Chapter 17
Rykan field-dressed the carcass of the large grazing animal, his breath misting in the cold air. It was a good kill—enough meat to last them for weeks if properly preserved, enough to justify the hours he’d spent tracking it through the frost-glazed forest.
Enough to almost justify running away from Ember that morning.
Almost.
He wrapped the meat in the hide and tied it to a makeshift sleigh, hauling it behind him as he walked, his boots crunching through the crust of ice that had formed over the deeper snow.
The sun hung low on the horizon, pale and watery, offering light without warmth.
In a few hours it would set, and the temperature would plummet again. He needed to go back.
He didn’t want to go back.
The thought twisted in his gut like a blade.
He’d been wrestling with it all day, turning it over and over as he tracked his prey through the silent woods.
Every time he tried to focus on the hunt—on the tracks, the scent, the subtle signs of movement—his mind betrayed him, dragging him back to the cabin. To her.
To the look on her face when he’d pulled away from her. When he’d told her he wouldn’t claim her. When she’d whispered maybe you’re right in a voice that sounded like something breaking.
He’d hurt her. He knew that. The knowledge sat in his chest like a stone, heavy and immovable, impossible to ignore no matter how hard he tried.
He’d seen the light dim in her eyes, seen the way she’d pulled the fur around herself like armor, and he’d done nothing.
Said nothing. Afterwards, he just lay there in the darkness, hating himself, unable to find the words to fix what he’d broken.
Because what could he say? The truth? That he wanted her so badly his beast howled with it, that every fiber of his being screamed at him to claim her and damn the consequences? That he lay awake every night listening to her breathe, fighting the urge to pull her close and never let go?
She didn’t need that burden. She had enough to carry already—the betrayal of her aunt, the weight of her father’s legacy, the impossible choice between the life she’d known and whatever this was between them. She didn’t need a broken Vultor adding his fears to her shoulders.
And what about what she wants?
The voice in his head sounded like hers. Calm. Measured. Utterly relentless.
She kissed me first. She asked me to teach her. She told me she wanted this. But I didn’t listen, did I? I decided I knew better. I decided to protect her from myself without ever asking if she wanted to be protected.
His jaw tightened. The sleigh felt heavier than it should, dragging at his arms, slowing his steps. He was being a coward. He knew that. Running away this morning, using the hunt as an excuse to avoid the conversation they needed to have—it was cowardice, pure and simple.
But what was the alternative? Stay and watch her pull further away? Watch her realize that he was right, that this could never work, that she would eventually leave him just like—
Stop it.
He forced the thought down, burying it beneath the cold clarity of survival instinct.
He couldn’t think about Lysara right now.
He couldn’t let that old wound bleed into this new relationship.
Ember wasn’t Lysara. He knew that. She was everything Lysara had never been—genuine, brave, and kind without calculation.
When she touched him, it was because she wanted to, not because she was maneuvering for advantage.
But that almost made it worse. Because Lysara’s betrayal had been comprehensible. He could understand ambition and choosing power over love. All too often, it was the way of the pack. The strong survived. The weak adapted.
When Ember left him, it wouldn’t be like that.
It would be something softer. Something sadder.
She would look at him with those grey eyes full of regret, and she would tell him that she had responsibilities, that her father’s company needed her, that she couldn’t abandon everything she’d been raised for.
And she would be right.
That was the cruelest part. She would be right.
He had no claim on her, no right to ask her to choose him over her birthright.
He was an exile living alone in the mountains, a solitary Vultor who’d walked away from everything he was supposed to be.
What could he possibly offer her that would compare to—
He stopped walking as the scent hit him—sharp, foreign, wrong. Vultor.
Another Vultor. In his territory. Near his cabin.
Near Ember.
The sleigh fell from his hands, forgotten before it hit the snow. His beast surged forward with a roar of protective fury, and he was running before he consciously decided to move, his boots tearing through the drifts, his claws extending without his permission.
If someone has touched her—
The thought fragmented, lost in the red haze of instinct. Trees blurred past him. Snow sprayed in his wake. He pushed himself faster, harder, his lungs burning with cold air, his heart pounding a single word over and over.
Ember. Ember. Ember.
The cabin came into view, and he skidded to a halt at the edge of the clearing.
A stranger stood between him and the door.
The Vultor was lean and tall, his dark hair pulled back from a face that would have been handsome if not for the arrogant set of his jaw and the mocking curve of his smile.
He stood with casual confidence, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, one hand resting on the knife at his belt. Not threatening, not yet, but ready.
“Well, well.” The stranger’s voice was smooth, almost lazy. “The hermit returns. I was starting to think you’d abandoned your little pet.”
Every muscle in his body went rigid. “What did you say?”
“The human female.” The stranger tilted his head, his nostrils flaring. “She’s been in there alone for hours. Scared, I’d wager. Probably wondering if you’re coming back at all.”
“Get away from my cabin.”
“Your cabin?” The stranger’s smile widened, showing a hint of fang. “Funny. I don’t remember this being part of any pack territory. Unclaimed land, last I checked. Which means that the female in there doesn’t belong to anyone.”
His beast roared. His features shifted, his fangs lengthening and his eyes burning gold with barely contained rage. “She is mine.”
