Chapter 29 Raphael #2
My fingers found the collar. The chain was warm from her skin, saturated with her scent and mine. I’d put this on her myself. Claimed her with it. Watched her accept it like a vow.
“This was never meant to be permanent.” I unclasped it. Let it fall.
The sound it made hitting the floor was obscenely quiet. A soft thump against the hardwood. Nothing compared to the death of everything between us.
She was crying openly now. Tears streaming down her cheeks, her body shaking with sobs she was trying to suppress. The smell of her grief filled the room, salt and pain and something broken.
“Raphael, please. I don’t understand. I love you. I told you I love you, and you—”
“I never said it back.”
Four words. The truest and cruelest thing I’d said all morning.
Her face crumbled. Whatever hope she’d been clinging to died in that moment. I watched it happen. Watched the light leave her eyes. Watched her become something smaller, something broken, something I had made.
Stop. Stop. Take it back. Hold her. Fix this.
The wolf was clawing at my control, desperate, frantic. I could feel the shift pushing at the edges of my consciousness, threatening to break through. My jaw ached from clenching. My hands were trembling. The beast wanted out. Wanted to wrap itself around her and never let go.
But I kept my face stone.
“Get dressed.” My voice didn’t waver. “Alice will pack your belongings. Parsons will drive you back to the hotel.”
She didn’t move. Just sat there, the sheet clutched to her chest, staring at me like she was trying to find some trace of the man who’d made love to her last night.
The man who’d held her afterward, who’d stroked her hair while she slept, who’d memorized her face like he was trying to store enough of her to last a lifetime.
That man was dead. I’d killed him myself.
“Why?” she whispered. “Just tell me why. I deserve that much.”
She did. She deserved so much more than I could ever give her. She deserved the truth, the whole truth, the story of wolves and packs and a beast inside me that could tear her apart. She deserved to know that I was doing this to save her life, not destroy it.
But if I told her, she’d fight. She’d refuse to go. She’d put herself in the path of the Pakhan’s judgment, and they would kill her. Not because they wanted to, but because she would know too much and belong to no one who could protect her.
My silence was the only shield I had left. But silence wouldn’t make her leave. Silence left room for hope.
“Because you were convenient.” The words tasted like ash. “A warm body with a debt to pay. Nothing more.”
The lie was so complete, so final, that even I almost believed it.
Something in her broke. I could see the exact moment it happened. The light that had been fighting to stay alive in her eyes finally went out.
She moved mechanically after that. Found her clothes. Dressed with her back to me, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. I watched every movement. Memorized every second. Her scent had changed completely now, all the sweetness drowned in salt and grief and something that smelled like dying hope.
This was what I was choosing. This was what I was giving up.
At the door, she stopped. Turned. One last chance.
“Tell me this is a mistake.” Her voice was raw. Wrecked. “Tell me you didn’t mean any of it. Tell me something, Raphael. Anything.”
I looked at the woman I loved, the woman I would love until the day I died, the woman who had seen through every mask I’d ever worn and somehow wanted me anyway.
And I said nothing.
She left.
The door closed behind her. I listened to her footsteps in the hallway, then on the stairs. I heard Alice’s voice, concerned and questioning. I heard Lena’s broken response, too quiet to make out words. I heard the front door open and close. I heard the car start.
I heard her drive away.
And then the wolf erupted.
It slammed into my control like a battering ram, snarling, clawing, fighting for dominance with everything it had.
I staggered, my hands bracing against the wall as my muscles cramped and my bones began to shift.
The beast wanted out. Wanted to run after her.
Wanted to drag her back and claim her and never let her go.
You destroyed us. You destroyed her. You destroyed everything.
I fought it. Barely. The shift pushed halfway through, my hands warping into something between fingers and claws, my spine curving, my jaw elongating before I shoved it back.
Sweat poured down my face. My whole body shook with the effort of containment.
Pain ripped through me, the half-shift worse than completing it would have been.
And then, finally, the wolf retreated.
Not in submission. In grief. I felt it curl into some dark corner of my soul and begin to howl, a sound of loss so profound it made the human part of me want to weep.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. My hands were shaking. My face was wet. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
The room was too quiet. Too empty. Her absence was a physical thing, a void where warmth had been. I could still smell her everywhere, but the scent was already fading, already mixing with the stale air and the cold ash of the dead fire.
The collar lay where it had fallen. I reached for it without thinking, my fingers closing around the chain that still held her scent. Even now, even soaked in grief, she still smelled like everything I’d ever wanted.
The bed behind me. The sheets. The pillows. Everything smelled like her. Like us. Like the happiness I’d just burned to the ground.
I should strip the bed. Air out the room. Erase every trace of her presence.
I couldn’t move.
The sheets were still warm. I could see the indent where her body had been, could see the darker stains where we’d made love. Evidence of the future I’d just murdered.
I sat there on the floor, holding her collar, breathing in her scent, and let myself feel what I’d done. The emptiness. The loss. The knowledge that I’d just destroyed the only good thing I’d ever had.
She’s gone. She’s gone. You made her go.
The wolf’s grief was a mirror of my own. For once, man and beast were in perfect agreement. We had done this. We had chosen this. And we would have to live with it forever.
I’d told myself it was protection. I’d told myself it was necessary. I’d told myself she’d survive this, that she’d hate me and move on and build a life that didn’t include a monster who could tear her apart.
She would find someone else. Someone human, who could love her without the constant fear of what lived beneath his skin. Someone who could give her children without the risk of passing on the curse that ran through my blood.
She would be happy. Eventually. Without me.
The thought should have been comforting. It wasn’t. It felt like swallowing broken glass.
But sitting there in the wreckage of everything I’d wanted, the only thing I knew for certain was that I would never be whole again.