“Our pup needs their father’s scent. Deal with it.” The words came out rougher than intended, gravel over broken glass. Months of screaming into pillows had left my voice permanently damaged.
Down to boxer briefs, I surveyed my options. The couch was a joke, built for aesthetic appeal rather than actual use. Maybe six feet long if I was generous, when I stood six-four barefoot. The cushions looked soft enough to swallow a grown man whole. But it was in the same room as her, breathing the same air, existing in the same space. After months of empty beds and sleepless nights, I’d take it.
If I couldn’t have her, I would take proximity, I thought, studying the inadequate furniture that would be my bed.
I settled onto the cushions, trying to arrange my too-long legs resembling comfort. My feet hung off one end, shoulders pressed uncomfortably against the opposite arm. The couch groaned under my weight, protesting the abuse with creaks that sounded like judgment.
Rhea remained frozen in the window seat, watching me like I might attack. Like I was some rabid animal she needed to monitor for signs of aggression. Her hands had movedprotectively over her belly, an unconscious gesture that made something twist in my chest.
“I’m not going to touch you,” I said quietly, the words scraping my throat like glass shards. “Just sleep.”
It was manipulation and truth tangled together, impossible to separate. I could feel it through the broken bond, that bright spark of life recognizing its sire. The pull was different from the mate bond, cleaner somehow. Pure connection without the messy complications of emotion. My offspring knew me even if their mother wished I’d disappear.
She eventually moved to the bed, each step careful and deliberate. The mattress was king-sized, we’d shared one just like it for a night that felt like a lifetime ago. Now she pressed herself against the far edge, maintaining maximum distance while still technically being in the same room. The mattress dipped under her weight, expensive springs adjusting silently. She pulled the covers up to her chin like armor, as if Egyptian cotton could protect her from the wolf on her couch.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with unspoken words. The apologies I couldn’t form, how did you apologize for choosing politics over your mate? The explanations for why I’d brought her back went beyond the simple understanding of survival. All of it hung in the darkness like a physical presence, unspoken but deafening.
I tracked her breathing with the skill of a predator monitoring prey. Each inhale lasted four seconds. Hold for two. Exhale for four. The rhythm of someone forcing calm, using meditation techniques to manage anxiety. Her stubbornness kept her awakelonger than her exhaustion should have allowed, twenty minutes of forced breathing before it finally began to even out naturally.
My own exhaustion pulled at me with hooks and chains. When had I last managed more than two hours of consecutive sleep? The bond sickness made rest impossible, every time I closed my eyes, I felt her absence like a missing limb. But now she was here. Safe from rogues and winter cold. Contained where I could protect her. Mine. The possessive thought followed me into darkness before I could examine why it still mattered.
The nightmare started as it always did, Laziel’s laughter echoing through halls that smelled of home and blood. But tonight the familiar soundtrack came with new visuals, as if someone had switched the film reel mid-scene.
Instead of watching Rhea kill my brother, I saw myself entering her room. The perspective was wrong, too tall, shoulders too broad, hands too large. I moved with my own distinctive gait, that slight favor to the left knee from an old training injury.
The room was exactly as crime scene photos had shown, Rhea’s childhood sanctuary with its feminine touches and book-lined walls. But now I saw it through my own eyes, not crime scene photography. Laziel stood by her bed, one hand extended toward her sleeping form. The rage that erupted felt volcanic, white-hot and world-ending.
“Mine,” dream-me snarled, and the voice was definitely mine, not hers.
The dream-shift happened between one heartbeat and the next. No transition, no buildup, one moment I was standing in the doorway, the next I was on him. I watched my own claws extend,catching lamplight like silver knives. The transformation was partial, controlled, the mark of an experienced wolf who could shift single body parts at will.
Laziel turned at the sound, his face transforming from casual confidence to shock. “Brother?”
The word barely formed before I struck. Claws raked across his throat in a motion I’d practiced a thousand times in training. The spray pattern was exactly as the crime scene photos had shown, arterial spray in a wide arc, blood painting walls in a grotesque rainbow.
But this time I felt it. The wet heat of blood on my hands. The copper taste in the air. The satisfying give of flesh beneath razor-sharp claws. The perspective shifted like a camera changing angles, and suddenly I was choking him, hands around his throat, watching life fade from eyes I’d known since birth.
Those eyes, our mother’s eyes, looked at me with such betrayal. Such confusion. Baby brother who’d followed me around the compound, who’d tried so hard to match my achievements. Who’d never quite managed to be the heir Father wanted but had never stopped trying.
“Please,” he mouthed, no sound emerging from his ruined throat. But I squeezed harder. Until I felt his life leave his body.
I woke to Rhea’s terrified gasps.
Reality crashed back. I was in her bed, somehow having moved from the couch in my sleep. My hands were around her throat, not tight enough to truly hurt but firm enough to panic anyone jolted from sleep by an attacker. Her nails clawed at my wrists,leaving bloody crescents in my skin, her eyes wide with terror that cut deeper than any physical wound.
I released her instantly, horror flooding my system like ice water in my veins. She scrambled backward, coughing and gulping air, one hand at her throat while the other protected her belly. The bed shook with her retreat until her back hit the headboard with a soft thump.
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The words tumbled out as I reached for her, needing to check the damage, to fix what I’d broken.
She flinched back from my hands like they were weapons, which they were. Which they’d just proven themselves to be. Anybody looking from the outside would get a wrong impression of this scene. I was practically naked, overpowering her, in her bed.
Fuck! The nightmare was different this time. More lucid than ever before.
“You were choking me!” Her voice came out raw, damaged, each word an accusation that landed like a physical blow.
“It was a nightmare. I didn’t mean, Christ, did I hurt you?” I could see the marks on her throat in the moonlight, the perfect imprint of my fingers on her pale skin. Another wound to add to my collection. Another scar she’d carry because of me.
I forced myself to remain still, fighting every instinct that demanded I check her injuries. My hands, the same hands that had just tried to strangle her, clenched into fists at my sides. “Please. Let me see. I need to know you’re okay.”
