chapter 6
1619 Words
POV: Riven
The door seals behind me with a sound that feels final. Not a click. Not a latch. A seal—thick metal locking into place, shutting out the world. Trapping me with him.
The room is colder than I expect. The air carries the faint burn of old sage and something bitter—like crushed herbs and rusted iron. A haze of scent-masking smoke curls near the ceiling, clinging to the walls like breath held too long.
Dominance runes shimmer faintly above the doorframe. Stonecarved and old. Meant to cage instincts. I grit my teeth.
He stands across the room.
Kellen.
Still. Watching.
There’s no throne here. No weapons. Just him—Alpha calm, carved muscle, shirt stained dark from earlier blood.
Mine. His. I can’t even tell anymore.
He doesn’t speak at first.
He circles.
Not fast, not aggressive. But every movement is intentional. He’s not walking—he’s assessing. My posture. The twitch in my hands. The blood still drying on my collarbone. He circles like he’s waiting to see if I’ll bare my throat or bite.
I don’t give him either.
“You didn’t kneel.”
His voice isn’t accusing. It’s curious. But I don’t mistake curiosity for kindness.
“Was it pride… or something deeper?”
I match his stare. My voice comes rough. Low.
“I don’t kneel for men who kill the weak to prove they’re strong.”
Silence blooms.
Then his aura shifts—heavy and hot, like standing too close to a furnace right before it bursts. It doesn’t push yet, not fully. But it rises. Lurks beneath his skin.
Like something waiting to break loose.
I hold my ground, but my pulse spikes hard enough to drum behind my ribs.
My muscles tighten. My skin starts to crawl—not from fear. From the urge.
The urge to shift crashes through my skull like a second heartbeat. Bones itching to break. Spine twitching to contort. It’s not time. I’m not ready. But the beast inside me doesn’t care.
He steps closer.
No words. No warning.
Just heat. Pressure. Proximity like a blade against my restraint.
I can’t stop the flicker in my vision—silver licking at the edges. My fingers twitch. Nails sharpen, not fully, but enough to catch the cold air like blades half-drawn.
He watches every breath I take.
Every twitch, every shift of weight, every flicker behind my eyes. Like he’s reading a fault line—waiting to see where I crack first.
“You feel it, don’t you?” he murmurs. Voice lower now. Almost intimate.
“The wild thing in your bones clawing to be seen.”
My jaw clenches.
“I’m not yours to dissect,” I snap. “Or tame.”
His mouth curves—barely. Not a smile. A warning. Or maybe… approval.
“Good,” he says. “I don’t need tame. I need truth.”
His words hang between us like smoke—impossible to breathe without choking. But I don’t move. I don’t give ground. If I do, I’m not sure what part of me will surface.
My pulse roars in my throat. My spine locks.
The shift wants out.
It drums beneath my skin like it has teeth. Claws. A voice I don’t understand but recognize in my marrow. My muscles twitch again. Nails splitting. Silver smears the edges of my sight, my hands aching with half-formed claws that threaten to rupture the moment I blink.
He steps closer.
Not touching—but close enough that I feel the heat off his body. It wraps around me like pressure from the inside out. Every cell strains to stay human.
I’m going to lose control.
And he knows it.
He watches me like I’m a puzzle he wants to break open. His eyes don’t stray. They don’t soften. Every flicker in my stance, every breath, every tremor—I can see him counting it all.
Studying me.
Testing.
“You’re not suppressing it,” he says, low. “You’re white-knuckling it. Barely.”
“Shut up,” I breathe.
But I don’t back down.
“I’m not yours,” I spit, throat raw. “Not your weapon. Not your curiosity.”
Something shifts in him. Just slightly. A muscle in his jaw tightens. He doesn’t correct me. Doesn’t deny it either.
Instead, that strange heat flickers in his voice again.
“Good,” Kellen says. “I don’t need obedience. I need honesty.”
There’s something dangerous in that. Something that makes my gut twist harder than any threat he’s thrown at me.
Because honesty doesn’t feel safer than submission.
It feels like the edge of something worse.
“Tell me,” he says, “about your first shift.”
I stay silent.
