Chapter 23
With my back to the wall, I slide to the floor beside Wolf and grip my knees to stop myself from reaching for him again.
“You’re okay. I’m here.” My voice shreds. “I’m not touching you. See? Just breathing with you. Just breathing.”
But I’m not breathing. Panic scrapes my throat raw, every heartbeat a hammer against bone. He’s shaking so hard the tile rattles, eyes squeezed shut, arms locked over his head like he’s trying to disappear.
My chest aches with the need to hug him. But I can’t touch him. I can’t help him. I can’t—
Footsteps pound the stairs. Then Monty bursts into the room. Not frantic or disheveled. Never that. He’s out of breath, yes, but his suit is still crisp, his shirt perfectly white.
His eyes land on Wolf, and his features go dangerously sharp. “What happened?”
Jag. Me. The stain of the Rath siblings. That’s what happened.
Instead, I say, “I found him like this.”
He crouches next to Wolf, his gaze lowering, catching the scars. Dozens. Hundreds. His jaw saws, the muscle jumping like it might crack, like this is the first time seeing his son’s mutilated body.
“Goddammit, Wolf.” His composure falters, voice fracturing. “What did they do to you?”
They? More than one person hurt Wolf?
Monty’s eyes skim over the mess of scars, so many ragged wounds that didn’t heal right. His face hardens, tendons straining like they’re the only thing holding him together, and he crumples in the same breath.
“I should’ve been there.” His hand hovers above Wolf’s shoulder, fingers twitching like he wants to touch but doesn’t dare. Then the words pour, coarse and thick, meant for a son too far under to hear. “I should’ve taken the knives for you. I would’ve bled for you. Every cut should’ve been mine.”
Just like that, Alaska’s richest man is unrecognizable. Stripped of his arrogance and billionaire swagger, he embodies a father’s wreckage.
“I need to move you, Wolf. I’m so sorry.” He slides his arms under Wolf’s trembling frame. “You’re safe now. I swear it.”
Wolf thrashes and weakly swings punches like a cornered, injured animal. Monty doesn’t waver, lifting him as I hold the towel in place, covering Wolf’s nudity.
We shuffle out of the bathroom, and I wonder if we’ll make it to the bed. Wolf is all muscle and mindless panic, bucking and snarling. But the shivering wrings him out fast, draining what little fight he has left.
His head lolls on Monty’s shoulder, and he releases a terrible, breaking sound, choking on air, until his anguish tumbles into sobs. Crushing, soul-deep sobs.
A ball of fire swells in my throat, and guilt buckles my stomach. I want to puke. Jag did this. Or lit the match that set it off. And I’m the one who brought Jag into Wolf’s life.
What did Jag do to trigger Wolf’s breakdown?
You know, and you’ll think about it tonight when you’re alone.
I do know. And it makes me sick with self-loathing.
Monty carries Wolf into the bedroom and eases him onto the bed, layering blankets over him, his movements clinical but so heart-wrenchingly tender.
I want to be the one to care for Wolf like that. And isn’t that a selfish thought? He deserves so much better than me.
“You’re safe.” Monty tucks the corners snug and sits on the bed beside him. “Nothing can reach you.”
Unresponsive, Wolf doesn’t appear to hear him.
“Breathe with me, Son. In. Out. Slower. Slower. That’s it.” He rests a hand on the blanket where Wolf’s chest rises and falls. “Rest now. I’ve got you.”
I stand uselessly at the foot of the bed, arms crossed over my middle, my sinuses burning with barely contained tears.
Monty looks at me and gestures toward the empty spot on Wolf’s other side.
“It’s me.” I clutch at my throat, wanting to help, knowing I’m part of the problem. “I brought this into his life. I’m hurting him.”
I should go.
“I don’t know what’s going on between you and my son, but it isn’t nothing.” Steel edges his calm voice. “You feel something. He feels something. It’s new and fragile, and if you leave him now…” His gaze drops to Wolf, cocooned in blankets, breath hitching shallow. “That will hurt him far worse.”
“You don’t understand.” I remove my phone, open the browser, and angle it toward him.
Gavin’s obituary glows on the screen.
“My ex-fiancé is dead.” My chin trembles. “Wolf will be next.”
Monty stares at the screen, and the air in the room shifts, chilling my skin. His blue eyes turn back to me, frosty cold but not surprised. He already knew about Gavin?
His expression goes stone-hard, calculating, like he’s already assembling a plan in the back of his mind.
“Not while I’m breathing.” His snarling tone triggers my fight-or-flight instinct, but beneath the growl lies a comforting protectiveness. “No one will take him. Not the ghosts in his past. Not the monsters in yours. Whatever is hunting you, hunting him, will go through me and his brothers first.”
My mouth opens to respond, but nothing comes. Then, to my horror, a ragged sob breaks loose from my throat. My hand flies up to meet it, too late. Hot tears spill faster than I can wipe them away.
