Chapter 8
Nadia
I can’t breathe right. My back presses against stone. Cold seeps through the coat, but I barely feel it. My lungs work too hard. Too fast. Like I just ran six hours instead of standing still.
The heat won’t fade.
It should. The fight’s over. The adrenaline should be crashing. My body should be remembering exhaustion, injuries, the thirty-some hours I’ve been awake.
Instead, my skin burns. Not fever. Not exertion. Something else.
I press my palms flat against the wall. Focus on the texture. Rough stone. Real. Solid. Anything to anchor myself to something that makes sense.
It doesn’t work. Because I can still smell him.
Even across the shelter—eight feet of space that feels like inches—his scent wraps around me. Cuts through snow and blood and smoke like none of that matters. Like my wolf has decided this is the only scent worth tracking.
Clean. Male. Dragonfire buried but not hidden. Something else underneath that I recognize, even though I can’t identify it.
My wolf prowls. Not aggressive. Not hunting.
Wanting.
No!
I stop the thought in its tracks. Try to find rage. The fury that’s kept me sharp. The hate that feeds me. It’s still there. But underneath—
The heat intensifies. Spreads from my chest down my spine. Settles low in my belly in a way that makes me want to claw my own skin off.
My thighs clench. I realize with sick clarity that I’m wet.
No. No. No!
But my body doesn’t listen. Just keeps responding to proximity and scent and some biological imperative that shouldn’t exist anymore.
Heat.
The word surfaces through shock and denial.
My heat cycle.
The thing that died when Chance did. When the bond snapped and took half my soul with it. When my wolf went cold, my pack started looking at me with pity disguised as sympathy.
Barren, they’d whispered. Poor thing. She’ll never bond again.
And I’d been relieved. Because it meant I’d never betray him. Never move on. Never let anyone else touch what belonged to Chance. Being empty felt right. Clean. Devoted.
Years without a cycle. Of coldness that proved my grief was real. Permanent. Worthy.
And now—
My wolf is screaming. For him. The man who killed my mate.
Nausea hits hard and fast. I press a hand to my mouth. Swallow bile.
This can’t be happening.
My body shouldn’t be doing this. Not for anyone. Especially not for the dragon who signed the order that destroyed my life.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Try to rationalize. It’s this fucked-up situation. Has to be. The fight flooded my system with chemicals that are confusing biological responses. Exhaustion making me interpret signals wrong. Maybe some kind of dragon pheromone… manipulation that I don’t understand yet.
Anything but that.
But wolves don’t lie to themselves about scent. About heat. About what their bodies recognize.
And this is unmistakable.
My skin feels alive. Sensitized. The fabric of my clothes feels too rough. The air against me too sharp. Everything heightened and wrong and demanding.
I want to shift. Let my wolf take over. Run until my paws bleed, and this wrongness gets left behind in the snow.
But I can’t.
Can’t leave. Can’t run. Can’t do anything but stand here while my body betrays everything I am.
What’s wrong with me?
The question pinballs around in my head. Relentless. For half a decade, I’ve hunted him. Planned this. Let hate feed me when nothing else could.
And my wolf… My own wolf—
She recognizes him as something other than prey. As something worth claiming.
The disgust is so strong I taste it coating my tongue.
How could she? How could my wolf betray Chance like this? He was our mate. Our soul mate. The one we chose. The one we lost. And she’s responding to his killer like—
I can’t finish the thought. My hands shake. I press them harder against the wall.
Chance.
His name is an anchor. The last solid thing in a world that’s spinning wrong. I see his face. His smile. The way he’d look at me across a room and I’d know—know—what he was thinking. The bond between us so strong that words were optional.
The way it felt when it snapped. Like dying. Like being torn in half. Like every good thing in the world ending at once. I mourned him. Still mourn him. Will mourn him until I die.
So why—?
Why is my body doing this?
Movement across the shelter jolts me back. Allon shifts his weight.
My reaction is instant. Pure instinct. I drop into a crouch. Hands up. Wolf so close to the surface that my vision flickers.
“Don’t,” I warn.
He stops. Doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t advance. Just stands there, hands loose at his sides. Then he raises his wrists. Holds them out. Palms up. Offering.
I don’t understand.
“What—?”
“You’ll probably feel better if you cuff me again,” he says. His voice is quiet. Careful. No mockery. No superiority. Just an observation delivered like he’s trying not to spook something wild.
I stare.
Bullshit!
This is a trick. Has to be. Some strategy I’m not seeing yet.
Except—
I look at him closely for the first time since we broke apart. Blood trails down his shoulder from where my blade caught him. The slash is clean. Deep enough that it’s still weeping red despite his healing trying to close it.
Claw marks score his face. Four parallel lines from temple to jaw. Fuck! When did I do that? I don’t remember shifting. Don’t remember my nails lengthening.
But the evidence is there. His jacket is torn. Fabric shredded across his chest where a blade has ripped through. More claw marks, these ones catching on his shirt underneath, pulling it loose. Bruising darkens along his jaw. His lip is split. Blood dried at the corner of his mouth.
I did that. All of it.
My gaze drops to my own hands. I turn them over. Check my arms. Run fingers across my ribs where he’d grabbed me.
