8. Chapter
1818 Words
Rowan’s POV
I closed the door behind me, but my hand stayed on the handle.
The wood was cool, smooth, lifeless. The exact opposite of what was happening inside that room.
I took a deep breath, trying to force that damn scent out of my lungs. Pine. Winter. And something sweet and scorching, spicy in a way that clung to my nose as if the woman herself had marked me physically.
“f**k,” I hissed under my breath and leaned my forehead against the doorframe.
The wolf inside me was raging.
Go back. Do not leave her. Ours. Unprotected. She is hurting.
“Shut up,” I growled inwardly. “She is not ours. She is just an injured woman. A stranger.”
I pushed myself away from the door and started down the hallway. My steps were heavy, the floorboards creaking under my boots. Every part of me was coiled tight, ready for a fight, even though I was only walking down the stairs of my own house.
Except it no longer felt like my house.
Ever since Caroline crossed the threshold, or rather since I carried her unconscious body inside through the storm, the air had changed. It was thicker. Charged. Alive.
When I reached the living room, the sight waiting for me did nothing to improve my mood.
My mother stood by the fireplace with her back to me, staring into the flames, her posture rigid and regal. Myra sat at the kitchen table surrounded by bloody rags and her notes. Calder stood at the window, looking out into the darkness.
When I entered, all three of them turned toward me at once.
The silence was so loud it almost hurt.
“Is she alive?” Calder asked first. There was no worry in his voice, only cautious curiosity.
“She’s alive,” I answered shortly, walking over to the liquor cabinet. I poured myself a whiskey and offered none to anyone. “She’s awake. Talking. Even being smart-mouthed. So her tongue is definitely not injured.”
My mother slowly turned around. Her eyes, the same green as mine, studied me darkly.
“And how are you?”
The glass froze halfway to my mouth.
“What do you mean, how am I?” I shot back, sharper than intended. “I didn’t fall into a ravine. I didn’t fight a forty-three-degree fever. I’m fine.”
“Your wolf nearly tore the walls down while she was unconscious,” Myra said quietly without looking up from her papers. “Your energy, Rowan, drowned out everything. The younger wolves are restless outside. They think there’s a threat inside.”
“There is no threat,” I snapped, slamming the glass down. Whiskey splashed onto the table. “It was an accident. A lost tourist.”
Myra looked up then. Her gaze was sharp, analytical. She was the only one who had never feared me, not even when I roared as Alpha.
“Rowan,” she began in her usual infuriatingly calm tone. “Her blood is not normal.”
My jaw tightened.
“You already said that. Shock. Hypothermia.”
“No,” she shook her head. “I checked the sample left on the bandage. Her cells are moving too fast. Her clotting speed is not human. That wound on the back of her neck should have needed stitches. Caroline’s is already closing.”
The air in the room went dead cold.
My mother took a step closer.
“Did you hear what she said, son? Closing. On its own.”
“So what?” I snapped at her. “Maybe she has good genetics. Maybe she’s lucky.”
“Or maybe she isn’t what you think she is,” my mother said softly. “Maybe the Mountains didn’t let her go by accident.”
I snorted, a harsh, disbelieving laugh.
“Oh, don’t start with the mystical nonsense again. ‘The will of the Mountains.’ The Mountains have no will. There is only snow, ice, and rock. She is a coincidence.”
“There are no coincidences,” she said sharply. “Not at Christmas. Not in a storm like this. And not when your Alpha wolf reacts as if it has found its mate.”
The word hung in the air like an executioner’s blade.
Mate.
At the sound of it, the wolf inside me howled in triumph, a long, resonant cry that shook my spine.
YES. MATE. OURS.
“No,” I said, my voice deeper and rougher than I meant it to be. “She is not my mate.”
“Then why is your hand shaking?” Calder asked from the window.
I looked at my hand.
It was not shaking.
But it was clenched into a fist so tight my nails were biting into my palm.
“If you don’t shut up, Calder, I swear I’ll put you on watch at the eastern pass. Naked.”
My friend, and one of my strongest warriors, raised his hands in surrender, but that damn grin was lurking in his eyes.
“Just saying, boss. I’ve never seen you like this. Not even when the southern pack attacked us. Now you look like you’re scared.”
