Chapter 26 #2
I let my eyes close, let myself drift on the edge of sleep, trusting her presence beside me.
The wolf was working, I could feel it, burning through the damage with a metabolism that human doctors could not explain.
The bullet had torn through muscle and lung, had nicked an artery vital enough to stop my heart.
But wolves healed. Wolves survived. And I had more reason to survive than I had ever had before.
Memory surfaced unbidden. Michael’s face as my jaws closed around his throat.
The shock in his eyes, the realization that he had miscalculated.
He had seen the businessman. The husband.
The man who wore expensive suits and spoke in measured tones.
He had never understood there was a monster underneath, a wolf that would tear through anything that threatened its mate.
I should feel remorse. Some shred of guilt for taking a life, even a life as twisted as his.
I felt nothing but satisfaction. And she had not flinched from that either.
“Viktor’s coming up.” Lena’s voice pulled me back. I had slept without meaning to, the afternoon fading toward evening outside the window. “He texted. Pack business.”
I pushed myself up against the pillows, ignoring the protest of healing muscles. “Okay.”
“Are you up for it? I can tell him to wait.”
“No.” I wanted to hear. Needed to know what came next. “I’m fine.”
Viktor appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, his bulk filling the frame the way it always did. He looked tired. We all looked tired. But there was relief in his eyes when he saw me sitting up, talking, present. Alive.
“You scared us.” He crossed to the bed, gripped my forearm in the wolf way of greeting. His hand was warm and solid, familiar. The grip of a brother who had thought he lost me. “Don’t do it again.”
My throat tightened. Viktor was not a man given to sentiment. That he was here, that the relief in his eyes was so visible, told me exactly how close I had come.
“I’ll try.”
He pulled up a second chair, settling his weight carefully. Lena stayed where she was, her fingers lacing through mine. Her curiosity bled into my awareness, her concern. She wanted to know what came next.
So did I.
“Pack’s stabilizing,” Viktor said. “Max’s old guard is falling in line. Those who won’t are being handled.”
Handled. I knew what that meant. Viktor had never been squeamish about necessary violence. It was one of the reasons he had survived to become Pakhan.
“Any problems?”
“Nothing we can’t manage.” He leaned back in the chair, stretching his long legs. “Your name still carries weight. The wolves who remember what you did for them, what you sacrificed. They’re not turning on us now.”
What I had sacrificed. I thought of the scars on my chest, old and new. The marks of punishments that should have broken me. The years spent as Max’s enforcer, doing things that haunted me, burying bodies and breaking bones because the pack demanded it.
And I thought of her. The reason I had walked away from all of it. The reason Viktor had challenged Max. The reason we were sitting here now, alive and free.
“Your place is secure,” Viktor continued. “When you’re ready. Take as long as you need. The pack isn’t going anywhere.”
My place. Not Pakhan. Viktor wore that crown better than I ever could. But trusted advisor. Right hand. Enforcer, when enforcement was needed. Part of the family I had thought I lost when I defied Max.
“Thank you.” The words felt inadequate. Viktor had risked everything to stand with me. Had challenged Max and won. Had killed the old Pakhan with his own jaws so that we could go home.
He waved off the gratitude. “You would have done the same.”
I would have. Without hesitation.
“Michael?” I asked.
“Handled.” Viktor’s expression hardened. “Hiking accident in the mountains. Body found by search and rescue after an anonymous tip. No connection to any of us.”
Clean. Professional. The kind of cover story that would hold up to scrutiny because there was nothing to scrutinize.
“The police?”
“Closing the file. He was wanted for questioning about the stalking. They’re treating this as closure.” Viktor shrugged. “No one’s going to look too hard at a dead stalker.”
Closure. For the human authorities, at least. For Lena and Clara and everyone Michael had terrorized, it would take longer. But he was gone. He could not hurt them anymore.
Viktor’s expression shifted. Something darker passing through his eyes. “There’s one more thing. Your cousin. Andrew Prescott.”
I went still. The Mayor of Paradise Peaks. The Senator’s legitimate grandson. The heir to the political dynasty that should have been mine, if my grandfather had not thrown me away.
