CHAPTER 12

Nathan didn't say a word. He didn't have to. The door to the mountain retreat hadn't just been opened; it had been deleted from its hinges. He stood in the frame, a silhouette of jagged muscle and drenched wool, the silver light of the storm turning his eyes into polished coins.

Zack scrambled back, his spine hitting the stone of the cold fireplace. "Get out." His voice was a pathetic thimble of sound against the roar of the wind.

Nathan stepped inside. He didn't stalk; he simply occupied the space, heavy and inevitable. He kicked a piece of the shattered door aside. His chest was heaving, the expensive fabric of his shirt plastered to his skin, mapping the tension in his frame. He looked down at Zack—shaking, pale, smelling of old terror and fresh rain.

The predatory stillness in Nathan broke. He didn't lunge. He crossed the room in three heavy strides and dropped. The sofa groaned under his mass as he forced himself into the small space between Zack and the wall.

"Don't touch me," Zack choked out, flinching as a hand reached for him.

Nathan ignored the protest. He didn't use words; he used weight. He hauled Zack into his lap, pinning him against his chest with the blunt force of his arms. It wasn't a hug. It was a lockdown. Zack fought, elbows catching Nathan’s ribs, heels digging into the leather, but it was like trying to move a mountain.

"Stop," Nathan growled, the vibration rattling through Zack’s own lungs.

Zack’s strength hit a wall. The exhaustion of the hyperemesis, the concussion, and the sheer adrenaline of the flight folded him in half. He went limp, his forehead dropping against Nathan’s soaked shoulder. Nathan adjusted, pulling a discarded wool blanket over them both, tucking it around Zack’s shivering form until only his eyes were visible.

Nathan’s hand, calloused and warm, rested on the back of Zack’s neck. He began to hum—a low, guttural vibration that wasn't a melody so much as a frequency. It was the sound of the Durand bloodline, a tactile reassurance that the world outside didn't exist. Zack’s breathing hitched, then slowed. The phantom of Logan—the whiskey breath and the basement shadows—receded. There was only the smell of woodsmoke and Nathan’s expensive, rain-dampened cologne.

Zack wanted to hate the comfort. He wanted to hold onto the jagged shards of the betrayal at the hospital. But the heat of Nathan’s body was a drug. He drifted, caught in the gravity of the man who had been his jailer, his protector, and the father of the secret growing inside him.

Nathan’s POV

Ten Years Earlier

The coup started at 05:00.

The Cocolink borders were breached not by rival syndicates, but by our own blood. My uncle’s mercenaries poured into the Havenfall districts like a virus. They expected a street war; they found a ghost town. My father, Julian Wright, didn't play by the rules of engagement. He’d moved the entire civilian sector into the sub-levels of the mountain hours before the first bullet was fired.

I stood on the balcony of Havenfall Heights, sixteen years old with a custom Glock 17 heavy in my hand. I felt the tremors in the air—the cold, calculated rage radiating off my father. To my left stood Marcus, the syndicate’s lead enforcer, and to my right was Flynn, my best friend.

Flynn was the logic to my fire. While I was ready to burn the city to find my uncle, Flynn was the one checking the thermal feeds. His sister, Madeline, was only six then, tucked away in the bunkers. Flynn lived for two things: the Cocolink and making sure Madeline never saw a drop of blood.

The ambush happened in the alpine pass. My uncle had tracked our command center. The forest became a meat grinder. The sounds of suppressors and the wet thud of knives finding home replaced the silence. I took my first life that morning—a mercenary twice my size. I didn't feel like a hero. I felt like a machine.

We were clearing a ridge near the cliff’s edge when the world broke. A downed shooter, a man we thought was dead, lunged from the brush with a jagged combat blade. I was looking the wrong way. Flynn wasn't.

He didn't scream. He just moved. He tackled the man mid-air, the momentum carrying both of them over the jagged precipice. I reached the edge just in time to see the mist swallow them.

Whatever was left of my childhood stayed at the bottom of that canyon.

Now, watching Zack sleep in my arms—looking so fragile I’m afraid my own grip might break him—I see Flynn’s face. I see the debt. Madeline is all that’s left of my friend. I promised him I’d look after her. I thought that meant marrying her. I thought it meant a neat, logical alliance.

Then I found Zack. Three years ago, pulled from Logan’s basement, covered in scars and smelling of broken things. I knew he was the one the moment I saw those mismatched eyes. The contract was a lie I told myself to keep him close without admitting I was addicted.

Three years. That was the deal.

I’d planned to make it permanent. I had the ring in my pocket the day before our anniversary. I was standing outside his study, ready to ask him to stay forever, when I heard him on the phone with that friend of his, Lucas.

"Yeah, I have a doctor’s appointment," Zack’s voice had drifted through the door, sounding wrecked. "I think I have to try. I mean, I’ve been in love with the man since I was a kid... he’s everything to me."

My heart didn't break; it turned to glass and shattered. He wasn't talking about me. He was talking about some ghost from his past. Logan? Someone else?

"I’m just going to have to learn to live with it," Zack had said. "I’ve survived worse, right?"

Listening to him talk about our marriage as an ordeal to be survived—like the basement, like the torture—it killed me. I couldn't keep him as a prisoner of gratitude. I did the only thing a Durand knows how to do. I cut him loose before he could ask to leave. I rejected him to save my pride, thinking I was giving him the freedom he clearly craved.

But sitting here, feeling the heat of him against my chest, the logic tastes like ash. I smelled the change on him the second I broke down the door. The pheromones. The metallic, sweet scent of a body changing.

Zack shifted in his sleep, a soft, pained whimper escaping his lips.

"You're not going anywhere, little wolf," I whispered, my hand sliding down to rest over his stomach. "Not to him. Not to anyone."

The secret was out in the room, thick and heavy. He was carrying my heir. And Madeline? If she really tried to kill him on those stairs, she wasn't the girl Flynn died for. She was a target.

The storm outside peaked, a violent crack of lightning illuminating the cabin, but inside, the silence was absolute. I held him tighter, waiting for the moment he’d wake up and realize the cage door was never actually open.