Chapter 28
RAPHAEL
Two days before the contract expired, I drove to Boston alone.
The hospice sat at the edge of the city, a low brick building surrounded by bare winter trees. I had tracked his transfer from the federal detention center three weeks ago. Pancreatic cancer, stage four. The courts had granted compassionate release to a man who had never shown compassion to anyone.
Senator William Prescott. My mother’s father. The man who had looked at a three-year-old orphan and seen only a problem to be disposed of.
The hallway smelled of toxic medicines and approaching death. My wolf stirred at the scents, cataloging them with predatory precision. Decay beneath the bleach. Fear leaking from behind closed doors. The particular stillness of bodies preparing to stop.
Room 114. I pushed open the door without knocking.
He was smaller than I remembered. The illness had eaten him from the inside out, leaving paper-thin skin stretched over prominent bones.
Tubes ran from his arms to machines that beeped with mechanical indifference.
His eyes, though. Those were the same. They found me in the doorway and widened with recognition.
With fear.
“Raphael.” My name came out as a rasp. “Come to watch me die?”
I crossed to the chair beside his bed and sat. Let him see that I was in no hurry. That I had time to spare while his ran out with every labored breath.
“You knew.” I kept my voice level. “For fifteen years, you knew exactly where I was. What was being done to me. Richard sent you reports.”
His jaw tightened. Even now, even dying, the instinct to deny was strong. “I did what was necessary. Your father was a monster. You had his blood. I couldn’t risk—”
“Risk what? Your reputation? Your career?” I leaned forward. “I was three years old. I watched my father kill my mother. And you threw me away like garbage because acknowledging me would have been inconvenient.”
Kill him, the wolf snarled. He left us to suffer. He deserves to bleed.
The urge was overwhelming. He was frail. Helpless. One hand over his mouth and nose, and it would be over. No witnesses. Just another death in hospice, another body for the morning staff to find.
But that would be mercy. And I had not come here for mercy.
“I could kill you,” I said. “The wolf wants it. You have no idea how much he wants it.” I let my eyes catch the light, let him see the predator looking out at him. “But death would be too quick. Too clean. You deserve to suffer first.”
The Senator’s heart monitor raced. The fear-scent thickened in the air, and the wolf purred with satisfaction.
“Do you know what I did to your career? To your investments? To every shell company you thought was hidden?” I smiled, and there was nothing warm in it.
“I took it all. Piece by piece. I made sure the world knew exactly what kind of man you are. A man who profits from abusing children. A man who threw away his own grandson to protect his reputation.”
His hand trembled on the sheets. “You ruined me.”
“I destroyed you.” I leaned closer, letting him smell the predator on my skin. “But that is not why I came today. I came to deliver the news in person.”
Something crossed his eyes. Hope, perhaps. That I had come to gloat about his downfall and nothing more.
I savored the moment before I crushed it.
“Andrew is dead.”
The words landed like a killing blow. His face went gray, his mouth opening and closing without sound. The heart monitor screamed a warning.
“Your precious legitimate grandson. The heir to your political dynasty. The one you chose over me.” I watched his eyes fill with horror, with grief, with the dawning understanding of what I was telling him.
“He put a gun in his mouth three weeks ago. The scandal was too much. His career was over, his reputation destroyed, and he could not live with the shame of bearing the Prescott name.”
“No.” The word came out as a wheeze. “No, that’s not—”
“I attended the funeral,” I continued, my voice soft and merciless.
“Stood in the back. Watched his wife weep over the casket. Watched his children try to understand why their father was never coming home.” I tilted my head, studying the old man’s anguish with clinical detachment.
“He left a note. Did you know that? Blamed you. Said he could not escape the shadow of what you had done.”
Tears leaked from the Senator’s eyes. His chest heaved with sobs that his ruined body could barely produce.
“You threw me away because you thought I was the monster’s son. Because you wanted Andrew to carry on your legacy instead.” I stood, looking down at the broken man in the bed. “And now Andrew is dead. Your dynasty is ashes. Your name will be remembered only for the scandal that destroyed it.”
I moved toward the door, then paused. Let the final blow land.
