Adrian
The word is a primal scream in my skull. A howl so loud it should shake the stones of this cave. It is not my voice. It belongs to the beast that paces the cage of my ribs, the feral thing that has kept me alive in this frozen hell.
Mate.
My hand drops from her arm. The skin of my palm tingles where it touched her, a phantom heat spreading up to my shoulder. My gaze is locked on the weeping, ugly brand on her skin. A mark of pack politics. Of betrayal. Of an Alpha using his power to break someone smaller than himself.
My wolf thrashes against my control. It wants to lunge forward. It wants to lick the wound clean. It wants to tear out the throat of the one who put it there. It wants to cover her with my body, my scent, and claim what the Moon Goddess has just dropped, broken and bleeding, at my feet.
I shove the instinct down with a violence born of old agony.
I take a step back. Then another. My bare feet are silent on the cold stone. I put distance between us. I need distance. The scent of her, woodsmoke and winter and a deep, soul aching sorrow, is wrapping around me, sinking into me. It’s a poison I thought I was immune to.
“You can stay,” I hear myself say, the words like gravel in my throat. “Until the blizzard breaks.”
The lie tastes like ash. I am not letting her stay because of the storm. I am letting her stay because my wolf would tear me apart from the inside out if I tried to force her back into the wind’s teeth.
I turn my back on her. A fatal mistake. It leaves me vulnerable, but facing her is worse. I stalk to the far side of the cave, the part I carved out for myself, and sink onto a bed of furs. My heart is a war drum against my sternum. My hands clench into fists, the knuckles white.
I swore an oath to myself years ago. Over the smoking ruins of my home. Over the cooling bodies of my pack. My first mate. My pups. I swore I would never again be part of a pack. Never again bow to an Alpha or have others bow to me. And I swore I would never, ever take another mate. A mate is a weakness. A heart outside your own body, a target for your enemies to aim at.
I already learned that lesson. It was written in blood.
“Thank you,” she whispers from across the cave. The sound is small, fragile. It cuts through the fog of my rage and my memory like a shard of glass.
I don’t answer. I don’t turn. I stare into the fire, but I don’t see the flames. I see the red of hunter’s cloaks against the snow. I smell burning pine and blood. So much blood. I hear the triumphant shouts of men and the dying screams of my family. A betrayal that ran so deep it poisoned the very ground.
This girl, Tessa, she is a ghost. A reminder of everything I lost. Everything that was stolen from me by the machinations of power hungry Alphas. The Silvermoon pack. Kael, she called him. The son is just like the father, it seems. A snake who wears the skin of a wolf.
My wolf is quieter now, but it is not silent. It watches her through my eyes. She has pulled the fur I gave her tight around her shoulders, a small, shivering bundle near the fire. She hasn’t touched the flames. Hasn’t moved closer to hoard the warmth. An omega’s training. Deferential. Always putting the pack, the Alpha, first. Even when there is no pack left to serve.
Even when the Alpha is a monster who branded her.
The silence stretches, thick and heavy, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind outside. I should sleep. I should rest. But the beast inside me is on watch. It will not rest while she is here. It sees a threat in every shadow, but the true threat is the one she poses to the walls I have built around my heart.
Hours pass. The fire burns low. I watch as she eventually stirs. She moves slowly, every motion stiff with cold and pain. She thinks I am asleep. Her breathing is shallow, punctuated by a soft, hitching sound. She is crying. Silently. Trying not to make a sound that might disturb the beast whose den she has invaded.
She doesn’t huddle and weep. She crawls to the stack of firewood I keep near the entrance. Her hands, raw and red with cold, pick up a small log. She places it on the embers with a care that is almost reverent. She coaxes the flames, her gentle breath a substitute for a bellows. The fire springs back to life, pushing the oppressive shadows back to the cave walls.
She is not just a victim. She is not just a traitor. In the flickering firelight, with tears tracing paths through the grime on her face, I see what she really is.
A survivor.
Just like me.
The thought is unwelcome. It forges a link between us I do not want. I am the Ghost of the Wastes. A feral outcast. A killer. I am not like this soft, broken thing. My wolf growls in my head, a low rumble of disagreement. It sees her strength. It honors it.
I rise to my feet. The sudden movement makes her flinch violently, her head snapping up. Fear flashes in her eyes, wide and luminous in the firelight. She scrambles back, pressing herself against the rock wall, making herself smaller.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say, the words rough. It is a promise my wolf demands I make.
She just watches me, her breath held tight in her chest.
I walk past her to the back of the cave where I keep my supplies. I have a small store of dried meat and a waterskin. I also have a wooden bowl with a salve of crushed herbs and bear fat. For wounds. For burns.
I bring it back and set it on the ground near her, but not too near. I don’t want her to feel cornered.
“What is it?” she asks, her voice hoarse.
“For the brand,” I say, nudging the bowl forward with my foot. “It will stop the festering.”
Her eyes widen. She looks from the bowl to my face, a storm of confusion and disbelief in her gaze. She expected cruelty. Indifference. She did not expect this.
“Why?” The question is barely audible.
Why? Because the sight of that mark makes my wolf want to rage. Because it is an injustice that stinks of the same rot that destroyed my life. Because my instincts are screaming at me to care for her, to heal my mate’s wound. That last reason, I will take to my grave.
“An open wound invites infection,” I say, my tone flat and practical. “Infection brings fever. I don’t want you dying in my cave. It would be an inconvenience.”
The excuse is flimsy. We both know it. But it’s a shield. A way for me to do what my wolf demands without admitting the truth of what is happening inside me. It gives her a reason that makes sense in a world of cruelty.
She reaches out a trembling hand and pulls the bowl closer. “Thank you,” she says again. This time, her voice is a little stronger.
I grunt in response and retreat to my side of the cave. I sit with my back against the wall, a silent sentinel. I watch as she struggles to apply the salve to her own shoulder, her face tight with pain as she twists her arm at an awkward angle.
My fingers twitch. The urge to go to her, to take the bowl from her hands and tend to the wound myself is a physical force, a tide pulling me across the space between us. I fight it down. I chain the beast. Touching her would be a mistake. A first step down a path I swore I would never walk again.
So I watch. I watch her quiet resilience. I watch her tend to her own pain. I watch the omega who was cast out by her pack for a crime she didn’t commit.
The blizzard rages outside, a wall of white and fury. But it is nothing compared to the storm she has brought into the hollowed out wreck of my soul. She is a weakness I cannot afford. She is a complication I do not want. She is a reminder of a life that was burned to ash.
And she is my mate.
The storm will pass. That is a certainty. And when it does, she will leave. I will make her leave. It is the only way. The only way to protect what little is left of me. The only way to protect her from the ghosts that hunt me.
I have to believe that. Because the alternative is too terrifying to even consider.
