, heavy and hungry in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with blood.
And fuck, the way she’s looking at me nearly knocks the air out of my lungs. Like she wants to climb inside me, and devour me whole.
Fireworks crack through my body so hard it almost hurts.
My hand tightens on her shoulder instinctively, pulling her a fraction closer, and her body sways toward mine like she can’t help it either. Like something between us already knows exactly where it wants to end up.
Charlotte’s fangs slide down slowly. For one dangerous second, I don’t think it’s because of hunger.
Then suddenly, a deer crashes through the trees behind us.
The scent hits a split second later.
Fresh blood.
Living heartbeat.
Prey.
Charlotte jerks hard toward the sound immediately, instinct overtaking everything else in a violent rush.
I grab her wrist before she gets two steps, and the contact detonates through both of us.
A sharp spark tears up my arm the second our skin connects, hot enough to make her suck in a breath as I pull her back toward me.
The bond surges wildly, reacting to the contact with absolutely no concern for timing or self-preservation.
“Easy,” I growl, my voice rough.
Her pupils blow wide. Hunger flashes across her face hard enough to make her tremble. “I can hear it,” she whispers.
The deer crashes somewhere deeper in the forest now, heartbeat frantic and alive against the dark.
“I know.”
Every muscle in her body stays tight beneath my grip, ready to run, ready to hunt. My wolf reacts instantly to the tension in her, instincts snapping into place with protective force.
Not fear for myself, but fear of what losing control would do to her afterward.
“Not yet,” I tell her quietly, tightening my hold on her wrist just enough to keep her grounded. “Stay with me, Charlie.”
Her eyes snap back to mine while the hunger fights hard for control. I see it happening in real time, the instinct to chase tearing through her while the bond between us pulls just as hard in the opposite direction.
“Control yourself,” I demand.
Charlotte trembles once beneath my hand, then slowly, painfully, her fangs retract…