Chapter Five

I can’t look up. The hands on my shoulders are still holding me in place, but I know that voice. The man from the diner.

“Alpha, the sentence has already been read,” the old man says. There’s a wobble in his tone now.

My blood runs cold at the title. Alpha. If anything I’ve read from all those paranormal romance novels is true, then this man is far more dangerous than I gave him credit for.

“Release her,” Diner Man says. His steps sound closer.

The hands holding me down let go immediately. Not before I feel the tremble in them.

They’re scared of him.

I was wrong about the old man being the leader.

I sit back on my heels, eyes locked on the blade that almost ended my life, my body trembling uncontrollably. It isn’t until Diner Man steps fully into my line of sight that I finally look up at him.

He looks exactly the same as he did in the diner. Same hard mouth. Same cold eyes. Same expression, like my existence is an inconvenience he never asked for.

His gaze drops to my neck, then flicks away, back to the old man. “She is mine,” he says. “She survived me.”

The old man studies him for a long moment. The silence stretches. Calculating. “Survival does not erase violation,” he says finally. “It delays it.”

The old man’s mouth thins. “You would take a contamination into your den.”

“I would finish what I started.”

Another pause. He glances at the blade. Then the post. Then the chains still locked around my ankles.

“And if she fails you?” the old man asks. “If your heat breaks her like it broke the last?”

The Alpha’s jaw tightens once. Just once.

“Then the sentence is carried out,” he says. “By me.”

He glances over my shoulder at the three men who brought me here. He doesn’t speak. He just looks at them. Then down at the chains. Then back up at them.

I look up at the Alpha again, but he isn’t looking at me. His gaze is on the crowd, like he’s waiting to be challenged.

No one does.

The crowd stares at the ground. At their hands. At the sky. Anywhere but directly at the man standing in front of them.

This isn’t a rescue. It’s a trade.

What they were going to do to me here has been replaced by whatever he plans to do to me next.

And somehow, that feels worse.

I feel movement behind me, then the release of the chains around my ankles. I look up at Shoe-thrower as he pulls them away and notice that he refuses to meet my gaze.

Jesus. Every one of them is terrified of this man.

I start to look back at the Alpha when a murmur ripples through the crowd. My breath catches when I see him shifting.

Instinct hits first. I try to scramble backward, to get away from whatever is about to happen, but Dresser-man and Bathroom-man block my path without looking at me.

Within seconds, the massive black wolf stands in front of me again.

Knowing there’s a man inside it doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

He bares his canines and I brace myself, certain they’re going for my throat.

They don’t.

He lunges and clamps down on my forearm instead, teeth sinking deep.

I bite down on my tongue like that will stop me from screaming. It doesn’t.

He pulls back a second later.

Then he shifts.

He doesn’t seem bothered by the crowd witnessing his nudity as he turns back to the old man, licking the blood from his lips before he speaks.

“Anyone who touches my belonging will deal directly with me.”

He turns and walks off the platform.

After a few steps, he stops and glances over his shoulder at me.

“Come.”

I hesitate. Just long enough for the Alpha’s eyes to narrow.

He starts to turn back toward me, but I scramble to my feet before he can, nearly pitching forward on my unsteady legs as I hurry off the platform.

I keep my eyes on him as we walk, deliberately avoiding looking down. The fact that he’s so comfortable strolling around naked means he either does it far too often or he doesn’t care at all. Possibly both.

I wait for him to say something. Anything.

He doesn’t.

We walk through the town in silence.

It isn’t like any town I’ve ever seen. It feels caught between centuries, old and new at the same time. There are no porch lights, no warm windows glowing in the dark, but people scroll on their phones as they pass. Cars idle along the road, sleek and expensive, worth more than my house.

We don’t make it far before my arm starts to throb in earnest.

At first it’s just pain. Sharp, insistent, radiating out from where his teeth broke skin. Then it deepens, sinking into my muscles, my bones, like something heavier than pain settling in. Heat follows. Not the consuming inferno from before, but an echo of it. A reminder. My fingers curl uselessly as the sensation creeps up my forearm, making my hands shake.

I try to hide it. I fail.

My steps falter. Just a little. Enough.

His pace doesn’t change, but I feel it when his attention shifts. Not looking. Not touching. Just aware.

People move out of our way as we pass. Not hurried. Not panicked. Deliberate. Heads bow. Gazes slide away. Conversations die mid-sentence. I feel them clock the blood on my arm, the mark of his bite, the way I’m keeping too close to his side without being held there.

