28. Raphael #2
Her love. Burning beneath the fear like coals that refused to die, warming her from the inside even as she sat bound and helpless in a dead woman’s living room.
Love for me. Trust in me. Faith that I would come, that I would find her, that I would tear through whatever stood between us because that was what mates did.
Because that was what I had proven I would do, over and over, even when it cost me everything.
Her relief. Crashing through everything else as she touched my face and felt me solid and real beneath her fingers. I came. I found her. She was not alone anymore.
I pulled her against my chest and held her so tight I could feel her heartbeat hammering against my ribs.
Her scent surrounded me. Blood from her wrists, fear from her ordeal, the chemical ghost of chloroform still clinging to her hair.
But underneath all of that, the essential truth of her.
Warm skin and familiar soap and the particular sweetness that had haunted me since the first moment I scented her in that hotel lobby a lifetime ago.
The wolf purred with satisfaction even as the man drowned in guilt.
If I had lost her, the bond would have killed me.
I knew that now with a certainty that went beyond logic or reason.
Hours of terror, of the connection screaming with her fear, of feeling her pain through the threads that bound us together.
If Michael had succeeded, if I had arrived too late, the bond would have snapped and taken my sanity with it.
“I left you.” The words tore out of me, raw and ragged and utterly inadequate. “I answered the summons and I left you. The Pakhan called and I went like an obedient dog, and this happened because I was not here to stop it.”
Her fingers curled into my shirt, holding on like she would never let go. “You came back.”
“I should never have left.”
“Raphael.” She pulled back just enough to look at me, her eyes wet with tears she had not let herself shed while Michael held her captive. “You came back. That is what matters.”
It was not what mattered. It was not enough.
I had failed her in the most fundamental way a mate could fail, had left her vulnerable to the predator lurking in plain sight while I submitted to pack discipline like a good little wolf.
The half-healed scars on my chest from the Pakhan’s unfinished mark throbbed beneath my shirt, a reminder of what my obedience had cost. What my cowardice had enabled.
But she was alive. She was in my arms. And for this moment, that had to be enough.
“He’s my brother.” Her voice was muffled against my chest, the words vibrating against my ribs. “My father had an affair. Michael is his son.”
Richard’s son. The words landed like a blow. I had tracked Michael here, had followed his scent to this house and known he was the threat. But I had not known why, had not understood the twisted family history that connected them.
“I tracked him here,” I said. “Figured out he was the one behind everything. But I did not know about your father. Not until now.”
She shuddered against me, and I tightened my arms around her.
We would have time later to untangle the full horror of what Michael had revealed.
The affair. The payoff. The decades of abandonment that had twisted him into the monster he had become.
Right now, all that mattered was getting her somewhere safe.
Somewhere Michael could not find. Somewhere the Pakhan’s hunters could not reach.
Dmitri cleared his throat from his position by the door. “We need to move.”
He was right. Michael knew we were here, knew we would be focused on Lena’s injuries and each other. If he had any resources beyond his own frenzy, they would be converging on this location within the hour.
And then there was the kill order.
The Pakhan’s price on both our heads, issued when I tore myself free from his punishment and raced to find my mate.
Every wolf in the bratva hunting us now.
Viktor and Dmitri’s loyalty fracturing. The pack I had served for decades turning against me because I had chosen her over them.
Because I had defied Max not once but twice, and there was no forgiveness for that level of rebellion.
We were dead wolves walking. The only question was how long we could stay ahead of the hunters.
“Can you walk?” I asked Lena, though I already knew the answer from the way she trembled against me.
“I think so.” She tried to pull away, to test her legs, but her knees buckled almost immediately. The chloroform was still in her system, weakening her, slowing her reactions. Hours of being bound had left her muscles stiff and uncooperative.
I caught her before she could fall and lifted her into my arms. She weighed nothing at all, or maybe my wolf’s strength was surging in response to the threat still lingering in the air. Either way, carrying her was easier than breathing.
“Dmitri, get the car started. We are leaving.”
He was already moving, disappearing through the ruined front door into the darkness outside.
I followed more slowly, Lena cradled against my chest, her head resting in the hollow of my shoulder.
I felt her exhaustion finally catching up with her.
The adrenaline fading. The terror giving way to marrow-deep weariness.
We passed the mantle on our way out. The photographs of Richard and Maria Santos, the history that had created this nightmare, the secret family Lena had never known existed.
Richard smiled out from one frame, his arm around his mistress.
Michael was gap-toothed and innocent in another picture, maybe eight or nine years old, before the abandonment twisted him into a killer.
Richard Hughes had been dead for months, but his sins were still finding new ways to wound the people he had left behind.
The cold night air hit us as we stepped onto the porch. Above, the sky stretched dark and clear, indifferent to the violence that had unfolded beneath it. Dmitri had the car running at the end of the dirt driveway, headlights cutting through the shadows.
I carried Lena down the porch steps and across the overgrown lawn, my feet finding the path by instinct rather than sight.
She pressed closer against my chest, seeking warmth, and I sensed her questions hovering at the edges of her consciousness.
Questions about the Pakhan. About the punishment she had glimpsed through our connection before Michael took her.
About the secrets I still carried, the truths I had not found the courage to speak.
She deserved to know everything. The kill-or-marry ultimatum. The choice I had made to save her life by marrying her instead of ending it. The price I had paid and would continue paying for the rest of my life.
But not tonight. Tonight she needed to rest, to heal, to process the brother she had never known and the father whose lies kept multiplying even after death.
Dmitri held the back door open as I approached.
I slid into the seat with Lena still in my arms, unwilling to let her go even for the seconds it would take to buckle a seatbelt.
She curled against me, her fingers still twisted in my shirt, her breathing evening out as the warmth of the car surrounded us.
The door closed. Dmitri climbed behind the wheel.
We pulled away from Maria Santos’s house, leaving the broken door and the flickering candles and the shattered window behind. Leaving Michael somewhere in those woods, wounded and furious and already planning his next move.
He would come for her again. I knew that with the same certainty I knew my own name. His obsession would not end until he was dead.
But that was a problem for another night. Right now, I had my mate in my arms and we were both still breathing. It was more than I deserved after everything I had done. Everything I had failed to do.
I felt Lena slipping toward sleep along our connection, her consciousness growing soft and hazy with exhaustion. Her trust in me unshaken despite every reason she had to doubt. Her love burning steady even in the darkness.
I held her closer and watched the night stream past the windows. Guilt sat heavy in my chest, mingling with love so fierce it hurt to breathe. My secrets. Her trauma. The enemies circling closer with every passing hour.
We were not safe. We might never be safe again.
But we were together. And for now, driving through the darkness with my mate’s heartbeat steady against my ribs, that had to suffice.