The words hit me like a physical blow.Three years old.Watching his father transform into a monster and tear his mother apart.Hiding in a closet for three days until someone came.The scent of blood and death burned into his memory before he was old enough to understand what death meant.
He had told me some of this before.But hearing it again, in the cold morning light, the full horror of it sank into my bones.This was not a metaphor.Not a fear of becoming cruel or controlling or any of the human ways men hurt women.
He was afraid of literally ripping me apart.
“I’m terrified of becoming him.”His voice cracked on the words.“Every time I feel the shift coming, every time I lose control, I see her face.I cannot risk it.I cannot risk you.”
I did not tell him he would not be like his father.I did not know if that was true, and false comfort would be worse than none.Instead, I pressed closer, wrapping my arm around him, holding on.I let my body say what words could not.
“Okay,” I said simply.
“Okay?”
“You are not ready.That is okay.”I kissed his chest, right above his heart, tasting salt and skin and the faint musk of the wolf beneath.“I am not going anywhere.”
His arms came around me, crushing me against him so tightly I could barely breathe.A shudder moved through him.Not quite tears.Not quite relief.Vulnerability he would never have shown me a week ago.
We lay there as the morning light crept higher across the cabin walls, and I let the question settle between us.Unanswered but not demanding.A door I had opened that he could walk through when he was ready.
If he was ever ready.
The drive back to Paradise Peaks was quiet in a way that felt different from before.Not hostile silence.Not the charged tension of two people pretending they did not want to tear each other’s clothes off.Just quiet.Comfortable.The kind of silence that did not need to be filled.
I kept my hand on his thigh as he drove, a casual intimacy that would have been impossible a week ago.His fingers occasionally left the steering wheel to cover mine, a brief squeeze of acknowledgment, before returning to the road.Each touch sent warmth spreading through my chest.
“So we are mated,” I said, testing the word out loud.It felt strange in my mouth.Foreign.“Even without the bite.”
“The bond started forming the first time we were together.During the contract.”He glanced at me, his eyes briefly leaving the winding mountain road.“It has been growing ever since.That is why you feel drawn to me.Why you can sense my moods sometimes.”
I thought about that.The way I always knew when he walked into a room, even before I saw him.The strange awareness of his presence that had nothing to do with sight or sound.The pull I felt toward him that I had blamed on chemistry, attraction, the dangerous appeal of a man I should hate.
“I thought that was just…” I trailed off, not sure how to finish.
“Chemistry?”He smiled, and it softened his whole face in a way that still surprised me.“It is chemistry.Just not the human kind.”
I looked out the window at the mountains scrolling past, the pines thick on either side of the winding road.The sky was clear blue, the kind of perfect early summer day that brought tourists flocking to Paradise Peaks.A world I thought I knew, hiding things I never imagined.
“What happens now?With the investigation?”
His expression hardened.The ease between us shifted into frustration.“Dead ends.Every lead turns into nothing.The scent from the crime scene is familiar, but I cannot place it.It is like trying to find a single voice in a crowd where everyone keeps talking over each other.”
“You will find them.”I squeezed his thigh.“Whoever killed Stephanie.You will find them.”
“I will not stop until I do.”
I believed him.Whatever else Raphael Antonov was, he was relentless.The person who had killed Stephanie, who had been terrorizing my hotel, had no idea what was hunting them.No idea what would happen when the wolf finally caught their scent.
The hotel was busy when I arrived that afternoon.Summer season in full swing, guests filling the lobby with their luggage and their laughter, the hum of activity that meant the Hughes Palace Hotel was recovering from the string of disasters that had nearly destroyed us.The fountain sparkled in the sunlight, no trace of the blood that had stained it weeks ago.
I settled into my office and tried to focus on the Midsummer Gala preparations.Catering confirmations.Vendor contracts.The endless details that went into making a signature event look effortless.The stack of papers on my desk multiplied every time I looked away.
But first, I had something to follow up on.
I found Gerald in the restaurant kitchen, elbow-deep in a broken ice machine.He looked up when I approached, gray beard flecked with condensation, and wiped his hands on a rag.
“Ms.Hughes.Everything okay?”
“Just a quick question.”I kept my voice casual.“I was reviewing security logs and noticed some late-night access on your keycard.A few weeks back.Loading dock entries around two, three in the morning.”