Chapter 4 - Dove
I run.
Where to? Hell if I know. This town’s too small to outrun that fight.
Too small to outrun Wolf.
I don’t trust him. He’s ruthless and unpredictable. A savage beneath the lazy grin.
But he saved me.
And he lost his job in the process.
That complicates things.
Salty ocean air clings to my skin, mixing with a sheen of moisture. Am I sweating?
No, wait. It’s drizzling.
Within minutes, a whispering mist slicks the streets in shimmering reflections of amber and blue, curling around the buildings like smoke.
The world feels hushed, blurred at the edges, and Jag is out there. Watching. Waiting. The thought unsettles me, careening my heart against my ribs.
He won’t let this go. Not after tonight.
My stomach twists with hunger, but I can’t eat until I find a job.
Should be easy. Every town has a mechanic shop.
Dragging my ruined dress through puddles, I jog past a bank, church, school, bakery, another church, multiple gift shops, chiropractor’s office, another bank, another church, on and on until…
There!
The sign above the garage is faded, the letters curling from years of rain and wind. The place is locked up, the bay doors drawn shut.
Around back, there’s a patch of grass, dry beneath an awning and hidden from the streetlights. A private place to bunker down for the night.
But first, I need out of this wet dress.
As I move toward the awning, the crunch of boots behind me sends a fresh spike of irritation up my spine. I don’t have to look to know it’s him.
“Ignoring me won’t make me disappear,” Wolf drawls.
While he’s shockingly violent, he hasn’t given me a reason to think he would aim that violence at me. The opposite, in fact. It’s weird.
Men have not been kind to me, but I get the feeling that men haven’t been kind to Wolf either.
I drop my bag under the awning and tug at the back of my bodice, my fingers slipping over the ties. They won’t budge, and after a few minutes, my arms ache from the effort.
Goddammit.
“What are you doing?” His voice is closer.
“Changing.” I turn my back to him. “Unlace it.”
For once, silence.
I peer over my shoulder and find his mouth open and his brows raised. Finally, something that shuts him up.
“No,” he growls.
“I can’t reach.”
“You’re not stripping outside in public.”
“There’s no one here.”
“There’s me.”
“Then don’t look.”
He scans the ground, my bag, and the awning, realizing my intention. “You can’t sleep here.”
“Says who?”
“Me.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“You do.” He shifts to face me, his blue eyes burning into mine. “My broth…errr…uncle has an unused apartment at the distillery.”
“Your brother? Or your uncle?”
“Both-ish.”
“No thanks.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t like options that involve you or males you know. Go away.”
“But your brother is an option?” He drifts closer, charging the air with his overbearing maleness. “You want to wake with a knife to your throat?”
I know he’s right, but accepting his help feels reckless. I’d rather take my chances with Jag. Better the enemy I know than the one I don’t.
“I have a better idea.” He shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. “Come to the island with me.”
Heady notes of vanilla vodka, weathered leather soaked by rain, and a trace of tobacco overwhelm my senses. Wolf’s scent. Masculine and dangerous, like a motorcycle ride through a thunderstorm.
I frown. “What island?”
“My father’s.” He motions toward the harbor. “Just across Sitka Sound.”
“I don’t know you.”
“My father is Monty Novak. Google him.” He studies his chewed fingernails. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
I pull out my phone, and the search results punch the breath from my lungs.
Monty Novak. The richest man in Alaska. His name is everywhere—business articles, interviews, photos of him standing beside world leaders and celebrities.
“This is your dad?” I lob a dubious look at Wolf.
“The captain of his yacht will confirm it.”
“And this captain will take us to your dad’s private island?”
“You’ll be safe there.”
“I don’t need you to keep me safe.”
“I know. You handled yourself like a shield maiden back there.” Raindrops cling to his lashes, softening his eyes. “I was just there to make sure you didn’t have to do it alone.”
“Why?” Heat flares up my spine.
“She wants a reason,” he mumbles to himself. “Right. Okay. I need to earn your trust. Let’s see…” He paces in the rain, shoulders hunched in his black T-shirt. “Being alone sucks. That’s the reason.”
His expression contorts, revealing raw, unexpected vulnerability that pinches my chest. I expect him to leave it at that, but he doesn’t.
“For twenty-four years, I was held captive by a psychopath in the Arctic Circle.” He rubs a hand down his shirt as if massaging wounds beneath the fabric. “I’ve only been in civilization for six months.”
His words penetrate my chest and punch the air from my throat. He says it so plainly, like it’s just a fact of life, like it doesn’t crack open the world beneath him.