I choke, trying to breathe, but the air won’t come. It gathers in my chest and collapses into more sobs. Holy fuck, I’m crying. Ugly, heaving tears I haven’t let myself shed since I was a little girl.
Monty doesn’t move to comfort me. He regards me without comment, one hand steady on Wolf’s blanket, the other free as if he’d offer it if I dared to take it.
I desperately need the warmth of human contact, but Monty’s hand isn’t the one I want to hold.
Before I can doubt myself, before shame can bite my heels, I move. Clumsy, graceless, but unstoppable, I climb onto the bed, slip beneath the blankets, and curl my body beside Wolf’s.
He’s ice-cold, his skin clammy and too pale. His chest rises shallowly, each breath strained, the muscles in his face tense even in sleep.
My hand hovers an inch from his cheek, trembling with the need to touch. Instead, I settle against the curve of his shoulder, my forehead close to his. Not touching. Just there.
“Breathe, Wolf,” I whisper. “You’re not alone.”
The sound of hurried footsteps cuts through the quiet, pounding downstairs, then up, closer, closer. The door bursts open.
Leo storms in, brash and golden, like a Norse sun god punching through frozen trees. Kody follows, cold and brooding, as if he were born in a blizzard and never thawed. And Frankie, still in her scrubs, hair pulled back, eyes wide with worry, trails close behind.
Monty greets them with his glacial stare and avalanche jawline vibrating with worry and relief.
They gather around Wolf, the dark heart of the north, taking in his pallid appearance. Taking up space. These people don’t just enter a room. They swallow it whole and all the air in it.
“We came as soon as we could,” Leo whispers, running a hand over Monty’s shoulders, absently massaging the stiffness there.
Monty immediately relaxes beneath the touch. “He had another episode. Severe. I don’t know what triggered it.”
Another episode. How often does this happen?
“Is he responsive at all?” Frankie wriggles in around them, her medical training taking over. “Pulse steady? His breathing is too shallow and—”
“He’s stable, darling.” Monty catches her wrist, his thumb making slow circles against her pulse point.
Kody’s gaze drags over me, then drops to Wolf’s arm. His worst scar. The chewed-up hole in his bicep looks like rot once lived there, eating him from the inside out. The skin is so mangled, puckered, and ruined, I wonder how close to death it brought him.
“I gave him that scar.” Kody glares at it. Then his stark eyes lift to mine. “Shot him with my crossbow—”
“Kody. That’s not…” Frankie shakes her head and looks at me. “Kody was protecting me.”
“Protecting you from Wolf?”
“It was…” She rubs her brow, letting her exhaustion show in that subtle gesture. “A dark, complicated time. We were stranded and starving.”
“And freezing to death.” Leo brushes a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Yeah.” She feathers her thumb over the arrow wound on Wolf’s arm. “We all did impossible, terrible things to survive.”
Kody flinches as if her words hit a nerve.
His fingers flex at his side, drawing my attention to the stigmata-like scar on the back of his hand.
It’s perfectly centered, round, the skin shiny and tight.
Healed, but not old. Maybe a year? The edges are still pink and tender-looking, like something sharp punched clean through his hand.
I wonder how it happened and if there’s a matching hole on his palm.
“You were here, Dove? When Wolf had the panic attack?” Kody opens his palm, revealing a smooth exit wound, confirming my suspicion. “You were with him?”
“I—” My voice cracks. “I found him curled up in the shower.”
“We left him alone with Jag this morning.” Frankie angles her ear near Wolf’s chest, listening to him breathe. Then her eyes shift to mine. “Your stepbrother had a high fever, could barely lift his head. But could he have done something—?”
“Of course, he did,” I snap, harsher than I mean to. My throat burns as I push to a sitting position and lower my voice to a whisper. “Jag sent me a text. Said he didn’t touch Wolf, but Wolf touched him. Something happened.”
“Oh.” Her features soften then dawn with realization. “Ohhh.” She lowers her gaze to Wolf. “He hasn’t been out in the world long. He’s still learning what he wants, what excites him…” She looks at Kody and Leo. “And what triggers him.”
I nod stiffly, but discomfort coils in my gut. This room feels too full, crowded with family, blood as thick as tar between them. I’m the outsider, sitting under Wolf’s blankets like a fraud, an intruder.
“Dove was here for him,” Monty says, shutting down whatever questions are brewing in their eyes.
Leo exhales slow, lips pressed thin. Kody scoops a saxophone off the floor and stows it in a case on the dresser.
I had no idea Wolf played an instrument. But why would I? I barely know Wolf at all.
One by one, Frankie carefully shimmies the stacked rings off his limp fingers. “We’ll get him through this.”
We.
I don’t belong in this family circle, yet here I am, folded into their moment by accident, by necessity.
They aren’t pushing me out, but I can’t stay.
“I need to shower.” I slide off the bed, stinking of cowardice, guilt, and motor oil.
No one stops me as I slip out the door. No one follows. The absence of footsteps is louder than a scream.