Chapter Three

Killian POV

I sit in the chair, my chest still heavy. The moment I caught her scent, the bond snapped into place.

"She’s mine," I whisper. The words feel like poison. Not because they aren’t true, but because they are, and because they never should have been.

Sighing, I look to the window. "How can I have a fated mate? Something forbidden and seen as wrong?"

Pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes I try to chase away the way she felt in my arms, and how she trembled but didn't pull away from me. I remember the way her heartbeat fluttered against my chest, uncertain and open. It was like she didn't know what I knew.

None of this can be allowed to happen, I have to fight it.

Eventually, I stand and strip off my shirt. The heat clings to me like a second layer, and I don't bother doing anything else.

I fall onto the bed with a sharp exhale and lie back into the mattress while staring at the ceiling like it might give me answers

It doesn’t.

The bond still pulses, no longer wild and longing, just there, constant and alive. A reminder of what I am having to fight. Her presence, though, that's in the air around me, and threaded through my thoughts. I can hear it, it's not a voice or a feeling that I can name, but it's there in my body, calling to me.

I could track her blindfolded. I could pick her out of a hundred wolves in a snowstorm, and the crazy thing is, if she called my name right now, I’d go.

"What happened?" Rose asks, and I turn my head to face her.

"Excuse me?" What is she talking about?

"You look like you're angry. Did you have an issue with work?"

Sighing, I look at the ceiling. "Not work, I'm just thinking about the safety of our pack," I lie. She doesn't answer, just leaves me with the burden.

The room falls silent again, and I close my eyes. I try to force the bond into the background, but it doesn't fade; if anything, the darkness only sharpens it.

I can see her face, and I see the way her mouth parted when I pressed close, the way her breath caught, and the way she leaned into me like her body already knew it belonged.

God, I want her.

Laws be damned, I want her and I'm not sure I can avoid her for long.

Not when I want to feel her skin beneath mine, and sink my teeth into her neck and mark her so deeply that no one will ever question who she belongs to. I want to hear her say my name like she means something more than duty and politics.

"Aurora is lucky, after she spoke up when she wasn't meant to this morning, Caelan could have walked away." Rose says.

I groan, not meaning to, but the bond is trying to get me to focus, and she continues to talk. She's not wrong, though. Aurora was taught her place, and she knows not to speak up. This morning over breakfast, she did.

"Caelan understands," I say.

I close my eyes again and my mind keeps replaying it, me burying myself so far inside of her that the bond and ache settle, is that really what I want, or is it the bond saying it? It is an ache, a hunger that sharpens with every second that she's not beside me.

I can’t let it happen, and I certainly can't touch her again. Not even once, not to ease the pain, or to ease the need, because I do, I won't stop.

If anyone finds out what she is to me, what the Veilmother has tied between us, I won't just lose my place in my own pack, but I'll lose everything.

So will she, everyone will turn on us for having something unnatural.

The thought of it is enough to pull me out of the haze. Shifting on the mattress, I rub a hand over my chest where the bond is still pulsing.

"She marries him in about eight hours, then in a month, she's no longer our burden," Rose says.

"I know," I reply. God, I know, and I didn't think of that.

Aurora can't stay here, but she can't go with Caelan either.

She's meant to be mated tonight, once the ceremony is complete, she won't be allowed to leave this territory for at least a month.

"Let's hope she has a boy first, it will make Caelan's pack happy, and show her use."

Rose's words have me pause. I hadn't thought of that.

She's going to be trapped inside the borders, tied to the male, who will never smell like home to her.

I'll be burning alive if she mates with him, and I can't let it. So I need to figure this out.

I need to stop it, I can't let this happen.

Sitting up, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. The only way to keep her safe and keep us both from slipping past the point of no return is to stop the bonding before it happens.

"What are you doing?" Rose looks at me.

"Something, go back to sleep," I say, already throwing on clothes.

I’ll cancel the wedding.

The decision seems to settle me, not just me, but my wolf. There will be ripples, and a lot of questions, maybe arguments and even threats. Caelan won't take the insult lightly.