Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Alex
The horror hits him before I can move.
I feel it through the bond — not my horror, his. The recognition landing all at once, what he's done, what he almost did, Dalton on the ground and his own hands the reason. He looks at them. Then at me. Then at Dalton behind me pushing himself upright.
His face breaks.
He fully shifts.
Not slow — an instant, the wolf taking him between one breath and the next, massive and dark and already turning. He hits the treeline before anyone can move.
I'm on my feet.
"Keep everyone back," I say to Dalton. "Everyone. Nobody follows."
Dalton looks at me. Blood at his collar, jaw set, eyes still fully shifted. "Alex—"
"Nobody follows," I say.
He holds my gaze for one beat. Nods.
I shift and go after him.
***
The forest is different as a wolf.
Not different — more. Every sense sharpened past what I have in human form, the cold air carrying information in layers, the ground telling me things through my paws.
RJ's trail is everywhere — scent and displaced snow and the deep gouges of a massive wolf running at full speed through undergrowth that didn't slow him at all.
I run.
He's faster. Bigger. He's been feral longer and his wolf knows this terrain the way mine doesn't yet. But the bond is a wire between us and I don't need his tracks — I need the pull, and the pull doesn't lie.
I find him in a clearing a mile into the trees.
He's in wolf form, massive and dark, pacing the far edge. He feels me arrive and goes still. His head turns. The yellow of his eyes catches the light between the branches.
I shift back.
The cold hits immediately and the winter air and the snow brilliant and white. I don't move toward him. I stand at the edge of the clearing and let him look.
He's shaking. Even in wolf form I can see it — the tremor running through him, the held-down quality of something that has been running on drive and arrived somewhere it didn't plan for and doesn't know what to do with itself now.
"RJ," I say.
A sound. Low. Not warning — anguish.
"Look at me," I say. "Just look."
He looks. His yellow eyes move over me — my face, my hands, the mark at my wrist visible even at this distance, the bond searching and pulling between us.
He takes a step back.
"Don't," I say.
He stops.
"I know what you think you did," I say. "I know what you're doing right now. You're trying to protect me from you." I hold his eyes. "I don't need that. I need you to stay in this clearing and listen to me."
The tremor is still running through him. His head drops slightly — not submission, something more complicated than that. The posture of a dominant alpha fighting himself.
"You ran five miles to me," I say. "Through a winter forest. In the dark.
Because the bond pulled you and you followed it and you didn't stop.
" I take one step toward him. He tenses but doesn't retreat.
"That's not something a wolf does for someone he's a danger to. That's what a wolf does for his mate."
The word lands in the clearing. He feels it — I feel him feel it through the bond.
Another step.
"I was in that common room," I say. "I remember what you said to me. Cuffed to a wall and you still said it." Another step. "I was at the fence every morning I could get there. You know that. You know I was there."
He's watching me the way he watched me at the south fence — but this time the recognition is there. Fractured, fragile, but there. Not the blank circuit-checking of a wolf who has lost the thread. Something that knows me.
Something that is terrified of itself.
"I'm choosing you," I say. "Right now. In this clearing.
I'm choosing feral and difficult and not fully back and whatever comes after this.
" I take another step. Close now. Close enough that I can see his breathing, the way his sides move.
"I'm not choosing the version of you that comes back all the way and stops being a problem. I'm choosing this. You. Now."
He makes a sound I've only heard once before — the night at the south fence, his thumb through the chain link on my mark.
"Shift back," I say.
Nothing.
"RJ." The alpha register drops into my voice. Not a request. "Shift back."
His head comes up. The yellow eyes find mine and hold and I feel the dominant alpha in him push back against it — not aggressive, just present, the instinct of a wolf who does not yield to anyone.
"I'm not asking you to yield," I say. Quieter now, the register dropping out. "I'm asking you to come back to me. There's a difference."
The tremor running through him changes quality.
"Please," I say.
The shift takes him slowly this time — not the instant violence of before.
It moves through him in waves, the wolf releasing its hold in pieces.
He goes to his knees in the snow and I close the distance and drop in front of him and put my hands on his face and feel the bond screaming between my palms and his skin.
When it's done he's gasping, hands buried in the snow, head bowed.
I tilt his face up.
He looks at me and the hollow vacancy that was there at the south fence is gone. What's replaced it is hunger so focused it stops my breath.
"Alex," he says. Not a question. Not a name.
A claim.
