Chapter 22 Wolves And Wilderness
WOLVES AND WILDERNESS
KONSTANTIN
The cabin squatted in the trees like a forgotten grave.
Sagging porch. Peeling paint. Roof bowed under the weight of old snow. My father had marked it on one of his maps years ago—a place you went when the city was trying to kill you and you weren’t quite ready to let it.
Perfect for a honeymoon from hell.
My shoulder burned under the bandage, a steady throb of heat and pressure. Dani had wrapped it tight, but blood still soaked through in dark blossoms. Pain was just information. It said I was alive. Alive meant I could still put bullets in the men who were trying to take everything from me.
Keep watch. Stay upright. Don’t let the blood loss make you sloppy.
I stood by the one decent window in the main room, Glock within easy reach, eyes sweeping the tree line. Snow sat heavy on the pines, branches creaking under the load. The forest was quiet in that old way that reminded you how small and fragile humans really were.
How easily we disappeared.
Behind me, the cabin’s single sagging couch complained as Dani shifted. She stared out at the trees, hair wild from the escape, clothes torn, my blood dried on her sleeve. For about ten seconds, her face went soft.
She was probably imagining living somewhere like this. No skyscrapers, no lock codes, no bullets punching through glass. Just trees and wood smoke and the kid growing inside her playing in the snow.
Ten seconds was all hell gave us these days.
Then I watched the tension slide back into her shoulders like armor she couldn’t put down.
“Who was it?” she asked suddenly, her voice slicing through the quiet.
Here we go.
“Who was what?” I kept my eyes on the trees. On the shadows. On anything but her.
“Don’t do that.” Her tone sharpened. “Don’t play dumb with me. Who betrayed us? Who sold us out?”
The million-dollar question. Or however much Vlad thought Mariupol blood money was worth.
I shifted my weight. Pain bit into my shoulder, hot and sharp.
“Could be anyone,” I said. “My world is full of wolves, kotyonok. It’s just a matter of which one decided to bite first.”
She turned fully toward me.
The fury in her dark eyes was glorious and terrifying. She’d been dragged through hell and still managed to light up like that.
“That’s not an answer,” she snapped.
“It’s the only one I have right now,” I said, finally letting my gaze leave the tree line to meet hers. “Maksim, probably. He has the network. The motive. And he’s always wanted what I have.”
What I have.
Like she was an object. A car. A territory.
She deserved better than this.
I turned away from the window fully and let myself look at her.
Small bruises already forming where doorframes and hands and seatbelts had met her skin. She was beautiful like that. Fierce. And carrying my child in a world that saw that as an opportunity, not something sacred.
“You want certainty?” I asked. “Here’s certainty: someone on my side decided you were worth more dead than alive. Someone looked at you and saw the perfect way to hurt me.”
And they weren’t wrong.
Losing her would finish what the bomb that killed my father started.
She shot to her feet so fast my hand automatically went toward my gun. She wasn’t charging the door, though.
She was charging me.
She stopped inches from my chest.
“This,” she spat. “This is what you dragged me into. This poison that follows you everywhere. It touches everything. Ruins everything. You turn anything beautiful into something violent just by breathing near it.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Everything I touched either died or learned how to kill.
Something gave way inside my chest. The careful distance I’d been trying to keep, the lie that she was a piece on my board and nothing more—it all crumbled under the weight of her rage.
“You think I chose this?” The words ripped out of me. “You think I woke up one day and decided that what I really needed was to fall for a woman who watched me put three bullets in a man’s chest?”
Fall for.
Fuck.
I’d said it out loud.
Her eyes widened. Shock. Something else. I didn’t let myself stop long enough to identify it.
“I didn’t choose to care about you, Dani,” I said. “It just happened. Like an illness you can’t shake. Only I don’t want the cure.”
There it was.
The truth that was going to get us both killed.
Silence dropped into the space between us. Heavy. Electric. Snow drifted past the window, ignoring us.
“Care about me?” she repeated, voice flat and dangerous. “Is that what you call it when you threaten to chain me to your bed? When you track me like I’m an escaped prisoner?”
Because you are a prisoner, I almost said.
So am I.
“I call it keeping you alive,” I shot back. “I call it making sure no one uses your body to send me a message.”
“And when there are no more messages to send?” She stepped closer, eyes never leaving mine. “What then? What happens when the danger passes?”
