19

My pulse roared in my ears. Every sense sharpened until it hurt: the copper of fear in the air, the warmth of her body beneath my hands, the fragile thrum of life pulsing just under her skin. 

My fingers twitched, betraying me, tightening as if they already belonged to him. Sorvane leaned harder, trying to take the reins. For a heartbeat, I wasn’t sure where my will ended, and his began.

He wanted out.

He wanted her.

I could feel it in the way my muscles tensed on their own, in the shift of my weight forward, the tightening in my jaw that wasn’t entirely mine. My fingers flexed against her arms without me meaning to. 

She flinched slightly.

“She’s arcing for you,” he said, almost laughing. “Smell it,” and I inhaled without thinking. Too close... I wanted it in my mouth. On my skin. I wanted...

No!

I tried to let her go, but he pushed harder and my grip tightened again. I could feel her pulse beneath my palm, and still I did not let go. 

“Let me through,” he hissed. “I’ll take care of her.”

The words scraped through my skull, and my vision pulsed red again, the pressure behind my eyes swelling, my hands tightening without my consent.

Then something else answered.

It began deep, so deep it barely made a sound. A growl that wasn’t heard so much as felt, rolling upward from somewhere beneath my ribs, slow and heavy, vibrating through muscle and marrow. 

It moved through me on a different rhythm, older, steadier. There was no sudden impact, no violent clash... only an undeniable awareness spreading up my spine, vertebra by vertebra, claiming space Sorvane had never truly owned.

The air in my lungs shifted. My chest expanded with a dense and controlled breath, as if something massive had settled behind it.

"do not touch her. She’s mine." The voice emerged low and rough, dragged up from underneath the red haze like stone grinding against stone. It did not shout. It did not need to. It simply was.

The red fractured.

Sorvane recoiled, his presence thinning, folding back on itself, smothered by something heavier, darker, absolute.

My grip loosened before I even realized I’d decided to let go.

I released the girl instantly, stepping back as the weight inside my body settled, dominant and final, leaving no room for the demon to return.

“Take her to my car,” I said to the guard behind me, my voice more gravel than command, and I did not turn to look at her again.

Not because I did not want to, but because I wasn’t sure which part of me would be staring back.

As I stepped away, I felt Sorvane shrink back into the far corners of my mind. But in his place, something stirred... something I hadn’t felt in three hundred years.

Ragnar, my wolf.

His presence came deeper than anything Sorvane had ever managed. He’d been buried deep for three hundred years, and when he surfaced, all he said was: "Mate!"

**

My car reached the castle first, gliding through the gates as the guards stepped aside, and when I stepped out, the cold air did little to settle the heat still pulsing under my skin. 

I crossed the main hall alone and silence, and stood at the center, waiting, unmoving, until the heavy double doors groaned open behind me.

She was the first thing I saw.

Melany walked in with her chin lifted, her wrists bound in front of her, the coarse rope cutting into her skin, but it wasn’t the restraint that spoke loudest... it was the guard’s hand clamped hard around her arm, and the bruising grip that told me she hadn’t made the journey quietly. 

She hadn’t submitted. Not once. 

She did not look at me. Her eyes flicked sharply across the room, slow and deliberate, drinking in every detail of the hall with open contempt. The chandeliers, the tapestries, the polished stone beneath her feet. Melany took it all in with the expression of someone already imagining it in flames.

Romeo descended the stairs just as her gaze reached the throne. “North wing,” he said, leaving no room for questions.

My jaw tensed.

That wing was where the others were kept: Women I fucked, and women who died for it. 

“No,” I said quietly. “Put her in the guest chamber.”

The guard hesitated for a second, maybe expecting Romeo to override me, but then obeyed, leading her toward the east corridor. 

Romeo paused on the steps, eyes narrowing as his brows furrowed. “I did not smell wolf on her,” he said flatly.

“She isn’t one,” I answered. “She’s human.”

His gaze sharpened. “Then why put her in the guest wing?”

“Sorvane recognized her.”

That made him falter. Only slightly, but it was enough, a breath caught in his throat, a blink that came too slow. “Oh,” he muttered, stepping back instinctively.

I did not give him more. I did not say the word lingering like ash on my tongue. Telling my Beta that the creature Sorvane had marked was also the one Ragnar had claimed would be too close to admitting something I couldn’t allow. Because saying it out loud would make it real, and calling her mate would be the same as writing her death sentence.

If I claimed her, she would die. And if I did not... she would never be mine.

That thought alone made Ragnar snarl beneath my skin.

Pow!

A crash echoed from upstairs, furniture or fists, I couldn’t tell, and then her voice rang out, furious: “Get away from me!”

Neither Romeo nor I moved. But I felt the ripple in my chest as Ragnar stirred, pleased. Every time she resisted, every time she defied with fire instead of fear, he responded with something approving. 

He liked how she did not bend.

“She might quiet the beast,” Romeo said eventually, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “Or at least keep him fed longer.”

“Or maybe she’ll survive,” my voice low.

He laughed under his breath, bitter and disbelieving. “A human won’t survive the two of you, Ravok.” Then he turned and left the hall.