The Tree Line

Maya didn't sleep.

She'd woken hours ago in a bed that wasn't hers, in a room that wasn't hers, in a house three floors tall and full of wolves. Bruised. Sore in places she didn't want to name. And when she finally made herself check her throat, her fingers found two puncture marks below her ear, already closing. Already his.

She hadn't slept since.

How could she. Gold eyes and a mark that pulsed with every beat of her heart and an Alpha downstairs who'd stood in a room full of people and told them he'd bury her himself.

The house was too quiet. No city under it. No cars, no sirens, no bus hissing at the corner the way there'd always been under her own thin walls. Just wind in the trees. And under the wind, far off, something else.

Howling.

Answering the thing under her skin.

At 2:13 in the morning she gave up.

She splashed water on her face at the little sink and caught her own reflection. Brown eyes. Normal.

Liar.

Because when she blinked, they flickered gold, and were gone.

The door was locked. Wilder had a key. He wasn't using it. Small mercies.

There was a knock. Soft.

"Food." Lindy's voice, careful through the wood. "Left it outside. I'm not coming in."

Maya opened the door a crack. A tray on the floor of the hall. Soup gone lukewarm. Bread. And a note tucked under the spoon, in Lindy's blocky handwriting.

Eat. He trains you at dawn. —L

Dawn. Wonderful.

So Lindy was in this now too. Pulled into a house full of wolves because Maya had taken one wrong shortcut, handing out soup and bad news through a door she wasn't allowed to open. Maya's chest did something complicated. Guilt, mostly. She'd spent two days trying to keep Lindy out of this, and here she was, three floors up in the middle of it.

Maya drank the water and left the food. Her stomach was a fist.

That was when she heard it.

Footsteps. Outside. Down in the yard.

She went to the window.

And there he was.

Wilder. No shirt, jeans, bare feet in the wet grass. Pacing a line back and forth like a man wearing a groove into the ground. Claws out. Jaw set so hard she could see it from three floors up. Fighting something. Fighting himself.

The full moon hung behind him, huge and low and gold-white, and it lit him up like a struck match.

Then he stopped.

Looked up.

Straight at her.

Even through the glass, even three floors up, she felt it. That tug behind her ribs. The bond, leaning toward him like a plant toward a window.

He lifted two fingers. Come down.

She should have said no.

She didn't.

The halls were freezing and empty and they smelled like pine and him. She found him at the back door, leaning against the frame, breathing like he'd run somewhere.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," he said. No hello.

"So are you."

He looked at her. At the too-big sweats somebody had left her. At her bare feet on the cold floor. At the mark on her throat. His own throat moved.

"The bond's worse at night," he said. "Full moon makes it worse. Pulls harder."

"Is that why you're out here looking feral?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Almost.

"Come on."

He didn't take her to the training yard she'd half expected, all fences and floodlights. He took her to the tree line, where the grass gave out and the dark started.

"Shoes off," he said.

"I'm not wearing shoes."

"Then feel the ground."

The grass was cold and soaked and it squelched between her toes, and she felt ridiculous, and she did it anyway. Wilder stopped in front of her. Close. Close enough that under the pine and the rain she caught plain soap, and warm skin, and wolf.

"Close your eyes."

"No."

"Close them, Maya."

She did.

"Listen."

Wind in the needles. An owl, somewhere left. Her own heart, going too fast.

And under all of it, another one. Slower. Steadier. Not hers.

His.

"That's the bond," he said, low. "You feel it?"

She nodded, eyes still shut. She didn't trust her voice.

"Good. Means you're not dying in twenty-nine days."

Her eyes came open. "And if I do?"

He didn't look away. "Then I failed."

He stepped closer. His hand came up near her throat, near the mark, and hovered there without touching it, like the last inch was a line he wouldn't cross without asking.

"You're scared," he said.

"Yes."

"Of me?"

"Of this." She moved her hand between them, him and her and whatever the bond was. "Of not being me anymore."

"You're still you," he said. "The gold doesn't change that."

"How do you know?"

"Because you're still arguing with me."

And for one second, standing barefoot in the wet dark with a monster's heartbeat inside her own chest, she almost believed him.

Then a twig snapped.

Both their heads turned to the trees at once.

