Chapter 6 — On the Edge of Instinct

The drive to the Rurik Motors headquarters was made in absolute silence. The city pulsed outside, indifferent to the storm swirling inside him.

Dmitry kept one hand firmly on the wheel and the other supporting his chin, his eyes fixed on the road, but his mind far away. He needed to focus. He had meetings with investors, adjustments to expansion projects, business decisions that could affect the clan for years.

But none of it seemed to matter.

Nothing.

A single name echoed in his chest.

“Susan.”

His Lycan stirred beneath his skin, restless, hungry. His sharpened senses detected her approach even before his rational mind could process it.

“She is close.”

Dmitry closed his eyes for a moment, pressing his fingers against his temples. He needed to maintain control. He needed to be cold. Objective. Lucid.

But she disarmed him without even knowing it.

As soon as he entered the building, he greeted the employees with only short nods, not stopping. He went straight up to the top floor, to the temporary refuge his office represented. He immersed himself in contracts, tried to ignore the soft scent that was beginning to permeate the air. Flowers and honey. Sweet. Unmistakable.

Her.

The phone rang.

“Mr. Rurik…” The secretary’s voice sounded firm, but there was something hesitant there. Barely contained curiosity. “Susan Grigorieva asked me to let you know she sent the drafts with the campaign ideas.”

Silence.

He didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at the computer screen, where her email was already open. Neatly aligned words. Objective. Professional. But his eyes no longer saw text. He saw her name.

Susan.

“Call her.”

The beast’s voice whispered inside him with cruel clarity, almost as if it were standing on the other side of the room. Dmitry felt the impact of her name spreading through his body like lightning, heating his insides and awakening memories of the sleepless night and the body he had tried in vain to forget.

“Send her to me,” he ordered, his voice low, hoarse, loaded with something he no longer even tried to contain.

He waited.

His eyes fixed on the door, as if she could walk through it at any moment. When the phone rang again, he didn’t give her a chance to speak.

“Send her in.”

He said before the secretary could even breathe, his voice heavy, opaque, non-negotiable.

The knock came minutes later. Soft. Almost shy.

His body stiffened in a betraying reflex. The beast inside him fell silent for a moment, in anticipation.

“Come in,” he said, restrained, although the tension vibrated in every syllable.

The doorknob turned.

And then she appeared.

Susan.

Like a spell taking shape before his eyes, she appeared at the threshold of the door with a presence that was both sweet and devastating. Her red hair framed her face like fire. Her vivid green eyes met his with disconcerting naturalness.

The light blouse outlined her breasts with a boldness that seemed innocent. The pencil skirt molded her curves like a secret he shouldn’t know. And yet, he knew. Her body seemed designed to provoke cracks in his control.

Dmitry forgot how to breathe.

“Touch her.”

The voice came again. Low. Demanding.

“Feel her. Mark her. Claim her.”

“Good morning, Mr. Rurik,” she said, her voice polite and gentle. As if she carried nothing. As if she had no idea of the chaos she planted just by existing.

“Good morning, Grigorieva,” he replied. His voice sounded deeper than he expected. Almost hoarse.

She approached with firm steps and a confident posture. She opened the sketchbook on the table, and Dmitry followed the movement of her fingers with insane attention, as if those hands could disarm an entire empire. Or him.

“I brought the concepts for the campaign. If there’s anything you didn’t like… Some ideas require emotional context,” she said, flipping through the notebook.

“Emotional.”

The word stirred something inside him. Because nothing about her seemed to be just concept. There was an organic naturalness in her gestures, an unconscious sensuality that seeped under his skin like slow poison.

She turned another page, explaining something about sensory impact, connection with the client, freedom… Dmitry heard, but he wasn’t listening. Every phrase seemed like an involuntary metaphor for what she awakened in him.

And then, like a divine accident, her fingers brushed against his.

For a second. A banal touch. Almost imperceptible. But for him, it was the equivalent of being struck by lightning.

“She touched us.”

The beast moved beneath his skin. Dmitry’s muscles tensed. His eyes darkened for a moment, his heart racing in an irregular rhythm. A muffled growl threatened to escape his throat, but he held it back. He forced control back, holding his breath for a few seconds.

She continued speaking, oblivious to the tension she left in the wake of her own movements.

“Here, this image suggests that driving a Rurik isn’t just about speed… It’s about belonging. About finding a place where you can be yourself.”

The irony of it almost made him laugh. Because, without knowing it, she had described exactly what he felt when he looked at her.

Belonging.

Being himself.

Dangerous words for a monster like him.

She was human. Ordinary, perhaps even naive about her own power. And yet, there he was — an Alpha of an ancient clan — on the verge of crumbling at the touch of her fingers.

And this weakness… terrified him.

Dmitry felt his senses heightened.

He could hear her pulse. Accelerated, subtle, unsteady, as if something inside her had also awakened. Susan’s breathing changed, almost imperceptibly. A contained sigh. An involuntary invitation.

The aroma that radiated from her skin, a soft mixture of flower and warmth, invaded his lungs like slow poison. Dmitry felt the raw, almost insane urge to pull her against him, to mark the outline of her body with his own hands.

Her skin seemed to call to him. As if the touch was inevitable. As if destiny was right there, in the palm of the hand he still didn’t dare to move.

But he didn’t. He managed to restrain himself.

The silence between them stretched. Susan, sensing the change in the air, frowned and looked at him with caution.

“Mr. Rurik?” Her voice came out low, hesitant, almost as if she feared the intensity she saw in his eyes.

“Tell her. Tell her she is ours.”

The Lycan’s voice sounded in his mind like a muffled roar, reverberating in his bones.

Dmitry pulled back abruptly, as if her touch had become live coal. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers clenching against the arms of the seat.

“Continue,” his voice came out harsher than he intended.

Susan blinked, surprised and confused by the reaction. But something inside her stopped her from retreating. She simply took a deep breath and went back to explaining the sketches they had started together.

He watched her from the corner of his eye, pretending to pay attention to the paper, but fighting against the Lycan that howled inside him. His eyes kept returning to the curve of her mouth, to the way her hair moved when she turned her head, to the heat that spread through the room just by her presence.

Everything about her was a call.

And now he knew he could no longer run from it.