Chapter 12 Darius
DARIUS
The snow has no intention of stopping tonight.
It howls like an ancient beast outside, pressing in with such force it muffles even the cracking of the old beams overhead.
The windows rattle, and somewhere down the long east hallway, a shutter bangs like a heartbeat out of sync.
But none of it really registers—not the storm, not the wind, not the eerie sounds of this house bracing itself against nature’s fury—because every ounce of me is wound tight with the awareness of her.
Tessa.
She’s in the study.
I don’t need to see her to know it. Her presence sings in my bones, in the aching marrow of me, as if she’s been stitched into the very fabric of my senses.
Her scent still lingers—lavender and something softer, something human that hums of skin warmed by firelight and tea steeped too long.
It wraps itself around my ribs, seeps beneath my skin like slow, sweet poison, and all I want—all I crave—is to follow it to her.
The wolf in me is restless. It scratches behind my sternum, prodding me with a kind of electric urgency I haven’t felt in decades.
The last time I wanted like this, it ended with blood on my hands and my mate buried under half a moon’s worth of snow.
And still, even now, after all the scars and shame, this need comes back, unrelenting, primal, deeper than desire.
I shouldn’t go to her.
I know that. I know what I am.
But knowing doesn’t stop my hand from wrapping around the brass doorknob, or my feet from crossing the threshold of the study like a man walking into the very fire he swore to avoid.
She’s standing near the frosted window, her frame outlined in the pale glow of candlelight, hair loose down her back and her sweater hanging long over her hips like she dressed for comfort, not company.
Her arms are wrapped around herself, not in fear, but in that absentminded way people do when they’re lost in thought.
She turns when she hears me, her eyes widening just a little—not in alarm, but in surprise, soft and unguarded.
“I didn’t think…” she begins, her voice barely above the hush of the wind.
“I know I shouldn’t be here,” I say, voice low and rough as gravel under boots. “But I couldn’t stay away.”
Something flickers in her eyes then. Not fear. Something warmer, more dangerous.
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t have to.
Because I’m already moving.
Three strides. That’s all it takes to reach her. And when I do, when her hands rise slowly—almost reverently—to frame my jaw, I feel something inside me fracture, deep and immediate, like a fault line cracking beneath the weight of too many years.
I lean in.
And when our mouths meet, it isn’t soft. It isn’t hesitant.
It’s fire.
It’s rage and grief and longing all tangled into one feral kiss that strips us down to skin and bone and need.
Her lips part, breath catching as I claim her mouth with the kind of desperation that only comes from too many nights spent alone, too many days convincing myself I didn’t need what I’d lost.
She gasps, and that sound shatters whatever scraps of restraint I had left.
My hands go to her waist, pulling her against me like she belongs there, like the space between us is the only wrong thing in the room.
She doesn’t push me away. Her arms loop around my neck, fingers threading into my hair, anchoring me to her like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.
And maybe I am. Maybe this is a dream.
But if it is, it’s the sweetest one I’ve had in a hundred years.
Her lips taste like mint and honey, like the tea she drinks in the evenings when she thinks no one is paying attention, and the heat of her body seeps through every layer of clothing between us until I can’t tell where she ends and I begin.
The wolf surges upward, howling through my blood, wild with approval and possession.
She’s ours, it growls.
Ours.
And then the shift hits.
A wave of heat bursts beneath my skin, so sudden and sharp I stumble back, gasping like I’ve been punched. My vision doubles, claws pushing through my fingers before I can stop them. The beast is no longer content to stay buried. It wants out—wants her.
“No,” I snarl, digging my nails into the backs of my hands, trying to anchor myself with pain. “No, no, no…”
Tessa’s lips are parted, chest heaving, her arms slowly falling back to her sides as she stares at me with something between heartbreak and horror.
“Darius?” she says, her voice full of confusion, of soft bewilderment, not anger. Never anger.
I shake my head violently, backing away until my spine hits the bookcase behind me. “I can’t,” I whisper, more to myself than to her. “I can’t do this…”
“Do what?” she asks gently, taking a step toward me. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a kiss.”
“No,” I growl, the word ripping out of me like a wound. “It’s never just a kiss. Not with me. Not when there’s this…”
My hands are bleeding. I’ve gouged deep crescents into my own palms, the scent of my blood hitting the air with a copper tang that makes my stomach twist. I see her see it—and still, she doesn’t run.
She reaches a hand out. Not to grab, just to offer.
And that’s what breaks me.
I bolt.
Out the door, down the hall, through the back into the snowdrifts that swallow me like a grave. The cold bites at my bare feet, my hands, my face, but I welcome it. Let it sink into me, let it punish me for daring to hope that something so warm, so human, so kind might want me.
I collapse near the old tree line, where the snow lies undisturbed and the wind howls loud enough to drown my sobs. I fall to my knees and press my forehead into the snow until the cold seeps all the way to my bones.
Because I kissed her.
And I wanted more.
I almost shifted with her in my arms. And if I had…
I’d have ruined her.
Just like I ruined…
No. I won’t think of her name. Not tonight.
But even as the wolf urges me to run—back to the wilderness, to the solitude I deserve—something stops me.
It smelled like lavender and honey and looked at me like I wasn’t broken.
Because when I close my eyes now, I don’t see my mistakes.
I see Tessa.
Still standing there. Brave and waiting.
And somehow, the man in me finds a reason to stay.