It never passes.
Not in my world.
I couldn’t say that. Couldn’t strip the last bit of hope from her bones.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. The words tasted like broken teeth.
She laughed once. No humor. All resignation.
“You don’t know,” she said. “Perfect.”
She turned toward the door, every line of her body rebel.
“I need air,” she said.
“Don’t,” I said.
It came out sharper and more desperate than I intended.
Don’t leave me. Don’t walk into a forest full of people who want you dead. Don’t make me choose between letting you go and burning the world down to bring you back.
She put her hand on the doorknob anyway.
“Watch me,” she said, and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
Stubborn. Reckless. Perfect woman.
The pain in my shoulder vanished under a stronger jolt of panic. I grabbed my gun and followed without thinking, stepping out into the biting air.
The woods swallowed sound. Snow muffled everything—the crunch of my boots, the distant rush of wind through the trees. Branches overhead formed a canopy, closing us off from sky.
I found her in a small clearing, maybe fifty yards from the cabin. She stood with her back to me, arms wrapped around herself, shoulders shaking.
Rage. Tears. Probably both.
“Go away, Konstantin,” she said as I approached.
Not an option.
“No,” I said. Three long strides and I was in front of her, my hands on her shoulders, spinning her gently but firmly to face me. “Don’t walk away from me again.”
Don’t make me live in a world where you’re gone. I’ve done that already. Once was enough.
Her eyes burned. Fury, hurt, and something that looked a lot like love all swirled there.
“What are you going to do?” she demanded, stepping into my space. I could feel the heat coming off her, even out here in the cold.
“I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep you safe,” I growled. My fingers tightened on her shoulders. “Even if you hate me while I do it. If you run again, I’ll tear this forest and this country and every city apart until I find you.”
The threat hung between us like live wire.
Because it wasn’t a threat.
It was the truth.
Her breath stuttered. Some of the fight drained from her expression, leaving something rawer.
“You’re insane,” she whispered.
“About you?” I asked. “Completely.”
She moved first.
Her hands fisted in my shirt. Yanked me down. Her mouth crashed against mine.
Not careful. Not calculated. Not for show.
Raw. Urgent. A collision of every bad decision we’d ever made.
I kissed her back, one hand tangling in her hair, the other anchoring her to me. She tasted like fear and fury and something uniquely her that I’d already accepted I was addicted to.
We stumbled backward until my back hit a tree. Bark scraped my shoulders. She pressed against me, curves soft and solid against muscle and scars.
“Here?” I asked, breath hot against her lips. “Out here?”
“Here,” she said, fierce. “Right now. Before the world finds us again.”
The world wasn’t safe. This wasn’t safe.
But it was honest.
I dragged her shirt up and over her head, baring her skin to the cold. Goosebumps chased my hands. Bruises stood out stark on pale flesh. Every mark mine or my world’s. None I was proud of. All I wanted to kiss away.
She stripped my shirt with hands that were careful around my injured shoulder and rough everywhere else. Her palms flattened over my chest, over the scars and ink and stories no one else got to read like this.
She wasn’t afraid of the damage.
The rest of our clothes disappeared in a flurry of breathless urgency, landing on snow and dead leaves. When I lifted her, her legs anchoring around my waist, pain shot through my shoulder, white-hot.
Worth it.
Every scar, every bullet, every sleepless night. Worth it for this.
“Konstantin,” she whispered against my mouth, and it hit harder than any shot I’d ever taken.
“I need you,” I said. The words ripped themselves out before I could censor them. “More than anything.”
More than power. More than revenge. More than breathing.
She answered with her mouth, with her hands in my hair, with the way she opened for me when I slid inside her, burying myself in heat that felt more like home than any building my name was on.
Here in the cold, with no witnesses and no walls, nothing existed but the way we fit.
This wasn’t about leverage or control. Not about winning or surviving another day on top.
This was the one piece of humanity I had left, and I was clinging to it with bloody fingers.
“Dani,” I breathed against her throat as I moved, slow at first, then harder when her nails dug into my back. “Look at me.”
She did.
Half-lidded eyes, cheeks flushed pink from cold and arousal, hair wild, snowflakes melting in the strands.
Mine.
I used my free hand to find her clit, circling, pressing. Her body tightened, breath coming in sharp, broken gasps.
“Oh God,” she panted