A figure. Tall. Standing just inside the dark, watching. And the smell of him reached her a half-second later, and it was all wrong. Too much cheap cologne. Too much human. And under it, something she knew in her back teeth.

Her blood went to ice.

"Wilder," she breathed.

"I see him." His voice dropped somewhere low and flat and awful. "Don't move."

The figure stepped out into the moonlight. Dark hair. A scar cut through one eyebrow.

The scar she'd given him. Three years ago. The night she ran.

Dane.

He grinned, slow and easy, like they were old friends running into each other at a gas station. "Hey, Maya. You look different." His eyes crawled over her, over the mark. "Did the dog put his mouth on you?"

Wilder moved.

One second he was beside her. The next he was in front of her, teeth already dropping long, a sound coming out of him that no human throat could make.

"Touch her and you're dead."

Dane laughed. It didn't reach his eyes, and his eyes stayed on Maya. "She's not yours, Alpha. She's mine. She always comes back. Ask her." He tipped his head. "Come on, Maya. You're leaving with me tonight. Same as always."

"No."

The word came out of her before she could catch it. Loud. Clear. It surprised her as much as it surprised him.

Dane's smile fell off his face. "Excuse me?"

"I said no." She stepped out from behind Wilder. Her hands were shaking. Her voice wasn't. "I'm not going anywhere with you. Not tonight. Not ever again."

Wilder's eyes flicked to her. Something crossed his face she'd never seen there before. Surprise. Then something warmer, fiercer, that she didn't have a word for.

"That's my girl," he said, low.

Dane's face twisted ugly. "You think he can keep you? You're human. You're nothing. You're the same scared little—"

He lunged.

Wilder was faster. What happened after that wasn't a fight so much as an answer. Tearing. A wet snarl. Dane screaming, high and shocked. Maya didn't look away. She'd spent three years running from this man. She was done flinching.

When it stopped, Dane was on the ground, curled around his own arm, blood black in the moonlight.

Wilder stood over him, chest heaving, eyes lit gold.

"Next time," he said, and his voice was almost gentle, which was the most frightening part, "I kill you. Get up. Get out."

Dane scrambled up and ran, crashing through the trees, gone.

Silence. Just the two of them breathing.

Wilder turned to her. There was blood on his hands. His eyes searched her face.

"You okay?"

She nodded. She couldn't get a word up her throat.

He crossed the space between them and cupped her jaw, careful, his thumb brushing the skin under her eye where the gold kept trying to come.

"You didn't run," he said, quiet. "You stood."

"I'm tired of running."

Something shifted behind his eyes, and the gold pulled back, and for a moment he was just a tired man in the dark.

"Then don't," he said. "Not from me."

He leaned in. She thought, for one insane second she was sure of it, he was going to kiss her.

He pressed his forehead to hers instead.

And the bond flared, hot and total, and for one breath she felt him. All of it. The rage still cooling in him. The relief, huge and shaking. The fear he'd never say out loud. And under it, quiet, a single word she felt more than heard.

Mine.

But it didn't sound like a threat this time. It sounded like a promise.

"Come on," he said, pulling back before she could deal with any of it. "Inside. Before the pack smells the blood."

They walked back in silence. At her door he stopped.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Real training."

"Okay."

"And Maya." He'd already turned to go. "Lock your door. Just in case."

She nodded, and stepped inside, and put her fingers to the mark on her throat.

It didn't burn.

It pulsed. Slow and warm. Like a second heartbeat.

Like hers.

She almost smiled.

And out in the hall, Wilder stopped walking.

She felt it through the door before she heard anything. The bond going tight. His slow heartbeat kicking up. She opened the door a crack.

He was standing dead still in the middle of the freezing hall, head turned toward the window, toward the black tree line where Dane had run.

"Wilder?"

"He didn't come alone." Wilder didn't look at her. His voice had gone quiet and wrong again. "Under the cologne. Under the blood." His jaw worked. "There were three others out there in the trees. Standing still. Watching. They let him walk in, and they let him run, and they didn't move the whole time."

The warm pulse at Maya's throat went cold.

"He wasn't here to take you," Wilder said. "He was here to find you." He finally looked at her, and there was nothing gentle left in his face. "And now he has."