Bound to The Enemy of My Mate

Fire erupted under her skin.

One moment she was human—trapped, terrified, married to a man who was reading her love letter like a death sentence. The next, her vision snapped into impossible clarity. Every scar on Kael's cheek. Every grey fleck in his iris. The fine tremor in the hand that gripped her wrist.

No. Not possible. I'm not—

Her fingernails thickened. Darkened. Curved into points that scraped against his leather bracer with a wet, sickening skritch.

Kael looked down.

Saw the claws.

The hunter in him went still. Too still. His hand flew to his belt for a dagger that wasn't there—muscle memory from a thousand kills. But his eyes—his eyes weren't a soldier's anymore. They were a man's. Wide. Disbelieving.

"You couldn't be—"

He knows, she thought. He knows what I am, and I didn't even know myself.

Thirty seconds earlier, she'd been trying not to cry.

He'd found the letter. Of course he found it. The one she wrote to Thane three years ago, before the marriage, before the suppressants, before she'd sealed herself into a human-shaped cage and thrown away the key.

"You wrote about his scent." Kael's voice was quiet. That was worse than shouting. "Rain after a fire."

She said nothing.

"He must be the source of your… sanctuary?"

Her nails bit into her palm. Stay human. Stay still. Don't let him see.

"My grandfather was a hunter." He stepped closer. Oak and steel and something wounded. "He told me about the silence after the hunt. What wolves feel when the hunger is sated." A pause. "Is that your poetry, Elira?"

"It is poetry."

"Liar."

His hand shot out. Seized her wrist. His thumb pressed down on her pulse—rabbit-fast, traitor-fast.

"Your heart is beating like cornered prey."

"Because you're scaring me!"

"No." His eyes locked onto hers. "You're terrified of what I'll find. Who is he?"

"None of your business."

The words hit like a door slammed in his face. She saw it—the flinch he tried to hide. Her husband, the stranger she'd married for land and leverage, looking at her like she'd just gutted him.

"This marriage was a deal," she said, quieter now. "You don't get to own my past."

"I don't care about the land." His voice cracked. Actually cracked. "I care about him. Should I go find him? Greet him myself?"

He'll hunt Thane.

The thought wasn't rational. It was instinct. Ancient. Wolf.

"Don't you dare touch him."

She lunged. Grabbed his arm.

And something inside her—a cage, a seal, a dam she didn't know existed—snapped.

Fire erupted under her skin.

Kael froze. Not tactical. Not hunter. Just frozen.

"No," he whispered. "You're not—"

Her hands spasmed on his wrist. Her fingernails—no, her claws—dug into his bracer. The sound made her whimper. That wasn't her. That couldn't be her.

But the scent of his blood hit the air—metallic, intimate, intoxicating—and something inside her salivated.

The wolf panicked. Hunter. Exposure. Death.

She shoved.

Kael—six feet of soldier, muscle, and hunting steel—flew across the room. Hit the far wall. Plaster cracked. He slid down, clutching his ribs, blood trickling from his temple.

Elira stared at her hands.

At the claws.

At the monster she'd just become.

"What—" Her voice wasn't human anymore. Too low. Too rough. "What am I?"

Kael pushed himself up on one elbow. Wiped blood from his eye. Stared at the red smear on his palm.

Then at her.

"A hybrid." The word was meant to be cold. Final. But it broke halfway through. Shattered by sheer disbelief. "You're one of them."

"I didn't know." She backed away. Her claws scraped against silk. "I didn't—I thought I was just—"

Human. Normal. Safe.

His gaze shifted. Hunter's assessment. But underneath—if she looked—there was something else. A man realizing he'd married his sworn enemy. And that his sworn enemy was terrified.

"I should kill you right now," he said.

The admission hung between them. Raw. Bleeding.

He should. The law demanded it.

But he stepped to the door instead. Pulled it shut. Turned the lock.

Click.

Not a bedroom anymore. A cage.

And he'd locked himself inside with her.

From somewhere far away, a howl split the night. Long. Mourning. Not a threat—a call.

Elira's head snapped toward the window.

She'd never heard it before.

But her soul knew its mate.