His head tilts—barely—but the way he does it says he’s watching everything. Waiting for the crack.
“My mother screamed when hers came,” he goes on. “They said she chewed through a priest’s throat before her own bones stopped breaking.”
I blink once.
“Nothing?” he presses. “No memories? No name? No answers about what made you this?”
Still, I say nothing.
He takes a slow step forward. Close enough now that I can hear his breath. See the faint silver mark where my claws scraped his collar earlier.
“You don’t even ask what you are?” he says.
“I know what I am,” I growl.
He studies me—harder now. As if my words are bait and he’s debating whether to bite.
“You don’t know anything about the Cade line, do you?”
That one lands. I flinch—and hate that I do.
It’s tiny. Less than a breath. But he catches it.
The shift in his eyes is subtle, but it chills something inside me.
Not dominance.
Not interest.
Curiosity wrapped in calculation.
And something colder: recognition.
He knows.
Or he suspects.
“You’re not wrong to hide it,” he murmurs. “Cade blood’s not a secret—it’s a curse.”
He’s baiting me. I know he is. And I give him nothing.
But it’s already too late. He’s seen enough.
Before I can move, he lunges.
No warning.
No words.
Not to kill—but to test.
And I move too.
Fast. Instinct. Reflex. I twist under the blow, arm raised, claw half-formed and catching his wrist mid-strike. The scent of him slams into me. Sweat. Blood. Smoke. Control.
We don’t speak.
We clash.
---
We crash together like instincts set on fire.
His weight slams into mine, and I twist, knee rising, claws raking up toward his throat. He blocks with his forearm. We spin, collide, slide hard across the stone. He’s stronger. I’m faster. But we’re both holding back, and that’s what makes it worse.
This isn’t a fight to win.
It’s a fight to reveal.
Kellen pins my arm. I bite his shoulder. He snarls—not a sound of anger, but something lower. Something he’s not sure he wants to admit he likes. I twist again, bone grinding, and manage to s***h across his chest.
Shirt rips.
Blood wells.
Shallow, but real.
We both freeze.
I stare at the line of red spreading over his ribs. My own breath hiccups. Not from fear.
From shock.
I drew blood from an Alpha. And he let me.
His body stills. Not limp—coiled. Like he’s caught between hunger and restraint.
But he doesn’t strike.
Doesn’t raise a hand.
Just stands there. Bleeding. Watching me.
And the air shifts.
The tension doesn’t dissolve. It transforms. From predator-prey to something darker. Stranger. Magnetic.
The room gets smaller. Hotter.
Not from rage.
From recognition.
The space between us crackles.
And it’s not dominance that pulses in his next breath—it’s confusion. Fascination. A threat he doesn’t know how to categorize.
“You shouldn’t be able to resist me,” he says.
It’s not arrogance.
It’s truth. Something he’s believed so long it calcified in his spine.
I wipe blood from my knuckles. My chest still heaves. I don’t step back.
“Then maybe,” I rasp, “I’m not what you think I am.”
His eyes narrow. Not in fury.
In fear.
Real fear. Not of my claws. Not of my bite.
Of what it means if I don’t belong in the box he built for wolves like me.
He stares for one long breath.
“That’s what terrifies me.”
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move.
For a second, I think he might come at me again—not in anger, but in that quiet, focused way animals lunge when the hesitation ends and the kill begins.
But Kellen steps back.
One pace. Then another.
He exhales slow, sharp through his nose, like cooling off something that almost boiled. His gaze doesn’t leave mine.
“You’ll shift fully soon,” he says, voice stripped of fire now. “And when you do…”
He doesn’t finish the threat.
Doesn’t need to.
“…we’ll see who you really are.”
He turns.
Walks to the door.
Doesn’t slam it. Doesn’t look back.
It opens for him like it recognizes its master. And then it seals again—solid, absolute, sealing me alone in the chamber that still pulses with heat and blood.
I stand there. Staring at the space where he stood.
And my legs finally give.
I collapse sideways into the wall. My shoulder thuds against stone, my breathing uneven, sweat slick down my back. My hands are still half-clawed. My jaw aches from grinding down the shift.
I almost lost control.
And worse…
A part of me wanted to.
- Writer