We pass a woman standing outside a stone house, phone glowing in her hand. She looks up, sees me, then looks at him. Whatever she sees there makes her go pale. She lowers her eyes at once, stepping back until her shoulder hits the wall.

I’ve never been looked through before. Not like this. Like I’m already accounted for. Filed away. Finished.

My arm pulses again and I hiss before I can stop myself.

That’s when he finally speaks.

“Keep up.”

Two words. Flat. Impatient.

“I’m trying,” I mutter, breath coming too fast now. The ground feels uneven. My knees still don’t want to cooperate.

He slows then. Not much. Just enough that I don’t have to run to stay beside him.

“That bite will hurt,” he says, as if he’s commenting on the weather. “You’ll feel weak for a while.”

A while sounds like forever in my head.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I say. My voice is thinner than I want it to be. “You already told them I was yours.”

“I did,” he agrees.

Then, after a beat, “That wasn’t for them.”

My skin prickles.

I risk a glance up at his face. He isn’t looking at me. His attention is forward, fixed on the path ahead, jaw set like this is all already decided.

“For the record,” I say, because apparently, I’m incapable of shutting up, “being traded like livestock is not my idea of a rescue.”

That finally gets a reaction.

He looks down at me then. Cold eyes, assessing, unreadable.

“I didn’t rescue you,” he says. “I claimed you.”

The words land heavy and final.

“And if you couldn’t walk away from that platform on your own,” he adds, turning his gaze forward again, “you wouldn’t be walking at all.”

He keeps moving.

I follow, because I don’t have a choice.

And because somewhere beneath the pain, the fear, and the very real understanding that my life just stopped being my own, something in my blood stirs.

I look up. Not a power line in sight. No hum of generators.

“Where are the lights? The electricity?” I finally ask, risking a glance up at the Alpha.

“The fires provide light and heat,” he says simply, like that answers my question.

It doesn’t. Not really.

“What about showering? How do you heat the water?”

He sighs, like my questions are an inconvenience. “Fire, Greer.”

I stop walking, glaring up at him. “I never told you my name.”

“Your boss speaks loudly,” he says, looking down at me like I’m bothersome.

“How did Gandalf the executioner know my name?”

His mouth quirks once in what might be amusement, then smooths away so quickly I wonder if I imagined it.

“I told him.”

“You…” I trail off as the pieces click into place. “You told them about me. Where to find me.”

“Yes.”

Just that. No explanation. Nothing.

“Why?”

“You were a stray,” he says. “Once my scent awakened you, you became a problem.”

“Then why did you wait so long to stop them?” I ask. “A few seconds later and the only thing coming off that platform would’ve been my head.”

I try for humor. Instead, the image lands fully, and the fact that I almost died finally catches up to me. My stomach lurches. The throbbing in my arm fades into the background.

“I hadn’t decided if I wanted to yet,” he says with a careless shrug, turning down a dirt path to our left.

I hesitate with my next question. Partly because I’m afraid of the answer, and partly because the lightheadedness is starting to catch up to me. My pulse feels thin. Distant.

“Why did you save me?”

“You endured seven years of repressed heat in one night,” he says. “That means there’s a chance you’ll survive my heat.”

I stop walking. The sudden stillness makes my vision swim.

“Are you saying you saved me because you enjoy fucking me?”

“Yes.”

The word lands heavier than the blade ever did.

Something gives way in me then. Not emotionally. Physically.

The world tilts hard to the left. My knees buckle before I can catch myself, and suddenly the dirt path is rushing up too fast. I barely feel the impact when I hit it, my shoulder slamming down, my arm screaming as fresh blood slicks my skin.

I gasp, but the breath doesn’t go all the way in.

Heat pulses at the bite mark, sharp and insistent, and my vision tunnels at the edges. The pain is distant now. Everything is distant.

“Greer.”

He says my name like an irritation, not a concern.

Strong hands close around my arm, fingers pressing into the wound hard enough to make me cry out. I feel him assessing, calculating, not panicking.

“Get up,” he says.

“I can’t,” I admit, hating the weakness in my voice.

There’s a pause.

Then he exhales through his nose, sharp and impatient, and suddenly I’m being lifted off the ground, my feet dangling uselessly as he hoists me against his chest like I weigh nothing at all.

“This,” he says quietly, starting down the path again without slowing, “is why you’re not allowed to fall apart yet.”

The ground disappears beneath me.

The world narrows to the heat of his body, the pain in my arm, and the sickening realization that surviving him was never the end of my sentence.

It was the beginning.