Chapter 2 #2
I stop close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. Close enough that the smell of her wraps around me and makes my wolf snarl with impatience. "You're not a prisoner. You're my betrothed."
"A distinction without a difference." She turns to face me, and her eyes blaze with fury that does nothing to mask the fear underneath.
"You bought me with a contract I never signed.
You dragged me across three states to lock me in a gilded cage.
You stood in front of your pack and claimed me like property. What would you call it?"
"Fate." The word comes out rougher than I intend. "Destiny. The fulfillment of a debt that should never have been allowed to sleep so long."
"Pretty words for ownership."
I step closer, crowding her against the wall. Her back hits the stone, and she plants her feet and lifts her chin, daring me to push harder. The fire in her eyes makes something dark and hungry twist in my chest.
"You should know something about me, Iris.
" My voice drops into territory that isn't quite human, the growl of my wolf bleeding through.
"I don't lose. I don't release. And I don't share.
Whatever plans you're making behind those clever eyes, whatever escape routes your grandmother taught you to calculate, abandon them. You're mine now."
"I'm no one's." Her voice doesn't waver. "Least of all yours."
This close, the change in her scent is unmistakable.
The suppressants are fighting a losing battle, and the sweetness underneath grows stronger with each racing heartbeat.
Heat builds beneath her skin, warming the air between us.
She doesn't know what's happening to her, doesn't understand why her body is responding to my proximity with flushed cheeks and quickened breath.
But I do.
"Your grandmother kept secrets from you," I say, watching her expression carefully. "Important ones. Secrets about what you are and why I've been waiting for you specifically."
A flicker crosses her face. Fear, yes, but also recognition. She's been wondering about those pills. She's been asking questions Helena is no longer alive to answer.
"What do you know about my grandmother?"
"Everything." I lean closer, until my lips nearly brush her ear.
"I know she spent years preparing you for this moment.
I know she dosed you with suppressants to hide what you are from the supernatural world.
I know she documented every detail of your training, your strengths, your weaknesses, your fears, and I know she sent me those documents before she died. "
Iris goes rigid. "You're lying."
"I'm many things, little wolf. A liar isn't one of them.
" I pull back just enough to meet her eyes.
"Helena knew the blood pact would come due eventually.
She wanted to make sure I understood exactly what I was getting.
A fighter. A survivor. A woman who would rather claw out my eyes than submit.
" My smile feels sharp on my face. "She wanted me to be ready for you. "
"Ready for what?"
The question hangs between us. I could tell her. I could explain what the suppressants have been hiding, what her changing scent means, what will happen when the last pill runs out and her true nature emerges. I could give her the truth that Helena protected her from for her entire adult life.
But knowledge is leverage, and I didn't wait years to hand her weapons she could use against me. When her omega nature surfaces, I want her off-balance. Desperate for answers. Looking to me because she has nowhere else to turn.
Instead, I step back and let her breathe.
"Get some sleep," I say. "Tomorrow, your education begins. You'll learn pack protocol, hierarchy, the political landscape you've walked into. And you'll learn what it means to belong to me."
"I don't belong to anyone."
"Not yet." I turn and walk away before my control can crack any further. "But you will."
I call forth my wolf at the treeline, barely a hundred yards from the fortress walls.
My wolf has been clawing at the inside of my skull since the moment I walked away from her, demanding release, demanding that I go back and finish what the blood pact started.
Years of iron discipline fracture under the weight of finally having her close, breathing her in, hearing her voice wrap around my name with all that beautiful rebellion.
I need to burn off this energy before it consumes me.
The transformation sweeps through me in a rush of silvery mist, human form giving way to wolf in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Human thought recedes as the wolf surges forward, and when the mist clears, I stand in the snow on four legs instead of two.
The world reshapes itself around my wolf's senses.
Scents sharpen into crystalline clarity.
The fortress blazes with the heat signatures of two hundred wolves and one human woman whose heartbeat I can hear even from here.
The forest spreads before me in shades of gray and blue, shadows alive with possibility.
I run.
My paws tear through the snow as I circle the perimeter, checking boundaries, marking territory, releasing the tension that has coiled in my muscles through all those years of waiting. The cold air burns in my lungs, and the moon rises above the peaks like a silent witness to my need.
When I reach the cliff below her window, I stop.
The room glows with firelight, warm and golden against the black stone.
A shadow moves behind the glass, and I know she's there, pacing in her gilded cage, thinking her human thoughts about escape and resistance.
She has no idea what's coming. No idea that the pills in her bag are the only thing standing between her and a transformation that will reshape her entire understanding of herself.
No idea that I've been waiting for exactly this moment since before she knew I existed.
The howl builds in my chest without conscious decision. It tears from my throat and splits the night, a declaration of ownership that echoes off the mountains and carries for miles in every direction. Every wolf in my territory will hear it. All of them will understand its meaning.
Mine. Finally mine.
In her window, the shadow goes still.
I hold my position long enough to make sure she understands, long enough for my howl to finish reverberating through the peaks.
Then I turn and disappear into the forest, running until the fortress is just a distant glow behind me, running until my muscles burn and my lungs ache and the desperate edge of my need finally begins to dull.
Tomorrow, her education begins. Tomorrow, I'll start teaching her what it means to be a member of the Northern Pack and belong to its alpha.
But tonight, I run.
And somewhere in the fortress behind me, Iris lies awake in her cage of silk and velvet, listening to an echo that won't stop reverberating through her bones. I know it the way I know the paths of this mountain. She heard me. She felt it.
I run until the ache in my muscles matches the ache in my chest. It doesn't help. Nothing will, not until she understands what she is. Not until she stops fighting what we both know is coming.
The moon watches me circle back toward the fortress, patient and cold. Twelve pills in her bag when she arrived. I counted them in the surveillance photos. Fewer now, most likely—she would have taken one tonight out of habit.
Eleven days, give or take. Then the waiting truly ends.