The Man I Ran From

LYRA'S POV

I wake to the smell of cedar and something colder underneath it, metal maybe, or the particular stillness of a room that's never been lived in.

My wrists aren't bound. That surprises me before anything else does, before the ache in my skull or the stiffness pulling through every muscle I own.

I'm lying on a couch instead of the forest floor, covered by a blanket someone draped over me with more care than I expected.

For one disoriented second, I think Kael found me. I think I'm safe.

Then I hear the voice, and every drop of hope leaves my body at once.

"You gave me quite a scare, running off like that."

I sit up too fast, the room tilting before it settles. He's sitting across from me in a chair that looks expensive and uncomfortable at the same time, legs crossed. He watches me the way he used to, as though he's already decided I belong to him and is simply waiting for me to accept it.

Roman Ashford.

Three months of running, and here he is, close enough to touch, exactly as calm as every memory I've carried of him.

"How?" The word comes out rougher than I mean it to. "How did you find me."

"That's an interesting question." He tilts his head, considering me the way he once considered a signature on a contract. "Would you believe me if I told you I didn't have to look very hard?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means you've been easier to track than you think, Lyra. Easier than you've been for three months, in fact. Something changed." His eyes drop, briefly, to my forearm, to the place where the gold light rose during the rite, and something in his expression shifts into quiet satisfaction. "Something changed the night you let that Alpha touch your blood with his."

My stomach drops. I don't understand what he means, not fully, but understanding isn't required for dread to set in.

"You're lying."

"I rarely bother to lie when the truth works just as well." He leans forward, elbows on his knees, closing some of the distance between us that I desperately want to keep. "You delivered yourself to me this morning without me lifting a finger. Exhausted, starving, alone. You practically delivered yourself."

I think of the mark. The cold spot under the shower water. The shadow passing beneath my skin that I told myself I imagined.

I didn't imagine it.

"What did you do to me?"

"Nothing you haven't already agreed to, in a way." He says it so reasonably, so gently, that it takes a moment for the horror of it to actually land.

"Your father agreed to quite a lot on your behalf, if you'll recall. I simply made sure the agreement held, regardless of how far you ran or who you convinced to stand between us."

"Kael will come for me." I swallow. I don't even realize when I say that.

"I'm counting on it." He doesn't show the faintest flicker of concern, like the idea of Kael Varga hunting him down is mildly entertaining rather than threatening. "Let him come. Let him see exactly how far loyalty gets a man who claimed a bond he couldn't fully explain."

"The bond is real."

"Is it?" His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Or is it simply the thing you needed to believe, the same way your mother needed to believe your father loved her enough to keep his promises?"

The mention of my mother lands like a slap, precise and deliberate, meant to wound rather than inform.

"Don't talk about her."

"I'll talk about whoever I like, Lyra. You're not in a position to set terms right now." He stands, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from his jacket, unhurried in a way that makes my skin crawl worse than if he'd shouted. "I left your Alpha chasing an empty promise. He'll spend the next several hours chasing a trail that leads nowhere useful, while you and I have time to discuss what happens next."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"You already have." He moves toward the door, pausing just before he reaches it, looking back at me with an expression I recognize even now, even after everything, because I spent months learning to read exactly how dangerous his calm could be. "I'd rest, if I were you. We have a long evening ahead of us, and I find exhausted guests make for such tiresome company."

He leaves the door unlocked behind him. I notice that immediately, and I understand, with a cold certainty settling into my chest, that he's not worried about me running.

He already knows I can't outrun whatever he did to me.

I count to sixty before I move, listening for footsteps that don't come.

The door opens without resistance, just like he said it would. I ease it wider, just enough to catch voices drifting from a room down the hall, Ashford's among them, low and unhurried.

"We move her before moonrise," he's saying. "I don't want her within reach of anyone from that pack a moment longer than necessary."

A second voice, lower, less certain. "And the Alpha?"

"She was promised to me, not to some Alpha who got in the way of a transaction he didn't understand. The mark makes sure nothing changes that. Whoever binds himself to her without my blessing doesn't get to keep the privilege for long."

My whole body goes cold.

"How long," the second voice asks, "before it..."

"That depends on him. On how hard his body fights it. Days, perhaps. A week if he's stubborn." Ashford's tone doesn't change at all, like he's discussing weather instead of a man's life. "Either way, the outcome doesn't change. She's mine. The curse simply reminds everyone else of that."

I stop breathing.

Kael is dying somewhere I can't reach him, all because of a bond he thought would save us both.