“What about him?”
“He resigned yesterday. The scandal finally caught up to him.” Viktor’s voice held no sympathy. “His wife left. Took the kids. Word is he’s not handling it well.”
The wolf stirred beneath my skin. Not with concern. With something colder. Satisfaction, maybe. The slow unraveling of everything my grandfather had built.
“The Prescott dynasty,” I said.
Viktor nodded. “Crumbling. The Senator’s in federal custody awaiting trial. Andrew’s finished politically. The name is poison now.” A pause. “Your grandfather bet on the wrong grandson.”
Lena’s hand tightened on mine. Her concern bled through the bond, her uncertainty about what I was feeling. I gave her nothing back. Some reactions were too dark to share.
Andrew Prescott had been the golden grandson. The one my grandfather had chosen over the monster’s son. The heir who would carry on the dynasty while I rotted in a boarding school, forgotten and alone.
Now his world was collapsing. And mine was finally whole.
The wolf purred.
“Clara?” Lena asked, her voice soft.
Viktor’s expression gentled. “Dmitri’s with her at a hotel nearby. She’s shaken but holding together. Tougher than she looks, that one.” He glanced at me. “She knows enough. Not the details, but enough. She doesn’t blame anyone.”
Lena’s relief washed through the bond, warm and sweet. Her cousin was safe. Her half-brother was dead. The threats that had hunted us for months were finally, finally over.
“The hotel?” she asked.
“Still standing. Staff’s managing fine. Clara called earlier to check on things. They’re holding down the fort, waiting for you to come back.” Viktor smiled, and it transformed his hard face into something almost gentle. “Take your time. Heal. Both of you. We’ve got everything else covered.”
Viktor stayed for another hour, filling us in on pack business and territory disputes and the hundred small fires that came with leadership. I listened with half my attention, the other half focused on the woman beside me. On the bond between us. On the simple miracle of being alive.
He left as the evening deepened, promising to return tomorrow. The room fell quiet, just the soft beep of monitors and the muffled sounds of the hospital beyond our door. Snow fell outside the window, thick flakes drifting past the glass, blanketing the parking lot in white.
Lena shifted her chair closer, her knee pressing against the edge of the bed. She reached for me, our fingers intertwining, her peace settling into something approaching calm.
I had died. For three minutes, my heart had stopped, and I had been gone.
And she had reached into that darkness and pulled me back.
“I thought loving you would kill me.”
The words came out before I could stop them. Raw and honest in a way I had not intended, dragged up from somewhere deep.
Her grip tightened on mine. A pulse of understanding passed between us. Recognition. Love.
“It almost did.”
“But I’m here.” Wonder in my own voice. After everything, after the bullet and the flatline and the three minutes of nothing, I was still here. Still breathing. Still holding her hand. “I’m here.”
“You’re here.” Her voice broke, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You came back.”
I had spent my whole life believing that love was destruction.
That the wolf was a monster, and loving someone would unleash that monster and destroy them.
I had watched my father shift and kill my mother, had felt my world shatter around me, and the wound had shaped everything I was.
Every choice I made. Every wall I built.
Every time I pushed someone away before they could get close enough to hurt me.
Love equals death. The equation I had carved into my bones.
But I had loved her. Fully. Completely. Without reservation.
I had shifted to protect her. I had used the wolf, the monster, and it had saved her instead of destroying her.
I had been shot. My heart had stopped.
And I was not dead.
My heart cracked. Not healed, not yet, but fractured in a way that let light through. Love had not destroyed me. Her love had saved me. The bond she had forged, the connection she had refused to release, had dragged me out of the dark.
I did not have the words for what that meant. Not yet. The understanding was too new, too fragile, a seedling just breaking through frozen ground. The full healing would come later, when I was home, when I was whole, when I could prove with every breath and every touch that love did not mean death.
But the crack was there. The fracture in everything I had believed.
For now, her hand in mine. The bond between us, stronger than it had ever been. Alive.
For now, that was enough.
Outside the window, snow continued to fall, soft and silent, blanketing the world in white. Winter had come, but we had survived it.
We had survived everything.
And somehow, impossibly, we were still here.