“I am the last Prescott standing. The grandson you never wanted. The monster’s son.” I smiled at him over my shoulder. “And I will live a long, happy life while you rot in the ground, knowing that everything you built, everything you sacrificed me for, died with Andrew.”
His wail followed me down the hallway. A broken sound, animal in its grief. The wolf rumbled satisfaction in my chest.
Good, he growled. Let him suffer. Let him die knowing we won.
The nurse at the station looked up as I passed, concern creasing her face. “Is everything all right? His monitors—”
“Family visit,” I said. “He received some difficult news.”
I did not look back.
The drive home took three hours. The wolf was quiet, sated in a way he had not been in years. The man who had thrown us away would die knowing his cruelty had destroyed everything he loved. Andrew’s blood was on his hands, not mine. I had simply ensured he understood that before the end.
I found Lena in the kitchen with Alice, laughing at something. She looked up when I entered, her smile brightening, and the bond flooded with her warmth.
She did not ask where I had been. Perhaps she sensed the darkness still clinging to my edges. Perhaps she simply trusted that whatever I had done, I had done for us.
I crossed to her and pulled her into my arms, breathing in apples and cream, letting her scent wash away the smell of death and grief.
“I love you,” I said against her hair.
She held me tighter. “I love you too.”
Two days later, the contract would expire. Two days later, she would be free to leave.
She was not going anywhere. Neither was I.
The fifth of January.
I woke to the scent of apples and cream, to the warmth of her body curled against mine, to the steady rhythm of her breathing.
The bond hummed between us with her peace, her contentment, her dreams still soft and unformed.
Outside the window, fresh snow blanketed the grounds, white and clean and untouched.
For a long moment, I simply lay there, watching her, breathing her in.
Seven weeks had passed since we returned from the hospital.
Seven weeks of wolf healing doing its work, knitting tissue and rebuilding muscle and erasing the evidence of the bullet that had nearly ended me.
We had celebrated Thanksgiving quietly, just the two of us, grateful to be alive.
Then Christmas with Viktor and the pack, Clara and the hotel staff, Alice hovering over us both.
New Year’s Eve passed in peaceful silence, watching fireworks from the bedroom window, her head on my shoulder.
The bandages were gone now. The weakness was gone.
The only reminder was a scar, pink and tender, directly over my heart.
A scar where my mate had reached into death and refused to let go.
Lena shifted in her sleep, her cheek pressing deeper into my chest, her hand curling against my ribs. The collar at her throat caught the early morning light, gleaming silver against her skin. My collar. My mark. My mate. My wife.
Mine.
The wolf settled at the thought, satisfied in a way I had not known was possible.
For so long, the wolf had been the enemy.
The monster lurking beneath my skin, waiting to destroy everything I loved the way my father’s wolf had destroyed my mother.
I had spent decades fighting him, caging him, refusing to let him have what he wanted.
But the wolf had not destroyed Lena. The wolf had saved her. In that cabin in the mountains, when Michael raised the gun to her head, the wolf had killed him before the man could have acted. The wolf had protected my mate the way wolves were supposed to protect their mates.
And then the wolf had almost died for her.
I had died. Three minutes on an operating table, my heart stopped, my blood on the floor, the bond between us screaming with her grief. I remembered darkness. I remembered cold. I remembered her voice, somewhere far away, refusing to let me slip away.
Come back to me. You do not get to leave me. Come back.
So I had come back.
Love was supposed to destroy. That was what I had learned watching my father’s wolf tear my mother apart. Love made you weak. Love made you vulnerable. Love made you into a monster, and monsters destroyed the things they loved.
But Lena’s love had not destroyed me. Lena’s love had reached through the veil between life and death and dragged me back to her.
Everything I believed about love was wrong. Love had not made me weak. Love had made me survive. Love was the reason I was lying in this bed, in this house, with this woman warm against my side.
But I was still the monster. That had not changed. I had killed for her. I would kill for her again. The wolf was not a curse anymore, but he was not tamed either. He was simply mine to command, and his commands were simple. Protect her. Claim her. Keep her.
Always.
Lena stirred, and this time her eyes opened. Blue and warm and still soft with sleep. She blinked up at me, a slow smile spreading across her face as she registered where she was. Who she was with. The bond brightened with her contentment.
“You’re watching me sleep again,” she murmured.