Chapter 19
LENA
The cold hit me the moment I stepped out of the SUV. Mountain air, sharp with pine and frost, filling my lungs with each breath. Behind me, leather creaked as Raphael’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, metal groaning under his grip.
I did not look back. If I looked back, I would not be able to leave.
The trees swallowed me within a dozen steps.
Darkness pressed in from all sides, broken only by patches of moonlight filtering through bare branches.
Frost crunched beneath my boots, each step impossibly loud in the silence.
The tracker sat in my coat lining, a small hard shape against my hip.
Viktor would follow the signal. Raphael would follow the bond.
I was not alone.
The cold bit deeper as I walked, seeping through my coat and into my bones.
My breath misted in the air, each exhale a small cloud that dissipated into nothing.
The forest smelled of pine and frozen earth, clean and sharp, a smell that should have been peaceful.
Instead it reminded me of the last time I had been in these mountains.
Running. Hiding. Praying that Raphael would find me before Michael did.
He had found me then. He would find me now.
I had to believe that. I had to hold onto that truth like a lifeline, because the alternative was unthinkable. The alternative was Clara dead, me dead, and Raphael spending the rest of his life knowing he had failed to protect us.
That was not going to happen.
His presence blazed in my chest. Not the distant ache of waiting I had expected, but something fiercer.
Focused. Hunting. All predatory intensity and absolute determination.
My mate was not sitting in that car counting seconds.
He was doing something, and whatever it was, the bond carried it to me like heat from a forge.
I wrapped myself in that feeling like armor. His love. His fury. His absolute refusal to let anything happen to me.
I was not alone.
The cabin came into view through the trees, and my feet stopped moving.
This place was familiar.
The memory crashed into me, sharp and sudden.
Waking bound and drugged, my wrists raw and burning, Michael’s voice floating out of the shadows like something from a nightmare.
The last time I had been here, I had been prey.
Helpless. Terrified. I had lain on a cold floor and wondered if I would ever see daylight again.
I had promised myself I would never be that again.
But here I was, walking back into the same nightmare. The same cabin. The same monster waiting inside. The only difference was that this time, I was not a victim stumbling blindly into a trap. This time, I knew exactly what I was walking into, and I was doing it anyway.
For Clara. For the cousin who had held my hotel together while I ran for my life. For the woman who had never asked for any of this, who had been dragged into Michael’s obsession simply because she loved me.
I would not let her die for that love.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. The fear was still there, cold and familiar, coiling in my stomach like a living thing. But beneath it, something harder. Something with teeth.
I was done being hunted. I was done being prey.
I had walked into this trap with my eyes open. Not because I was stupid. Not because I had no choice. Because Clara was in there, and Michael had taken enough from me. My peace. My sense of safety. My ability to walk through my own hotel without looking over my shoulder.
He did not get to take her too.
I started walking again.
The cabin sat in a small clearing, smoke curling from the chimney, warm light glowing in the windows. Peaceful, almost. A postcard image of a mountain retreat. If you did not know what waited inside.
Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.
A voice came from behind me.
“Hello, Lena.”
I spun, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to crack them. Michael stood in the shadows of the pines, not inside the cabin but outside, waiting. He had been watching me approach the whole time. Patient. Calculating. A spider at the center of his web.
“You came.” His voice was calm. Pleasant. The voice of a man welcoming a guest, not a predator cornering his prey. “Even knowing it was a trap. That’s what I’ve always admired about you.”
“Where’s Clara?”
“Inside. Unharmed.” He stepped closer, and the moonlight caught his face. He looked tired. Thinner than I remembered, his cheekbones more prominent, shadows carved beneath his eyes. But those eyes were bright with a hunger that made my skin crawl. “She’ll stay that way, as long as you cooperate.”
“Let her go. She has nothing to do with this.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong.” Another step. “Everyone you love has everything to do with this. That’s what you never understood, Lena. I told you once that I would burn your world down to make you see me. I meant it.”
