2. Raphael
RAPHAEL
The scars pulled when I raised my arms for the jacket.
Eight weeks since the Pakhan’s enforcers had held me down while their claws tore through muscle, and the wounds were still healing.
Slower than they should have. Deeper than they needed to be.
That had been the point. A lesson written in my flesh, carved by hands that weren’t human when they did the carving.
You’ve become weak. Distracted. This is what happens to wolves who forget what matters.
I had taken every strike without making a sound.
Not because I was brave. Because all I could think about was her.
The way she had looked at me that last morning, shattered and confused, searching my face for some explanation I could not give her.
The way her scent had lingered in my sheets for days after I sent her away.
Apples and cream, faded to a ghost of itself, and still my wolf had pressed his muzzle into the fabric every night like an addict chasing the memory of a high.
I shrugged into the jacket carefully, letting the expensive fabric settle over the mess of scar tissue on my back. The lining caught on raised ridges where the claw marks hadn’t healed flat.
In the mirror, I looked exactly like the man the world expected. Cold. Composed. A Vor of the Ivankovskaya Bratva, second only to the Pakhan himself. A man who crushed his enemies without hesitation and never let sentiment interfere with business.
No one looking at me would guess that I had spent the last two months counting the days until I could see her again. That every part of me strained toward a woman who was miles away and hated me with every breath in her body.
Eight weeks of separation after touching her, tasting her, nearly marking her. Eight weeks of the bond screaming for completion while I denied it everything.
That I deserved every ounce of her hatred. And she could destroy me with a word if she knew how much power she held.
A soft knock at the bedroom door. I knew who it was before she spoke. The scent of lavender soap and the particular rhythm of her heartbeat, slower than a younger woman’s but steady as a metronome.
“You’re going back to her.”
Alice stood in the doorway, her gray hair pinned back the way she always wore it, her eyes seeing straight through every mask I had ever constructed.
She had been my mother’s housekeeper before she was mine.
Had watched me grow from a feral child into whatever I was now.
She knew about the wolf. Knew what Lena was to me.
What she had been from the first moment I saw her.
“Yes.”
Alice nodded slowly. No judgment in her expression. No pity either. Just the understanding.
“She doesn’t know what you did for her.”
“No.” I adjusted my cuffs, not meeting her eyes. The silver links caught the morning light. “And she won’t.”
“Raphael—”
“If she learns I broke up with her because the Pakhan threatened her life, she’ll know how deep this goes.” I finally looked up. “Better she thinks I’m a bastard than knows how close she came to a bullet.”
Alice’s mouth pressed into a thin line, but she didn’t argue. She had known me too long to waste words on battles she could not win. Had watched me beat my head against enough walls to know that stubbornness was the only inheritance my father had left me.
“Be careful,” was all she said. “With her. And with yourself.”
I nodded once, then turned back to the mirror to finish dressing. Tie knotted precisely. Cufflinks aligned. Every hair in place. The perfect image of control.
My wolf pressed against my ribs, wanting out. Wanting to run. Wanting to find her and bury his muzzle in the curve of her neck and never let go.
Soon, I told him. Soon.
He didn’t believe me. Neither did I.
The drive to Paradise Peaks would take three hours. Three hours to prepare myself for what was coming. For the hatred in her eyes and the contempt in her voice and the absolute certainty that I was the villain of her story.
Three hours to remember why I was doing this at all.
The memory came whether I wanted it or not. It always did. Playing on a loop behind my eyes whenever I let my guard down, whenever the wolf’s grief broke through the walls I had built.
Two months ago. The Pakhan’s private office in the compound outside the city. The smell of old blood and the particular musk of wolves who had killed and would kill again. The scent of power and violence, thick enough to taste on the back of my tongue.
Max Ivankov sat behind his desk like a king on a throne, his silver hair swept back from a face that revealed nothing.
Viktor stood to his left, silent as always, his eyes on me with an expression I couldn’t read.
