Chapter 6 - Nicholas
The drive back to Wells is quiet, the kind of silence that gnaws on your bones. The road hums beneath the tires, the forest rich as it stretches endlessly on either side, but inside the SUV, there’s only tension.
Thick. Heavy. Suffocating.
Donna sits beside me in the passenger seat, her gaze fixed out of the window.
The silver moonlight flashes across her face every time we pass between the trees, painting her in different shades; one second, she’s soft and ethereal, the next, she’s hard and cold.
Her hands are folded neatly on her lap, the gold band on her finger catching the light like a cruel reminder.
Donna Rivera is my wife now.
The words should mean something, but they don’t.
Not yet.
The gold band was my mother’s, while the dress she’s wearing belonged to hers. Everyone else seemed to be treating this like a real mating ceremony, a real marriage, but Donna’s cold indifference reminds me that it’s not the case.
Perhaps I’m being too ambitious to think that this could be real. I mean, it’s not. That’s not why she agreed to this. After all, I hurt her in the past, and that’s why she can’t even look my way.
But every time I glance at her, my wolf stirs, restless and guilty, but protective—that’s why I’m doing this.
The air between us feels charged, alive with everything we’re not saying.
If she’s angry, she hides it well, but her silence since she stormed off from that fire pit in Terramor says enough.
Her walls are higher now than they’ve ever been, and I’m the reason they exist at all.
I should say something…anything…but words feel redundant right now. None of them can fix the damage I caused a year ago. No words can make her trust me again.
When we finally reach my house and pull into the driveway, Donna doesn’t wait for me to open her door. She steps out first, her chin tilted high, her movements precise and deliberate, like she’s performing for an invisible audience to prove that she’s unaffected.
If only she knew that every calculated step she takes unravels me a little more….
“Welcome home,” I murmur as I grab our bags from the back of the SUV.
She pauses at the foot of the stairs, glancing up at the porch and the house beyond it. The stone and cedar facade glows beneath the porch lights, the Crescent Moon insignia etched above the double doors.
“It looks different,” she remarks flatly, and I pause behind the SUV, watching how she barely moves, her breathing controlled.
I know what she’s remembering—or rather, reliving—and I gulp hard, a new wave of guilt washing over me.
“I had it revamped,” I reply as I slowly make my way toward her, cautious. “The old place didn’t feel like mine anymore,” I add.
What used to be here before was an old, brick-faced house with decades of character.
It’s where Donna, Dominic, and a pregnant Cecelia stayed during their visit last summer, but back then, it was my father’s place, before I’d taken over as the alpha of Crescent Moon.
Once I took the mantle, I made a few changes to the house.
Donna’s lips twitch, almost into a smirk. “Right. Out with the old, in with the new alpha. Though I was expecting more.”
The jab lands squarely where it’s meant to—in that spot where I was hoping for something else.
In hindsight, perhaps I wanted her to be impressed, or fazed, at the very least. Subconsciously, I might have made the changes to the house in an effort to get rid of the memories of what happened here last summer.
I smirk, trying to mask the sting. “I keep it simple. Function over flair.”
“Of course you do.” Her tone is sharp enough to draw blood. “No personality to the place anymore.”
Another sting, but I choose to ignore it, pushing open the door and stepping aside for her to enter first. “Your room is this way,” I say with a gentle nod to the west hallway, and she follows me down, her heels clicking against the pristine wooden floors, each sound echoing through the quiet house like a countdown.
The clock is ticking as if we’re traveling through time, to the past, to that moment when her brother and his mate were here, and we’d been full of chatter and joyful smiles.
The silence between us now echoes in those memories, but the scent of her—lavender and something softer, uniquely hers—remains the same as it trails behind me, clawing at the edges of my control.
When we reach the west wing, I open the door to the bedroom across from mine. “This is the room you stayed in…” My voice tapers off when the words and the memory catch in my throat. “You should be comfortable here,” I say, gesturing inside. “If you need anything, I can—”
“I won’t need anything,” Donna says abruptly as she turns to face me, her expression unreadable, eyes cool and distant. For a second, I catch a flicker of the girl I used to know—the one who smiled too easily, who looked at me like I hung the moon. But it’s gone before I can soak it in.
“Right,” I mutter, forcing a weak chuckle. “You would know where everything is.”
