4. Raphael
RAPHAEL
My control slipped the moment the elevator doors closed.
The walk from her office had taken everything I had.
Every step pulled at the wounds across my back, the claw marks beneath my shirt, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst was her presence fading behind me with every stride.
Apples and fury. The combination that had become the only thing I wanted to breathe, the only air that felt right in my lungs.
My wolf clawed at my insides, howling.
Go back. She’s ours. She agreed. Go back and claim what’s ours.
I kept walking. Forced one foot in front of the other despite the wolf’s snarling protests and the fire across my ribs.
The hallway stretched endless, too bright, all that spring sunshine streaming through windows that overlooked mountains she loved.
Mountains I had watched her admire from my penthouse, coffee cup cradled in her hands, her face soft and unguarded in the early morning light. When she thought I wasn’t looking.
I was always looking.
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime. Parsons waited beside them, his face carefully blank. He saw whatever was showing on mine, whatever had slipped through the cracks in my mask, and said nothing.
Good man. Fifteen years of loyalty, and he had never once asked a question I was not prepared to answer.
I stepped into the elevator. The doors slid closed, cutting off the hallway, cutting off the fading trace of her scent.
I braced my hand against the wall as the elevator descended. Let my head fall forward. Let myself breathe without the mask, just for these few seconds between floors.
She agreed.
The words should have been victory. The Pakhan’s ultimatum was satisfied.
Kill her or marry her. Those had been my only options, delivered with cold precision in the Alpha’s study while four of his enforcers stood ready to ensure my compliance.
I had chosen marriage, taken the beating that was the price of that choice, and now she had agreed.
My mate would be legally mine, protected by my name and my resources and every weapon in my arsenal.
But the way she had looked at me.
Like I was the monster she believed me to be. Like every accusation she had hurled at me was written in the lines of my face. Like she could see straight through to the darkness that lived in my chest, the wolf that wanted to pin her down and claim her properly, consequences be damned.
You are a monster, the dark voice whispered. The one that sounded like my father’s ghost. You made sure of that.
The elevator reached the lobby with a soft jolt.
I straightened my back, settling the mask back into place despite the way the movement made the wounds scream in protest. Fresh blood, wet and warm, seeped into the fabric of my shirt.
I ignored it. Parsons fell into step beside me as I crossed the marble floor, his presence steady and silent.
“The courthouse is expecting us Thursday at two,” he said as we pushed through the hotel’s front doors into spring sunlight that mocked me. Too warm. Too cheerful. The world had no business looking this beautiful when she was back there, despising me.
“Good.”
That was all. Nothing else to say. Parsons knew everything, and we had been speaking in silences for fifteen years.
He knew about the ultimatum. Knew about the scars beneath my shirt.
Knew that I had walked into this marriage with my eyes open and my heart in my throat, and he had never judged me for any of it.
The car waited at the curb, black and sleek and armored against the threats I had spent my life navigating. I slid into the back seat. Pain ripped across my ribs where the enforcer’s claws had gone deepest, tearing through muscle and scraping against bone.
I didn’t let the pain show. Couldn’t afford to, even now.
Parsons started the engine. We pulled away from the Hughes Palace Hotel, away from the woman who hated me, away from the memory of her that clung to my jacket and filled the hollow spaces of my chest.
The mountains rolled past the tinted windows, their peaks still capped with spring snow.
Green was creeping up from the valleys, painting the foothills in shades of new growth.
She had been fascinated by the changing seasons, commenting on the deer that appeared at dusk.
Small observations she had offered during those weeks we were together, before I had taught her to hate me.
You destroyed my family.
Her words wouldn’t stop, each one landing like a blow I couldn’t block.
Couldn’t dodge. Because she was right. Apex Lending had been my weapon, carefully constructed over years of patient planning, designed to bring the Hughes empire to its knees.
Her father had helped destroy my childhood, had been the Senator’s fixer when they had shipped a three-year-old boy off to boarding school hell. I had returned the favor with interest.
I hadn’t known she would be collateral damage. Hadn’t known she existed until I walked into that hotel and her scent hit me like a fist to the chest, until she became everything.
And now I was paying the price for that night.
For touching her. Tasting her. Nearly marking her before I forced myself to stop.
The ache of not claiming her had been agony for two months, a torment that left my wolf howling and my chest hollow.
Every day without her made it worse. Every day the bond pulled tighter, demanding what I had denied it.
You took my virginity and threw me away like garbage.
That morning after. My greatest cruelty. My greatest mercy.
The wolf whined at the memory, the sound echoing through my chest. We had held her sleeping form all night, her body warm and solid against our chest, her breath soft and even against our neck, the way she had curled into us like she belonged there. Because I had known it might be the last time.
She didn’t know that the coldness in my voice was the only thing standing between her and a death order signed in my blood.
Tell her, my wolf demanded, surging against my control. She deserves to know. She’s our mate. Tell her what we sacrificed.
If I told her, her forgiveness would become debt. Gratitude wasn’t love. I needed her to choose me, not because I had saved her life, but because she finally saw a man worth choosing.
She’ll never see you, the dark voice answered, my father’s ghost laughing in the shadows of my mind. You made sure of that. You showed her exactly what you are.
The car climbed the winding road toward the manor, switchbacks carrying us higher into the mountains. I stared out the window and let her accusations replay, over and over, the penance I deserved. The torture I had earned.
The manor rose against the mountainside like a fortress. Twenty thousand square feet, built to withstand any assault. It had never been home. Just a place to conduct business and plot revenge and sleep alone in beds too large for one person.
For two months, she had made it feel lived-in.
Her presence in my space, her scent soaking into my sheets, her voice echoing through hallways that had only ever known silence.
I had told myself it was temporary. Told myself the contract would end and I would let her go, let her return to her normal life, let her forget she had ever belonged to me.
Then the Pakhan had delivered his ultimatum, and letting her go had never been an option.
Parsons pulled up to the front entrance. I climbed out of the car, my movements careful and controlled, fresh blood sticking my shirt to my skin.
I pushed through the front door. The manor swallowed me in silence. Too empty. Too still. Wrong without the faint notes of apples that had started to weave through the halls during her time here. The wolf paced inside my skull, agitated by her absence.
I knew exactly what she would be doing right now if she were here.
Four-thirty on a weekday meant she would be curled in the library window seat with her tablet, reviewing the next day’s reservations, a cup of tea cooling beside her because she always forgot to drink it while she worked.
She tucked her feet under her when she read.
She bit her lower lip when the numbers didn’t add up.
She hummed under her breath when she thought no one was listening, always the same melody, something classical I had never been able to identify.
I knew all of this. I had memorized every detail during those months she lived under my roof, cataloging her habits like a predator studying prey. Or like a man so desperately in love he couldn’t look away.
She should be here. She should be with us. Why isn’t she with us?
Because she hated me. Because I had made her loathe me. Because the only way to save her life was to destroy whatever fragile thing had started to grow between us.
I made it to my study before the need to move became unbearable.
The room was dark, curtains drawn against the afternoon light, and I stood in the shadows for a long moment, just breathing in the familiar darkness of my own space.
Underneath it, fading but still present, lingered the ghost of her scent.
She had been in this room. Weeks ago, before everything went wrong. I had kissed her against that bookshelf, her body arched into mine, and I heard the soft, surprised sound she made when I bit her neck. The sound that had made my wolf howl in triumph.
I stripped off my jacket and let it fall, then fumbled with the shirt buttons, my hands wanting to shake. The fabric was stuck to my back in places, dried blood cementing it to the wounds beneath. I peeled it away with a hiss, the pain sharp and gratifying.