“Is she?” The stranger didn’t move, but something sharpened in his gaze. “Because she isn’t mated, and she smells terrified. She wouldn’t open the door. Which makes me wonder what exactly you’ve been doing to her up here, all alone, with no one to—”
He lunged.
He didn’t think. Didn’t plan. His body moved on pure instinct, closing the distance between them in a blur of claws and fury. The stranger was fast—faster than he expected—spinning aside at the last moment, his own claws extending as he dropped into a fighting crouch.
“Easy,” the other male growled, and now there was no mockery in his voice. “I don’t want to kill you. But I will if I have to.”
“Try it.” He circled, looking for an opening. Every second this stranger stood between him and the cabin was a second Ember was in danger. “I’ll tear your throat out before I let you—”
“Stop!”
The voices cut through the clearing like twin blades—one from the cabin, one from the trees. Both female. Both furious.
His head snapped towards the cabin door. Ember stood on the threshold, her face pale but determined, a kitchen knife clutched in her hand. She looked small against the doorframe, fragile in her borrowed furs, but her grey eyes blazed with a fire he’d never seen before.
“I said stop!” She stepped forward, planting herself between the two of them like she had any chance of surviving if they decided to ignore her. “Both of you!”
At the same moment, a human female ran over from the tree line on the other side of the clearing.
She wasn’t much taller than Ember, with dark hair and a scowl on her pretty face.
At her heels ran two adyani—the vicious mountain predators that should have torn her apart on sight—but they moved beside her like trained hounds, their ears pricked forward with alert curiosity.
“Korrin!” The female’s voice was sharp with exasperation. “What did I just say about starting fights with strangers?”
Korrin straightened slowly, his claws retracting. His expression shifted from battle-ready to something that looked almost sheepish. “I wasn’t starting a fight. I was investigating.”
“You were antagonizing.” The female stopped beside Korrin, a small finger poking him in the ribs hard enough to make him wince. “I could hear you from the trees. ‘Your little pet?’ Really?”
“I was testing him.”
“You were being an ass.”
He stared at them, his beast still snarling for violence but his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.
The female’s hand on Korrin’s arm. The way Korrin leaned slightly towards her, protective even as she scolded him.
The adyani sitting calmly at her feet, watching the scene with intelligent yellow eyes.
“You have a human mate,” he heard himself say.
Korrin’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t deny it. “What of it?”
“You thought…” He looked down at Ember, and suddenly the stranger’s accusations made terrible sense. “You thought I was keeping her prisoner.”
“The thought crossed my mind.” Korrin’s voice was flat. “A lone Vultor with an unmarked human female who won’t open the door and who smells like fear and… other things.” His gaze flicked between them, sharp and assessing. “What was I supposed to think?”
His claws slowly retracted. The rage was still there, simmering beneath the surface, but it was cooling now, replaced by something that felt almost like embarrassment. He’d nearly killed another Vultor over a misunderstanding. Nearly started a fight he might not have won.
All because he’d been too busy wallowing in self-pity to stay where he belonged.
“Ember isn’t my prisoner,” he said quietly. “She was in a crash. I found her. She hasn’t been able to leave because the southern pass has been blocked ever since.”
“And the other scents?” Korrin’s eyes narrowed. “The ones that say you’ve been doing more than playing rescuer?”
“Korrin.” The human female squeezed his arm warningly. “Unless she’s unwilling, that’s none of our business.”
“I wasn’t unwilling.” Ember’s voice was soft but certain, her face calm as she regarded the two newcomers.
“Are you sure? Because if he’s—”
“Korrin,” the female snapped, and something passed between them—a silent conversation he recognized from his own experience with Ember. The kind of communication that happened when two people had spent enough time together to read each other without words.
Korrin finally exhaled, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.
“Fine.” He looked at Rykan, and for the first time there wasn’t any antagonism in his gaze. “Your territory. Your female. My mistake.”
“She’s not—” he started, then stopped. Because what was he going to say? She’s not mine? After everything they’d been through? After he’d nearly transformed and killed someone just because he’d stood between the two of them?
She was still watching them both, her knife lowered but not sheathed. Her eyes met his, and he saw the questions there. The hurt he’d caused this morning. The confusion over what had just happened.
He owed her an explanation. He owed her a lot of things.
But first, apparently, he owed hospitality to a pair of strangers who’d wandered into his territory at the worst possible time.
“Come inside,” he said heavily, the words dragging out of him like stones. “Both of you. We can… talk.”
Korrin raised an eyebrow. “A gracious invitation.”
“Don’t push it.”
But he stepped aside, gesturing towards the cabin door, and watched as the two exchanged a glance before moving forward.
The adyani padded after them, their paws silent on the frozen ground, and he wondered distantly how a human female had managed to tame creatures that should have torn her to pieces.
Then Ember was beside him, her hand brushing his arm, and he forgot about everything else.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly.
No. He wasn’t all right. He’d hurt her, abandoned her, and nearly killed someone in a fit of jealous rage. He was the furthest thing from all right.
But her hand was warm on his arm, and her eyes were searching his face with concern rather than fear, and somehow that made it both better and worse.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The words felt inadequate. They were inadequate. But they were all he had.
She studied him for a long moment. Then she nodded slowly, something shifting in her expression.
“We should go inside,” she said. “It’s cold.”
She turned and walked into the cabin, leaving him standing in the snow with the weight of everything unsaid pressing down on his shoulders.
After a long moment, he followed.