“Unless it’s changed?”
I shake my head tersely. “Not really. Everything’s pretty much where it used to be.”
Donna nods and steps through the doorway, and I know this is my cue to walk away, give her the space she deserves. But something inside me—maybe my wolf, maybe my guilt—keeps me rooted there, watching her.
“Donna—”
She turns her back to me. “Unzip my dress.”
The request knocks the breath right out of me, even when it sounds more like a command.
“Wh-what?”
Her tone is calm, deliberate. “The zipper on my dress. I can’t reach it.”
My mouth goes dry, but I step closer, the faint sound of my heartbeat thundering in my eardrums as Donna pulls aside her thick, dark hair from where it curtains her back, exposing the zipper that runs from midway to her waist. My hands hover for a moment before I touch her, and I gulp hard to diffuse the heat rising in my bones.
When I’m able to move again, her skin is warm beneath my fingertips, soft in a way I remember too well, eliciting sensations through my fingertips that feel almost addictive.
The scent of her hair, the faint pulse at the back of her neck; the memories all flood me at once.
I drag the zipper down slowly, the soft, silk fabric whispering against her skin, revealing a sliver of her bare back that makes my throat tighten. My fingers tremble before I pull away, my eyes lingering on bare skin, the air between us thick with the echo of what used to be.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice cool and controlled, and a stark contrast to the storm raging inside me.
Then, out of nowhere, a gust of cold wind knocks into me right before the door slams shut in my face.
For a moment, I just stand there, staring at the polished wood, my pulse still hammering as I blink, dumbfounded. The house is silent, but I can still hear her heartbeat on the other side of the door. Steady. Strong. Indifferent.
Mine is beating in the opposite direction.
I let out a low, bitter laugh and rake a hand through my hair, muttering to myself as I head down the hall. “Well, well…this is gonna be interesting….”
I saunter toward the bar on the other side of the kitchen, another memory knocking me like a gut-punch when I see a flash of Donna seated on the bar, her legs hooked over my shoulders as I ate her out like the most decadent meal—or the last supper that signified the end of our time together.
Gulping and shivering from the memory, I drag my feet to the back bar, grabbing a bottle from the shelf before finding my way to a stool.
The bar’s glow is low and amber, a welcome contrast to my racing heart, the faint hum of the refrigerator filling the silence and lulling me to calmness.
I pour myself a double of bourbon and prop my elbows on the counter, staring at the liquid like it holds the answers I need.
It doesn’t.
The echo of Donna’s door slamming in my face still reverberates in my head, mocking me, chastising me for the things I’ve done, the things I haven’t said.
I down the drink in one go, the fire burning a trail down my throat.
For a moment, it’s easier to focus on that sting than the one that resides in my chest.
I hate myself for this.
I heard her conversation that night at the barbecue, at her graduation party, about how excited she was when she told the girls about her plans to open her practice in the city.
Now, I’m stripping her of her freedom as if I hated the idea that she had it, that she had a life that didn’t involve me.
I must look like the biggest asshole in the world, but I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think she was in real danger.
Still, I can’t shake the thought that maybe I did this for me as much as for her. It sounds selfish, but isn’t that what happens to werewolves who discover their fated mates?
Of course, I knew all along. But one of the reasons I did what I did was to protect her, to ensure that she had a life outside of me.
A fated mate bond is all-consuming, and Donna had so much to look forward to in her life.
She’s an ambitious woman, and her degree would have taken her far.
And as much as it pained me to do what I did, I had to. For her.
But maybe part of me wanted her close again, where I could see her, protect her, pretend we hadn’t ruined each other. I’m still ruined, and I’ll always be. Now I’m dragging her down with me because my inner wolf won’t rest until it has her right under his nose, where he can keep her safe.
I could fight it before, but I’ve given up. Maybe because I am selfish.
The ice in my glass clinks as I swirl another round of bourbon inside, a hollow sound in the empty room reflecting the state of my heart for the past year. My reflection in the mirrored shelves stares back at me—red-rimmed eyes, tired, haunted by the past. An alpha wolf wearing a man’s guilt.
I set my glass down, hard enough to make it clink, and mutter under my breath, “Yeah. Real noble, Nick. You fucking dick….”
Shaking my head slowly at myself, I tear my gaze from the mirrored glass as if my reflection disgusts me, a dull ache in my shoulder drawing my attention there.