“You’re lying.”
“Look up my brothers. Leonid and Kodiak. Same last name as mine. Strakh.”
I hesitate before searching, and sure enough, their names flood the screen.
Kidnapped as children. Raised in isolation. Stranded until starvation and near death. Escaped on a plane after teaching themselves how to fly it.
A lifetime of horror buried under sensationalized headlines. It’s all there. Including a heavily-reported missing persons case. Frankie Novak, wife of billionaire Monty Novak, was found alive one year ago when she escaped with the Strakh men.
I remember this story, but the details are fuzzy. Wolf’s involvement doesn’t ring any bells as I search on variations of his name. Wolf, Wolfson Strakh…
“Your name isn’t mentioned in any of this.” I glance up at him.
“Because I didn’t exist.” His lips flatten. “Not in records. No birth certificate. Not until my father aided in my escape six months ago and forged the documents to make me a legal citizen.”
I study his face for deception, but there’s nothing there except invisible bruises. The kind I know too well.
He’s risking something by telling me this. I can feel it.
“My father can validate everything when we get to the island.”
I believe him. It’s strange, but the truth shimmers in his eyes, and his jaw tenses like he’s waiting for me to call him a liar again.
“Why do you want to help me?” I swallow.
“Because you need it.”
He bends his knees, leaning in. Too close, his presence devours the space between us, making my pulse spike.
This push and pull is suffocating and addictive.
I don’t trust him. I don’t even like him.
But I believe him when he says I’d be safer with him than sleeping in the dirt behind some mechanic shop.
I take a breath and exhale slowly. “Fine.”
“Bullets and brains.”
He grabs my backpack. Before I can protest, he takes my hand in his and tugs me down the street toward the harbor.
I try to pull free, but his fingers squeeze, keeping me from slipping away without hurting me. He moves with purpose as if this was already decided. I let him lead me, but unease coils in my stomach.
He lights a cigarette with his free hand, the glow illuminating his striking features.
The moment his lips wrap around the filter, I yank my hand from his, pluck the cigarette from his mouth, and take a drag.
“You don’t strike me as a thief.” His brows lift.
“You don’t strike me as a rich boy.” I exhale smoke into the night.
“You have no idea what I am, princess.”
No truer words, and that’s what scares me.
Doubt follows me down the pier, hitting on all cylinders as we approach the waiting yacht. The water laps against the dock, crooning a dark warning.
Am I making a fatal mistake?
I glance back toward the town. Jag will find me. He’ll try to break me. More than he already has.
And Wolf just lost his job for me.
“How many islands are in Sitka?” I ask.
“Eleven-hundred-ish, but no one knows for sure.”
More importantly, Jag won’t know. If he figures out I left on a yacht, he’ll have to search over a thousand unknown islands to find me.
I love those odds.
“I’ll get your job back,” I say reluctantly.
It’s the least I can do.
“No. I will get my job back.” His finger dives toward my nose. “You will stay away from him.”
He boards the yacht, and I dig in my heels.
“Now what?” He pauses, pivoting to face me, hands on his hips.
“You can’t expect me to just jump on a boat with a stranger.”
“Well, now, that’s exactly what I expect. Except I’m not a stranger. You know some of my innermost secrets.”
“Some?”
“I can’t dump my load all in one go. You gotta earn it, Gunslinger.”
“Where’s that captain you promised?”
“Kai!” he yells and gives me a patient smile.
Within seconds, a tall man in a suit emerges from the helm.
“Aye, aye, Captain Kai.” Wolf waves him forward. “Where’s my family?”
“They returned to the island on Kodiak’s yacht. I was instructed to wait for you.” The captain casts a quizzical look at my wedding gown and backpack. “Good evening, ma’am. Are congratulations in order?”
“Not yet,” Wolf says cryptically. “Who do you work for, Kai?”
“Monty Novak, sir.”
“And who is my father?”
“Sir?”
“Just answer the question. For whatever reason, the princess trusts the word of a complete stranger over mine, her one and only soul mate.”
“Wise decision, ma’am.” Kai winks at me and quickly clears his throat when Wolf levels him with a look. “Monty Novak sired this uncivilized creature. With much regret, I suspect.”
“You’re a gem.” Wolf pats Kai’s cheek. “Now go pretend you’re Jack Sparrow and try not to crash us.” To me, he holds out a hand. “Decision time, Annie Oakley.”
Stalling, I stare at those long fingers.
If I turn back now, I’ll never know what he’s really hiding or what he sees in me that makes him so sure I’m worth helping.
This isn’t about trusting him. It’s about trusting myself to handle whatever comes next.
