Eighteen: Lucian

I keep my grip tight, waiting for her to make the first mistake. There’s always one last play for dominance, a final snap at the hand that holds you down. But she just lies there, every muscle tensed like she might detonate, her breath hot against my wrist and her eyes—Christ, those eyes—burning up at me.

The heat of her skin seeps into my palms, banishing the winter chill. She shivers, but not from cold. It’s the aftermath, the backlash from a shift that should have killed her and didn’t. I adjust my hold, sliding from the familiar grip of fur to the not-so-familiar bite of naked shoulder beneath my fingers. The change is electric. Her skin is rough from the transformation, slick with sweat and blood, the outline of her shoulder blades sharp against my hands.

She blinks, lashes clumped with melting frost, and for a moment I see the confusion in her face—who am I, why am I here, what the fuck happened to my body? I know the look because I’ve seen it in the mirror, long ago, the first time I shifted back and realized that survival wasn’t victory. It was just a different kind of hell.

Her lips are torn, the blood already crusting. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but the words get stuck behind a throatful of pain. Instead, she just breathes, ragged and raw, never taking her eyes off me. Amber, I think. No, not quite—more gold, but there’s a shadow in it, something waiting to see if I’ll finish the job or let her up.

It hits me like a punch to the gut.

I know what’s coming—every wolf is told about it, warned and threatened and promised it’s only legend—but nothing prepares you for the real thing. The world tilts. My heart detonates in my chest, a triple-beat that echoes in my jaw and skull and down to my fingertips. At the same instant, I feel her pulse rise to meet mine, the tempo matching, a perfect lock.

Our eyes lock. I try to look away, to break the circuit, but I can’t. The air between us is alive, charged, every molecule humming with the promise of violence or something worse. I smell her now—beneath the blood and terror, a flood of wild honey and sap, smoke and citrus, nothing like I remember from the first hunt but so much more. It hits the back of my throat, shoves every other sense to the edge.

She smells me too, I can tell. The nostrils flare, the pupils blow wide, and for a split second I think she might lunge again. Instead, she trembles—really trembles, not the aftershock of pain but something else. Something I’ve only ever seen in the oldest wolves, the ones who remember the time before we policed our own instincts.

The bond. The fucking bond.

My body goes rigid. The skin along my spine goes hot-cold-hot, like a fever spike. My hands curl tighter on her shoulders, and she gasps, as if I’ve shocked her with a live wire. She’s so close now, I can see the way her pulse flutters at the neck, the way her whole body arches toward mine without ever moving an inch.

The pack senses it, all at once.

Jace drops his weapon, eyes gone round as if he’s witnessing a miracle and a murder at the same time. Tessa steps forward, mouth opening to say something, but the words die in her throat. The rest keep their distance, but the line of their bodies tells me everything—shoulders up, spines straight, the subtle tilt of the head that says: Are we seeing this? Is this allowed?

It isn’t. But the law can’t do shit about what’s happening right now.

Wren’s breath hitches. The sound is human, but the rest of her is pure animal. I feel the heat radiate from her chest, and when I loosen my grip—just a fraction, just to see—she pushes up against my hand, almost nuzzling, almost begging. Her lips part, and this time there’s a sound: not a whimper, not a plea, but something in between, soft and hollow and so fucking alive it hurts to listen.

My own voice comes out wrong, too low and rough. “Easy,” I say, and the sound vibrates in her bones. I can feel it—no, I can hear it, the way the resonance travels from me into her, and the way she answers without words.

The mate bond is a curse. It’s a joke played by the moon on wolves who think they can control anything. I knew it was real, somewhere deep in the hindbrain, but I’d never expected to feel it with someone like this—with a stray, with a newling, with a girl who still smells of human fear and bar soap and the city she came from.

She doesn’t know what’s happening, not fully. But the body always knows. Her fingers twitch against the snow, reaching, needing. I let go of her shoulder, just to see, and immediately her hand finds my wrist, nails digging in, desperate for purchase or comfort or both. It’s embarrassing, but it’s the rule. The wolf never lies.

I sense the others trying to back off, to give space, but they’re locked in place by the same force that holds me here. The clearing is thick with it—the air, the snow, the very trees seem to lean in, trying to witness the impossible. I close my eyes, just for a second, to see if the world will right itself, but all I get is a brighter, hotter rush of her scent and a new, ugly need clawing its way up my chest.

She gasps again, and this time it’s louder. She’s still trembling, still naked and blood-spattered and small under my hands, but the bond is changing her, minute by minute. I see the flush rise on her neck, the way her eyes fight to stay open, the way she surrenders to the connection because it’s better than pain, better than nothing.

I want to tell her to fight it. I want to warn her what comes next, but I can’t. I’m too busy fighting it myself.

For a moment, there is only us. The pack fades. The cold disappears. The moon and the stars and the rules of the world stop mattering.

I bend closer, not sure what I’m going to do until I do it. My lips graze her ear, and she shudders, every nerve lit up.

“Wren,” I whisper, because that’s the only truth left.

She turns her head, her cheek pressed to the snow, and looks at me. Really looks, like she’s seeing me for the first time.

And I see myself in her eyes, reflected back: not Alpha, not judge, not even a monster.

Just a wolf, and just a man, and something in between.

The mate bond is the end of choice. It’s the beginning of everything else.

And there’s no going back.