Chapter 07 (Part 02)

I lock myself in the bedroom and immediately head for the sink.

My hands are shaking too hard to control the faucet, so I slam it on and shove both wrists under the freezing water. The shock slices through me like a blade, cutting through the fever heat that’s been building under my skin. I welcome it, desperate for anything that might ground me back in reality.

My skin flushes pink under the icy stream. My eyes burn with unshed tears.

*Cold. Stay cold. Stay here. Stay you.*

I count, forcing my breathing to slow, trying to match it to the rhythm of the water hitting the porcelain.

Ten seconds.

Twenty.

Forty-five.

The buzzing in my blood doesn’t fade.

If anything, it’s getting stronger, like my attempts to fight it are only feeding whatever’s waking up inside me.

I shut the water off with more force than necessary, press my soaked hands to my cheeks, and stare at my reflection in the cracked hand mirror on the nightstand.

I don’t look like myself.

My face is flushed, skin glowing with an inner heat that has nothing to do with fever. My pupils are wide and dark, surrounded by irises that seem brighter than usual, almost luminous in the dim light. There’s a tension in my mouth I don’t recognize—tight and twitching, like something’s trying to get out.

Like fangs wanting to drop.

The thought comes from nowhere and everywhere at once, and I nearly stumble backward from the mirror.

“Stop,” I whisper to my reflection.

But it doesn’t.

Because there’s something inside me now. A thread. I can feel it.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

It’s tight and sharp and invisible—but it’s there, as real as the blood in my veins.

Running from somewhere under my ribs, pulling toward something in the woods. Toward him.

I know exactly which direction it’s pulling me, can sense his location like a compass needle finding magnetic north. The knowledge should terrify me, but instead, it makes something deep in my chest purr with satisfaction.

I pull my hoodie over my head and throw it across the room like that will help, like removing the fabric will somehow break the connection I can feel forming between us. I pace the floor barefoot, jaw clenched, lungs fighting the air that suddenly feels too thin.

The floorboards creak under my restless movement, each sound sharp in the oppressive silence. I can hear every settling noise the old house makes, every whisper of wind through the eaves. My senses feel heightened, hyperaware, like someone has turned up the volume on the world around me.

I try to tell myself it’s trauma. That it’s just some kind of fight-or-flight response. My brain latching onto the first threat it’s seen in days and giving it meaning it doesn’t have.

But it’s not that.

It’s not fear.

Not exactly.

It’s want.

Not even sexual—not yet. Not really.

It’s something more primal than that. Something carved into bone and old as blood. Something that predates language and logic and every rational thought I’ve ever had.

It says: *go to him.*

It says: *find him.*

It says: *his.*

The possessive pronoun sends a shock through me that’s equal parts horror and longing. I slam my fist into the wall just to stop it, to break the chain of thoughts before they can drag me under completely.

The wood groans under the impact. My knuckles throb with sharp, clean pain that cuts through the fog in my head for just a moment.

But the thread pulls tighter.

I can feel him out there, somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees. I can sense his restlessness, his own struggle against whatever’s happening between us. The knowledge that he’s fighting it too should be comforting, but instead, it just makes the pull stronger, like the bond is trying to overcome our resistance through sheer force.

I curl into myself, sitting on the floor in the cold patch near the window, knees pulled to my chest, breathing slow and sharp. The floorboards are icy against my bare feet, but the chill feels good against my overheated skin.

Through the window, I can see the edge of the woods, dark and forbidding under the cloudy sky. Somewhere out there, he’s probably fighting the same battle I am. The thought makes my chest tight with something that might be sympathy.

Or hunger.

I don’t want this.

But the bond doesn’t care what I want.

It only cares that he’s out there.

And that I’m not.

-----

POV Shift: Cassian

I run until the trees blur.

Until the wind tears through my lungs like ice water, sharp and clean and merciless.

Until my thoughts are drowned in the sound of my own breath and the drumbeat of footfalls over moss and mud, the rhythm hypnotic and mindless.

But nothing helps.

Not the speed. Not the pain. Not the cold slicing through my bare chest and arms like knives.

I still smell her.

It’s not even real. She’s not here, not physically present in these woods I’ve claimed as my territory for longer than most humans have been alive.

But her scent lives under my skin now—warm, electric, maddening. Sweet like honey but with an underlying sharpness that speaks of strength, of fire barely contained. It’s in the marrow of my bones, woven into my DNA like it was always meant to be there.

The wolf is closer to the surface than I’ve felt in years. He’s scraping at my ribs like he wants out, claws raking against the inside of my human skin. Not for war. Not for blood. Not for any of the usual reasons he stirs.

For her.

That’s worse.

I shouldn’t have gone into that café.

Shouldn’t have looked at her, shouldn’t have let myself see the way the afternoon light caught in her hair, shouldn’t have noticed the delicate line of her throat or the way her pulse jumped when our eyes met.

Shouldn’t have breathed her in like—

Like she was mine.

But the moment I stepped through that door, the moment her scent hit me, I knew. The recognition was instant and undeniable, like finding something I’d lost long ago and forgotten I was looking for.

I stagger to a stop near the base of the ridge and grab the nearest tree, a massive oak that’s stood here longer than the town has existed.

The bark digs into my palms, rough and grounding. My claws punch through my fingers before I can stop them, extending with sharp pricks of pain as bone shifts and reshapes.

I drop to my knees, panting like I’ve been running for hours instead of minutes. My head bows under the weight of what’s happening, what I can’t stop or control. The heat builds behind my eyes, pressure mounting like a storm front moving in. My spine arches, muscles twitching as they prepare for a transformation I’m not sure I can prevent.

*Don’t shift.*

The bond pulses like a heartbeat behind my navel, hot and insistent and completely beyond my control.

*Don’t shift.*

My jaw snaps as bone begins to move, cartilage popping and stretching. I can feel my teeth sharpening, canines extending as my mouth begins to reshape itself.

*Don’t—*

I lose it.

The pain rips through me like fire, like being turned inside out and rebuilt from the ground up.