I backed up, but there was nowhere to go. Trees behind me. Michael in front. The cabin to my left, its warm light suddenly menacing. The forest pressed in from all sides, dark and indifferent.
“Arms out.”
“What?”
“Arms out, Lena. I need to check you for weapons. Wires. Anything your guard dog might have given you.” His voice was patient, like he was explaining something to a child. “You didn’t really think I’d let you walk in here without searching you first?”
My stomach turned, but I raised my arms. His hands moved over me with clinical efficiency, patting down my sides, my back, my legs. Professional. Thorough. The hands of a man who had planned this moment for years.
His fingers paused at my hip, pressing against the coat fabric.
“What’s this?” He felt along the seam, found the small hard shape hidden in the lining. His eyes met mine, understanding dawning. “Take off the coat. Now.”
My heart sank. I shrugged out of the coat, the cold immediately biting through my sweater. He snatched it from my hands, his fingers tearing through the lining until he pulled out the tracking unit. The safety pin clattered to the frozen ground.
“Cute.” He tossed the tracker into the trees. “Did you think I haven’t been watching every move you’ve made for the past two years?”
My blood ran cold. Two years. Since before any of this started. Since before I even knew he was my brother.
Two years of being watched. Two years of Michael lurking in the shadows of my life, documenting my movements, learning my patterns, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Every time I had felt eyes on me and dismissed it as paranoia.
Every time I had sensed something wrong and told myself I was imagining things.
I had not been imagining anything. He had been there the whole time.
The violation of it made me want to scream. To claw at his face and demand to know how he could do this to me. But I forced myself to stay still, to keep my expression neutral, to not give him the satisfaction of seeing how deeply his words had cut.
“Your guard dog is out there somewhere with his Russian thugs.” Michael’s voice dropped, intimate, like we were sharing a secret. “But by the time they find this place, we’ll be long gone. I have everything planned, Lena. I’ve been planning for years.”
The bond lurched. Raphael’s presence, which had been fierce and focused, suddenly spiked with alarm. With terror. He had sensed something wrong, felt me in danger, and every protective instinct had ignited at once.
He knew. Somehow, he knew.
“What do you want, Michael?”
“I told you what I want.” He was close now. Close enough to touch, close enough that I could smell his cologne, something expensive and wrong on him. “I want you to see me. I want you to choose me. I want what should have been mine from the beginning.”
“I’m not yours.”
“You could have been.” The sadness in his voice was real. That was the horrible part. The sadness was real, bleeding through every word. “We could have been family, Lena. Real family. But you chose him instead. You chose a monster.”
I opened my mouth to respond. A sting bit into my neck.
My hand flew up, fingers finding the tiny puncture, the wetness of blood already welling against my skin. Michael stood there with an empty syringe, his expression almost apologetic, like he regretted the necessity.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can’t have you screaming.”
The drug worked fast. My legs buckled and the world tilted sideways, the trees spinning around me like I was on a carousel. I reached for the bond, reached for Raphael, and his alarm exploded into full panic, his terror flooding the connection as he sensed something wrong.
Michael caught me before I hit the ground.
“I’ve waited so long for this,” he murmured against my hair, his arms holding me upright even as my body went limp. “So long to have you where no one can take you from me.”
The bond was fading. Raphael’s presence, his love, his rage, all of it growing distant, muffled, like a radio signal losing reception. I reached for him with everything I had, tried to hold on even as the drug pulled at my consciousness.
No. No, I would not lose him. I would not let Michael take this from me too.
But the drug was stronger than my will. It seeped through my veins like ice water, numbing my limbs, clouding my thoughts, severing the connection that had kept me tethered to hope.
Raphael’s panic spiked through what remained of the bond, his wolf howling in rage and terror, and then even that was gone.
Muffled. Distant. Like hearing someone scream from underwater.
His voice echoed in my memory. Come back to me.
I was trying. I was trying.
But my eyes were closing, and my body was not my own anymore, and somewhere far away Michael was lifting me, carrying me away from the cabin and into the trees.
The darkness pulled me under.