Chapter 5
IRIS
Icould run because the cold can only kill me once. Staying will break me a thousand times over.
My body is betraying me in ways I never imagined possible.
Fever burns beneath my skin like molten iron poured into my veins, radiating outward from my core until even my fingernails feel like they're on fire.
Every nerve ending has been scraped raw and exposed, turning the simple brush of my nightgown against my breasts into exquisite torture.
My nipples strain against the thin fabric, so swollen and sensitive that each step sends jolts of unwanted pleasure straight to my clit.
And between my thighs, where the ache has become a living thing with teeth and claws, I'm so wet that the slick has soaked through my undergarments and begun trailing down the inside of my legs.
The scent of my own arousal fills the room, thick and musky and utterly humiliating.
The taste of him lingers on my lips like a brand.
Copper from where I bit his lip, cedar and leather and something darker underneath, something purely male that makes my mouth water even now.
Every time I swallow, I remember the way his tongue swept into my mouth like he owned it.
Like he owned me. The memory plays on repeat behind my eyelids: his fist in my hair, the growl that vibrated through his chest into mine, the way his teeth scraped my bottom lip before he devoured me whole.
My core clenches around nothing, desperate and empty, and a whimper escapes before I can stop it.
The mark on my neck throbs in time with my heartbeat.
I press my fingers against it and hiss at the sensation, equal parts pain and pleasure, the bruised flesh sending signals to my brain that I don't want to interpret.
He put his mouth there. He bit down and sucked until the capillaries burst, until his claim was written in purple and red across my skin for everyone to see.
The thought should enrage me. Instead, my hips roll against the mattress, seeking friction that isn't there, and fresh slick gushes between my thighs.
If I stay in that keep one more hour, I'll do something unforgivable. I'll crawl to his door on my hands and knees. I'll beg him to fill the emptiness that's hollowing me out from the inside. I'll spread my legs and present myself like the omega my treacherous body insists I am.
I'll go to him. And I'll never forgive myself for it.
The east tower blind spot is exactly where Helena's notes said it would be. My grandmother must have spent years mapping the keep's weaknesses, cataloging every shadow and every gap in the patrol rotations. She meant it as insurance, a way out if the blood pact ever came due and I needed to run.
I don't think she anticipated I'd be running from my own body as much as from Stellan.
I drag on the warmest clothes I can get my hands—on trousers, a wool tunic, boots that pinch my toes. The fabric scrapes against my overly sensitized skin like sandpaper, but I force myself to keep moving. Layers mean survival. Survival means freedom.
The hours since he left have blurred together, broken only by fitful sleep that offers no rest. The fever comes in waves, each one worse than the last. My skin feels too tight, too sensitive.
Even the brush of fabric against my nipples sends lightning crackling down my spine.
And the ache between my legs has become a constant throb, a hollow emptiness that demands to be filled.
Omega. I spent the hours after he left tearing through grandmother's notes, and now I wish I hadn't. Designed to submit. To crave. To need. And my body is screaming for the one alpha I despise most.
The word sits in my chest like a tumor. Helena never told me.
She kept me drugged and ignorant while she searched for a way to break the pact, and now I'm paying for her secrets with my sanity.
Part of me wants to rage at her grave, to demand answers from a woman who can't give them anymore.
The rest of me understands. She was trying to protect me from exactly this moment.
She failed.
The blizzard hits me like a wall when I slip through the gap in the tower stones.
Wind screams across the mountainside, driving ice crystals into my exposed skin hard enough to draw blood.
The cold is brutal, savage, exactly what I need.
It numbs the fever burning through my veins.
It gives me something to fight that isn't my own biology.
My boots sink through the snow with every step.
Helena trained me for harsh conditions, forced me to run through rain and cold until my lungs burned and my muscles screamed.
That training keeps me moving now, one foot in front of the other, toward the mountain pass that leads away from Stellan's territory.
I don't have a destination. I barely have a plan. All I know is that I can't stay in that room with his bite mark throbbing on my neck and his scent clinging to my skin. I can't spend another night listening to my body beg for something my mind refuses to accept.