Safe has never given me a leg up. Maybe a risky ride into the unknown will.
Lifting my chin, I shoulder past him and board the yacht like my nerves aren’t unfurling in rapid heartbeats.
Wolf leads me to the railing, the cold wind whipping my hair around my face. He openly stares at me from inches away, poking at my silence as if trying to pry me open. It only makes me want to close tighter.
“You always this moody, or is this just your honeymoon glow?” he asks.
“You always this annoying, or is this just my bad luck?”
“Nah, you caught me on a good night.”
“Look, I just need a place to stay until I get my feet under me.”
“So it’s like that?”
“What else is it like?”
“So many possibilities, the most logical being that you’re a princess, and I’m Prince Charming.”
“You really don’t know how normal people interact, do you?”
“Fuck normal. You’re dressed for an epic adventure, and I’m at your side with a sword in my…” He looks down.
“Don’t say it.”
“Boot?” He lifts a pant leg, revealing the handle of a knife, before kicking the hem back in place. “Our fairy tale has already begun.”
He leans on the railing beside me, cigarette dangling from his lips and a smirk ghosting his mouth like it’s his default setting.
What a weirdo.
Possibly insane.
But no.
No, that’s not it at all.
There’s too much calculation in his sarcasm, too much intelligence in those ice-blue eyes. Maybe the whole nice-with-a-knife thing works on other people, but I’m well-versed in sugar-coated hostility. He’s hiding something.
If what he said is true, if he spent his life in a psychopath’s prison, then whatever he’s showing me is only the surface.
A performance.
A deflection.
Under the cocky grin and flippant remarks, there’s depth. Pain. Maybe rage. I don’t know why that realization disturbs me more than his violence earlier. Maybe because it makes me want to understand him. To see what’s behind that chaos-colored mask.
That’s a problem.
I don’t need more trouble in my life. I’m already neck-deep in it. I don’t need a wild, beautiful, emotionally unstable man with a tragic past and a dangerous smile.
Too late now.
I’m on his yacht, moving through dark water toward an island I’ve never seen, with a stranger I should’ve refused.
The lights of Sitka grow dim behind us, swallowed by fog and sea. The island waits somewhere ahead, shadowed and ominous. Whatever’s coming, I’ve already made my choice.
“You scare me,” I admit, staring across the water. “But not for the reasons you probably think. Not in a bad way. More like…”
“Like?”
“Like someone who learned to survive by pretending they’re bulletproof.”
“Hm.” He draws on the cigarette and sighs through the exhale. “What gave me away?”
“Smiling through your teeth. Grudges dressed as jokes. Acting like you know what you’re doing, even when you don’t. Rehearsed confidence. You carry yourself like someone who’s been shot too many times to worry about the next bullet.”
The haunted look in his eyes doesn’t match the smile he gives me.
“When I saw you run down the street like you fled a castle, I thought… Holy hellfire and heartbreak, I’ve stepped into a dark fairy tale.
Your dress moved as if caught in a dream, flowing behind you as you ran.
But it wasn’t marital bliss that trailed you.
It was sorrow. You looked like you were halfway to forever before the world yanked it out from under you.
Doesn’t help that you’re insanely beautiful.
Makes it that much harder to look away.”
He should talk. The man oozes perfect genes from every pore.
“All I could think was…” He rests his forearms on the railing, shaking his head.
“She shouldn’t be real. Fairy tales aren’t real.
Not for people like me. But here you are.
You’re real. And being part of your story, even if just a small, insignificant part, has sent me to a dimension of utter joy. ” He straightens. “We’re here.”
My breath hitches at his declaration. Then it hitches again as I take in the view.
The island rises out of the water, silent, hidden, and entirely otherworldly. Soaring evergreens blanket every inch, their canopies so thick they knit the sky shut.
In Anaheim, everything is sun-bleached and buzzing, with an overabundance of strip malls, traffic, and baking concrete.
Here, moisture and mystery saturate the air, swollen with the scent of pine, damp earth, and cold moss.
The gentle purr of the yacht feels intrusive as if it shouldn’t be here.
Half-hidden in the trees, a stone mansion emerges from the shadows. Massive and still, it glows with the warmth of golden light that pulses behind tall windows.
The estate doesn’t stand atop the island. It’s cradled by it. Like the forest grew around it and decided to keep it.
The beauty here is rich and wild, much like the man at my side. The sort of beauty that comes with a warning, a trick of the light that lures unsuspecting souls and traps them forever.
I clutch the railing, my insides tumbling in free fall.
A dark fairy tale, indeed.