He lunges and his mouth crashes into mine and I feel it everywhere — his hands finding my waist, grip bruising, dragging me into him like he's been waiting to do exactly this since the first day at the fence and is not interested in taking it slowly now.
I don't want slowly. I want his hands and his mouth and the proof that there is no fence anymore.
I kiss him back with everything I have.
He stands, taking me with him, and walks me backward until my back hits a tree.
The bark bites through the thin fabric of my shirt and I don't care — his hips pin mine and I feel how hard he is, how much he wants, the full weight of months of chain link and outside time and supervised distance pressing into me.
"RJ—"
He drops his head and drags his teeth along my throat, right over my pulse, and the sound that comes out of me is not dignified.
His hands push up under my shirt and find my breasts and his mouth follows — hot and insistent, his tongue working one nipple and then the other, sucking hard enough that my hands fist in his hair and pull him closer instead of away.
He groans against my skin. Low. Rough.
"Still here," I say. Breathless and wanting.
His hands work my clothes with an impatience that is almost clumsy and is entirely him — not practiced, not smooth, the urgency of a man who has had months of not and is done with not. I help him. He helps me. The cold hits my skin and then his hands are everywhere and the cold doesn't matter.
When he pushes into me, I feel every inch, my head drops back against the tree. My legs wrap around him and I need more.
He stills. Both of us breathing. The bond blazing between us so loud it's almost sound.
Then he moves.
It's not gentle. His hands grip my hips and hold me steady and he thrusts into me hard and deep and I take it — meet it, match it, my nails dragging down his back hard enough to mark.
Every time he says my name against my throat the bond flares and I feel it in my whole body, the pull that has been running hot since the fence given everything it was asking for.
He sucks at my throat. My collarbone. Back to my nipples, his mouth hot and demanding, his hips never stopping. I have the tree at my back and his weight against my front and his cock filling me and his mouth marking every piece of skin he can reach.
"More," I say.
He gives me more.
When I come it hits hard and fast — the mark at my wrist blazing, both of us shaking, his face buried in my throat, my name in his mouth broken and rough and real.
He follows me over the edge with a sound I feel in my chest.
***
Afterward he doesn't let go.
He pulls me down with him and locks his arms around me and presses his face into my hair and breathes. I lie against his chest and feel his heartbeat slowing and the bond running between us — warm now, settled in a way it hasn't been since before the yard.
Not the bruise it was. Something that knows it's been answered.
I press my palm flat against his chest, right over his heart.
He puts his hand over mine and holds it there and doesn't say anything and neither do I and the trees are still around us and the cold is irrelevant.
***
I feel Dalton before I hear him.
The bond between us pulls warm and present and I know his tread — the deliberate pace of a man making enough noise to be heard before he arrives. RJ feels it too. His arm tightens around me and then he's upright, putting me behind him, the dominant alpha reading an approach in the dark.
Dalton steps into the clearing.
They look at each other.
RJ is still — the held quality of a wolf deciding what something is. Not the feral vacancy of the yard or the drive-blind violence of the campus. Present. Calculating. His hand finds my arm behind him, fingers closing around it. Not pushing me back. Anchoring.
I step out from behind him.
RJ's hand tightens.
"It's okay," I say.
I step between them.
I squeeze RJ's hand. I reach forward and put my other hand on Dalton's chest — feel his heartbeat under my palm, the bond between us running warm and steady. His eyes drop to my face and I hold his gaze.
The mark at my wrist blazes — both bonds, my hands on two of my fated mates and—
It doesn't build. It doesn't warn.
It just hits.
Nothing like the others — not the slow warm recognition of Leo, not the collision-ignition of Dalton in a hallway. This is a door blown off its hinges in a winter clearing with snow on the ground and blood on Dalton's collar and miles of forest between here and where RJ started this morning.
The mark at my wrist doesn't pulse.
It burns.
RJ makes a sound I've never heard from him — not the warning sound, not the anguish of the clearing, not my name pulled up from underneath language. Something that has no word for it. Something that is only ever made once.
His hand around mine goes from anchoring to crushing.
I hold on.
Dalton's hand comes up and covers mine against his chest, his eyes on my face, the bond between us wide open in response to what's happening beside it.
And then it's done.
RJ is bonded.
I feel it settle into place — not the pull. Something permanent now. Something that knows exactly where it belongs and has stopped looking.
He presses his forehead to the back of my head. His chest against my back. His hand still crushing mine.
"Mate," he says.
Not a claim this time.
A fact.