Death in the snow feels cleaner than surrender.
The thought should frighten me. Instead, it brings a strange peace. At least this choice is mine. At least I'm not spreading my legs for a monster because my genes demand it.
The keep disappears behind a curtain of white. Good. I push harder, faster, ignoring the burn in my thighs and the ice forming on my eyelashes. The mountain pass is two miles north. If I can reach it before dawn, before anyone notices I'm gone, I might actually make it. I might actually be free.
Something howls in the distance.
My heart stutters. The sound echoes off the peaks, long and low and ancient, a song of hunt and hunger that resonates in my bones. Another howl joins the first, then another, a chorus of wolves calling to each other across the frozen wilderness.
None of them are the howl I fear.
I keep moving. The snow is deeper here, drifted against the rock faces until it swallows my legs to mid-thigh.
Each step becomes a battle, my body burning calories faster than I can replace them.
The cold that felt numbing an hour ago now cuts through my layers like knives.
My fingers have stopped hurting, which means they're probably frostbitten.
I don't care. Better to lose fingers than to lose myself.
The eastern sky lightens from black to gray. Dawn approaches, and with it, discovery. Someone will check my room. Someone will raise the alarm. And then he'll come for me, because Stellan doesn't strike me as a man who tolerates escape.
The howl that splits the air this time is different.
Closer. Much closer. And even through the wind and the snow and the distance, I recognize it.
The sound burrows into something primitive at the base of my skull, triggering responses I can't control.
My pulse spikes. My thighs clench. Arousal floods through me despite the cold, a wave so intense it nearly brings me to my knees.
My body knows that howl. My body wants to answer it.
"No," I whisper, but the word comes out cracked and desperate. "No, no, no."
I run.
The mountain pass is still a mile away, maybe more.
The snow drags at my legs like hands trying to hold me back.
My lungs burn with every breath of frozen air, and the heat inside me wars with the cold outside until I can't tell which is winning.
Somewhere behind me, a massive shape moves through the blizzard, and I don't need to see it to know what's coming.
The wolf bursts from the treeline like a silver ghost.
He's enormous. Larger than any natural wolf, larger than any shifter I've ever seen in Helena's research materials.
His fur gleams pewter-bright against the snow, and his eyes blaze even through the driving ice.
Muscle ripples beneath his coat with every stride, power and grace combined into something that steals my breath entirely.
He's beautiful. He's terrifying. And he's gaining on me with every heartbeat.
The chase becomes primal. Some rational part of my brain knows I can't outrun him.
He's built for this terrain, for this hunt, while I'm stumbling through drifts in borrowed boots with my body tearing itself apart from the inside.
But instinct doesn't care about logic. Instinct demands that I flee, that I make him work for his prize, that I prove I'm not just prey to be taken.
And beneath the terror, beneath the fury, a dark and shameful thrill stirs.
The thrill of pursuit.
Something ancient and instinctive recognizes him. Recognizes him and wants to be caught. Wants to submit, to present, to offer my throat and my body and everything I have to the predator running me down. The thought sends shame burning through my cheeks even as fresh slick coats my thighs.
I hate myself for it. I hate that every treacherous nerve ending craves submission to the same man who stole my pills and backed me against a wall and kissed me until I couldn't remember how to breathe.
I hate that some broken part of me is excited by this chase, by the knowledge that he wants me badly enough to hunt me through a blizzard.
The wolf gains ground. I can hear his paws now, the rhythmic thud of his weight against the snow. My legs are shaking, my lungs screaming. The mountain pass looms ahead, tantalizingly close, but I know I won't reach it. I know this ends here, in the snow and the cold, with his teeth in my throat.
I spin to face him instead of letting him take me from behind.
The wolf slows, then stops, barely ten feet away. His breath plumes white in the frozen air. Those eyes hold intelligence, calculation, and a flicker of approval. Even in this form, he exudes authority. Even as an animal, he expects obedience.
"Go ahead." My voice cracks from cold and exhaustion. "Finish it."