Dmitri flanked his right, arms crossed, watching me with the cold calculation of a wolf sizing up wounded prey.
Two enforcers stood at the door. Not for protection. As a message.
“You’ve become attached,” the Pakhan said. No preamble. No games. Just the flat statement of fact that preceded every execution he had ever ordered.
My wolf went still. Dangerously still. The kind of stillness that came before violence.
“The Hughes girl.” Max didn’t make it a question. “You’ve been distracted for months. Your men have noticed. Viktor has noticed.” A pause weighted with disappointment. “I have noticed.”
I said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was right. Every word of it. I had become attached. Distracted. Had let a human woman crawl under my skin and wrap herself around my heart until I couldn’t think straight.
And I would do it again in a heartbeat.
“Attachments make us weak, Raphael. They give our enemies leverage. They make us hesitate when we should act.” He leaned forward, and for a moment I saw the wolf behind his eyes.
The Alpha who had built this pack from nothing and held it together through blood and will alone.
“I thought you understood that. After your father. After what happened to your mother.”
The mention of my parents was a blade slipped between ribs.
He knew exactly where to cut. My father had smelled another man’s scent on my mother.
A stranger she had brushed past, nothing more.
But his wolf had seen only betrayal. I had watched him tear out her throat in our kitchen.
Watched the confusion in her eyes turn to terror turn to nothing at all.
I had been three years old. Old enough to remember everything.
“I do understand.”
“Then you understand what needs to happen.” Max spread his hands on the desk, a gesture of false reasonableness. “Kill her and remove the distraction. It’s the cleanest solution. She’s human. Uninvolved. No one will question it.”
The word came out before I could stop it. “No.”
Max’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. In another man, it would have been shock. In him, it was a warning. A signal that the next words out of my mouth would determine whether I walked out of this room.
“No?”
My wolf surged forward, pressing against the inside of my skin, ready to fight. Ready to die. We would not harm her. We would tear apart anyone who tried. Would paint the walls of this office red before we let a single claw touch her.
“I said no.” My voice came out rougher than I intended, the wolf bleeding through. “I won’t kill her.”
For a long moment, the Pakhan simply looked at me. Assessing. Calculating. I could feel the enforcers shifting behind me, ready to move if he gave the signal. Could smell their anticipation, the eagerness of wolves who lived for violence.
Then Max smiled. And somehow that was worse.
“I thought you might say that.” He settled back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight.
“So I’ll offer you an alternative. Marry her.
Bring her under pack protection. Make her yours in a way that cannot be undone.
” His smile sharpened into a blade. “Then she becomes an asset rather than a liability. A connection to the Hughes hospitality empire. And your attachment becomes legitimate.”
Marriage. The word echoed through me like a bell struck in an empty cathedral.
Marry her.
My wolf lunged toward the idea with desperate hunger. Our mate, ours forever, protected and claimed. No one would dare touch what belonged to the Vor. He saw only the prize, only the chance to bind her to us permanently.
But the man understood what the wolf couldn’t.
She would hate it. Hate me. I had already broken her once, had taken her virginity and then dismissed her like she meant nothing.
And I knew exactly what traps she was already caught in.
My men had been watching since I left her.
Had reported on the will’s marriage clause, the ticking deadline, the way her options narrowed with every passing week.
They had told me other things too. That she took her coffee at six-twenty sharp, black with one sugar, the same way she had taken it in my kitchen.
That she worked sixteen-hour days now, as if exhaustion could fill the space where I used to be.
That she still reached for her throat sometimes, fingers finding bare skin where the collar used to rest. This would be using all of it.
The contract. The will. Every cage her father had built around her.
Forcing her into a marriage she didn’t want with a man she had every reason to despise.
I would be saving her life by destroying any chance she might ever forgive me.
“There is no third option,” Max said quietly, reading the conflict on my face. “Kill her or marry her. Those are your choices. And you have until tomorrow to decide.”
I didn’t need until tomorrow.
“Marriage,” I said. The word tasted like ash and salvation in equal measure.