Nothing. Not a scratch. Not a bruise. Not even a red mark.
He’d blocked. Defended. Redirected my attacks. But he’d never struck back. Never used his strength. His weight. His lifetime of battle experience.
Why didn’t he kill me?
He could have ended it. Could have broken my arm when I lunged. Crushed my throat when we grappled. Put his knife through my ribs in any of a dozen openings I gave him.
He didn’t.
The realization sits wrong. Doesn’t fit with anything I know about him. About dragons. About men who rise to tactical commander in the Syndicate.
“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it.
“Why what?”
“You didn’t—” I gesture vaguely. At myself. At him. “Kill me. You could have.”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He’s quiet for a while. Then: “I don’t know.” The honesty in those three words shakes me more than any blow he didn’t deliver.
I should call him a liar. Assume manipulation. See this as a strategy: make the target think you’re not a threat so she drops her guard. But I’ve been hunting predators for long enough to know truth when I hear it.
He doesn’t know why he held back. Which means he’s as confused as I am.
The thought unsettles me more than violence would have.
“It’s not a trick,” he says quietly. Still holding his wrists out. “I’m offering.”
I don’t trust it. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust anything right now. But the heat is still there. Still burning beneath my skin. Still making me too aware of how close he is.
And the cuffs—
The suppression might help. Might dull whatever this is. I move before I can reconsider. Cross the shelter fast. Grab the cuffs from where they fell and fit them around his wrists, fingertips tingling at the contact with his skin.
God. How could this be happening?
He doesn’t resist. Doesn’t move. Just stands absolutely still while I lock the runes in place. The moment they activate, relief crashes through me. The heat dims. Not gone—not even close—but the edge dulls. The overwhelming presence of him recedes like a wave pulling back from shore.
I can breathe again. Sort of.
I back away. Fast. Don’t stop until my shoulders hit the far wall. Then my legs give out. I slide down. Knees to chest. Arms wrapped around them. Making myself small. The shaking starts. Not from cold. Not from fear. From grief so deep it threatens to drown me.
For all this time, I’ve survived on hate. Let it feed me when food tasted like pain. Let it drive me when exhaustion said to quit. Let it give me purpose when waking up felt pointless.
Hate made sense. Hate was clean. Simple. Justified.
I hated the Syndicate for killing Chance. Hated the world for taking him. Hated this man for signing the order. And underneath all that hate—I hated myself. For laughing at my mother’s story that day. For not being there when he died. For surviving when he didn’t.
But hate gave me direction. Structure. Something to do with the rage that had nowhere else to go.
And now—
Now I don’t know how to hate him when my body wants him alive. Don’t know how to honor Chance’s memory when my wolf is howling for the dragon who killed him. Don’t know who I am without the certainty that carrying grief and vengeance is the only thing I’m good for anymore.
My forehead drops to my knees. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can still smell him. Still feel the phantom weight of his body against mine. Still remember the way my hands wanted to rip fabric and find skin instead of ripping into his throat and drawing blood.
What’s wrong with me?
The question is relentless. No answer. Just the certainty that something has broken.
I can’t look across the shelter. Can’t bear to see if he’s watching me fall apart. Can’t face whatever might be in his expression—confusion or understanding or worse, contempt.
The heat thrums beneath my skin. His dragon is muted by the suppression cuffs, but somehow, I can still sense him. Wrong. Impossible.
My wolf prowls. Restless. Not hunting.
Seeking.
No, goddammit!
I press my forehead harder against my knees until it hurts. The foundation I rebuilt my life on has cracks I can’t explain. Can’t fix. Can’t ignore. I don’t know who I am without it. Don’t know what I’m supposed to do when the man I came to kill triggers responses that should be happening.
I want to scream. To tear something apart. To get out of this place and pretend none of this ever took place. But the storm has sealed us in. Snow piled against the entrance. No escape until it passes.
Hours. Maybe a full day. Trapped here with him while my body betrays everything I am.
My breathing turns ragged. Too fast. The edges of my vision blur.
I’m breaking.
Can feel it happening. The careful control I’ve maintained—the discipline, the focus, the single-minded purpose—collapsing under the weight of something I never prepared for.
I came here to kill him. To end the man who ended Chance. To close the chapter on the grief and hate and sleepless nights where I’d plan his death in a thousand different ways.
And now—
Now I don’t know anything anymore.
The storm howls. Wind whistles through gaps in stone. Snow falls so thick that the world beyond this shelter ceases to exist.
Inside, silence presses down. Heavy. Suffocating.
I don’t look at him. Can’t. If I see his face right now—if I see whatever he’s thinking, whatever he’s feeling—
I might shatter completely.
So I stay curled against the wall. Arms locked around my knees. Eyes squeezed shut against the burn of tears I won’t let fall.
And I wait.
For the heat to fade.
For my wolf to come to her senses.
For this nightmare to end.
But the heat doesn’t fade. My wolf doesn’t relent.
And the truth sits in my chest, heavy and undeniable:
Everything I thought I knew—about myself, about grief, about what comes after loss—just became a lie.
And I have no idea how to survive what comes next.