Chapter 30, The Beast at the Threshold
Skarde
Wren vanished into the shadows of the upper gallery without a single word. The door to her suite slid shut with a hiss, the seal engaging with a finality that made the sitting room feel suddenly, violently empty.
The moment the connection was severed, the man in me was pushed aside.
Varg did not wait for my command. He hit the surface of my consciousness like a landslide, a violent, lightless force that obliterated my human restraint. There was no cracking of bone, no agonizing snap of a frame being rebuilt. Instead, my vision fractured as my body became a fluid, dark thing.
Varg rippled my skin like the surface of a black lake. He expanded my frame and darkened my fur in a blur of motion. Before I could even think the word stop, the wolf was in total control.
Varg was a shadow made flesh, a six hundred pound engine of predatory muscle. He drove the paws into the polished slate floor with a muffled thud that vibrated through the foundation of the villa. He launched us up the stairs like a streak of black lightning, driven by a hunger that had no name.
Varg reached her door and slammed my weight against the sliding panel.
The seal groaned under the impact, the reinforced metal shuddering in its track, but it held.
Varg pressed my muzzle against the narrow seam, inhaling so deeply I could feel the pressurized air whistling in my throat.
The scent of her, the honey, the rain, the burgeoning storm, it was a drug.
He did not want to protect her. Varg wanted to melt through the steel and claim her. He needed her. Wanted her.
"Boss!” Rhys’s voice cracked through the mind-link, a sandpaper rasp of alarm. ”You’re scaring her! Back off!"
“Move, Rhys,” Torin growled, his mental voice granite hard. “I got him.”
A massive shape exploded from the side corridor. Torin did not waste time with words or warnings. He shifted mid-stride, his body flowing from man to beast like ink spilling across a page, and barreled into my flank like a falling boulder.
Varg was thrown back from the door, claws screeching against the slate and leaving deep, ragged white gouges in the stone. He whipped his head around, a tectonic growl ripping from his throat, eyes glowing with a murderous, violet light.
Torin did not back down. He stood between Varg and the door, his fur the color of slate gray, his hackles raised in a rigid ridge.
He snapped his jaws, a sharp, loud crack that echoed like a gunshot in the narrow hall.
It was a challenge. A provocation meant to snap Varg’s focus away from the woman behind the door.
“Out, Varg!” Torin’s voice was a roar in my mind. “Hunt or run, I do not care, but you have to give her space!”
Varg snarled, ears pinning back, the blood-lust peaking. But then, through the wolf’s rage, I finally heard it. The sound of her.
She was gasping for air, the short, terrified hitches of someone being crushed by the sheer intensity of an Alpha’s shadow. She was small, and she was terrified of me. Us. She was afraid of us.
The realization hit me like a physical blow, even as Varg fought to stay at the door. The monster he was becoming was the very thing she was running from.
Torin did not wait for Varg to recover. He lunged, nipping hard at my shoulder to draw blood, a sharp sting intended to wake me up. Then he spun and bolted toward the open balcony. He was giving Varg a target to chase.
The need to hunt, to dominate, to run finally overrode the obsession at the door. Varg pivoted, his haunches launching us after the gray blur of my Beta, leaping into the freezing mountain night to bleed off the heat.