It’s my left shoulder again, and the dull ache turns to a throbbing pain that has me frowning deeply as I press a palm to the spot where Tobias had bitten me.
It’s been forty-eight hours, and the bastard’s bite hasn’t healed quickly enough, remaining there like a festering reminder that it’s because of him that I’ve had to marry Donna. I have no regrets, but I know she does. She has all of them, and I’m left to shoulder the guilt—quite literally, too.
As a true-blooded alpha, I should have healed within the first hour, but an hour after the incident, I was deliberating my entire life while trying to protect Donna’s.
It makes sense that my emotional state has dampened my quick healing abilities, but fuck!
I need to get my head straight again.
I groan when my head starts buzzing with the first stirrings of a mind link that’s coming through. I recognize the frequency of the crackling tearing through the silence and straighten up for my beta Evan’s telepathic message.
“Alpha,” his voice crackles through the line, tense, but the fuzziness must be because the alcohol hasn’t burned out from my system just yet. “You might wanna come see this. South border. Something’s…off.”
Of course it is. It’s never just one thing.
I sigh, rubbing the back of my neck. “I’m on my way,” I respond through the mind link, getting to my feet and pushing aside the thoughts haunting my mind. Between wallowing in my sorrows and doing what’s needed of me as the alpha of this pack, the latter wins out.
I can’t be weak.
Undoing another button of my white shirt, I roll my bad shoulder and push the throb aside as I head for the door, the bourbon’s warmth evaporating as duty kicks in. Outside, the night air bites on my cheeks, sharp and clean, the moon glaring down like it’s tallying a score.
Moon Goddess: two.
Nicholas Bartalow: zero.
I shift mid-stride when I step off the porch, the change hitting me hard but clean—bone, sinew, fur, and then quiet calm for a split second that’s long enough to adjust my senses to their capacity in wolf form.
The world sharpens in an instant as scents, sounds, and shadows become more distinct, the pads of my cushioned paws on the ground absorbing the earth’s vibrations.
There’s a sense of healing being grounded in wolf form again, and it allows me to be thankful that my beta drew me out.
By the time I reach the border, Evan is already there in wolf form, pacing, his fur prickling when he spots me.
He nods, then leads me toward a blueberry bush where the air around us suddenly feels…wrong.
Thicker.
Heavy with something that reminds me of the way Delilah’s cottage in Scarborough felt when she’d been in the clutches of dark magic.
My paws slow, my ears pricking at attention when the fur at the back of my neck rises with sharp alertness.
Then I see it, and a cold wind passes through my spine.
Nestled between two roots is a small burlap pouch, blackened by the dirt and tied with red twine.
A hex bag—I know because Delilah and Arianna left some around our pack territories to keep out evil, but they’d buried them deep enough to not be found.
Evan shifts first. “You think this is one of Delilah’s? I don't know who would have dug it out, though.”
I shift to human form then, crouching low as I pick up the bag, my chest suddenly tightening when I catch a whiff of the unbearable stench coming from the bag.
The thing hums faintly, like it’s alive on my palm, the energy dark and clinging.
“No. It's not Delilah's. Hers would never reek like this. This one's new.”
I untie the thread and dump the contents onto my palm, and a collection of ash, bones, and a clump of hair comes tumbling out. Along with those is a folded note, the parchment aged, edges scorched as if they’d been burned purposely.
“What the hell…?” Evan mutters, brows furrowed.
I unfold the note slowly, frowning at the strange markings scribbled across the page, looping in jagged patterns. But one symbol catches my eye—a circular emblem etched at the bottom.
The same one that Delilah and Arianna wear around their necks. I recognize it from the intricate details of the sigil and how they form the roots of a tree.
My pulse quickens just as I notice my shoulder throbbing beneath my jacket, right where Tobias bit me, as if the items from the burlap bag are heavier than they should be. I flex my shoulder, but the pain only deepens, sharp and burning. “This isn’t just dark magic…” I murmur. “It’s a message.”
Evan frowns. “From whom?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug, the dull ache gnawing on my mind now.
It might be a hunch, but nothing feels independent about all these strange occurrences.
From Donna being targeted, to me getting bitten, and now this…
I have to report this to the others. “But whoever…whatever it is…it’s coming for us. We need to be ready.”