Fear.
That word did not exist in my vocabulary.
Anger? Yes.
Frustration? Plenty.
But fear?
“I’m not afraid of her,” I muttered. “I’m just careful. We don’t know who she is or where she came from. She could be a spy. She could be a hunter.”
“A hunter who tried to drive up the mountain in a Ford Fiesta on summer tires?” Myra asked dryly. “Doubtful.”
My mother sighed and sat down in the armchair. Her movements looked tired, but her gaze remained sharp.
“Rowan, listen to me. The girl is here. The blizzard won’t ease for at least two more days. The road is impassable. You cannot send her away.”
“I know.”
“And you cannot leave her alone. Her body is changing. If Myra is right and her healing is accelerated, then other symptoms will follow.”
I looked at my mother.
“What kind of symptoms?”
“Sharper hearing. Smell. Restlessness. Aggression.”
The moment in the bedroom flashed through my mind.
“Did you hear that? Something howling. Like a dog.”
Through the thick walls of the house. In the storm. No human should have been able to hear a distant wolf howl.
Caroline did.
“She already has symptoms,” I admitted reluctantly. “She heard the wolves.”
My mother’s eyes widened.
“Through the walls?”
“Yes.”
Myra set her pen down.
“That’s faster than I expected. If there’s a dormant bloodline, the shock of the accident could have triggered it. Near-death experiences often awaken ancient genes.”
“Or she hallucinated from the fever,” I tried, clinging to my last rational excuse.
No one believed me. Not even myself.
“What are you going to do?” my mother asked.
I refilled my glass and drained it in one swallow. The alcohol burned, but not enough. It could not drown out the icy thrill Caroline’s presence caused.
“I’ll watch her,” I said finally. “If she’s a danger to the pack, I’ll handle it. If she’s just sick, she’s Myra’s problem. But as long as she’s in this house, she follows my rules.”
“And your wolf?” Calder asked quietly. “What rules does he follow?”
I had no answer.
Because my wolf had already overturned the chessboard.
A low growl sounded outside. Not the wind.
A real growl.
“They’re at the gate,” Calder said, muscles tightening. “The younger ones. They smell her. They smell the stranger.”
“They think there’s an intruder,” Myra added. “Rowan, if you don’t go out there and establish order, they’ll break in. Their instincts are telling them something ‘other’ is on their territory.”
“For f**k’s sake,” I slammed my hand on the table. “Can’t I have one moment of peace?”
I grabbed my jacket from the hook.
“I’m going.”
“Rowan,” my mother called after me.
I stopped in the doorway.
“Don’t forget,” she said softly. “If the pack senses that she is different, they will soon sense whose protection she is under. If they realize your mark is on her, even energetically, they won’t see her as an intruder.”
“As what, then?” I asked, turning back.
My mother smiled. A little sad. A little triumphant.
“As their Queen.”
I didn’t answer. I tore the door open and stepped into the blizzard.
The cold hit me instantly, and for once it felt good. It cooled the fire under my skin.
Outside the house, in the darkness, dozens of eyes gleamed. Yellow. Amber.
My pack.
The younger ones in wolf form, the older ones human but on the edge of shifting.
I saw the tension in them. Hackles raised, heads turned toward the house, sniffing.
They smelled her.
Her blood. Her fever. Her otherness.
“STAND DOWN,” I roared, lacing my voice with Alpha command. The air itself shuddered.
The wolves dropped instantly, ears pinned back. My dominance crashed over them like a wave, merciless and absolute.
“There is nothing to see here,” I continued as I stepped down among them. “There is a guest in the house. She is injured. She is under my protection.”
I stopped in front of one young male, Jace, who was growling softly toward the house in wolf form.
“Do you have a problem, Jace?” I asked quietly, dangerously.
The wolf looked at me, then dropped his gaze and exposed his throat with a whine.
“Thought so,” I nodded. “No one approaches the house without permission. No one scents. No one howls. Clear?”
Low rumbles and nods answered me.
They slowly dispersed back into the trees, to their posts. But I felt it.
Their curiosity.
And their fear.
They were not afraid of me.
They were afraid of what was inside the house.
When I turned back, I looked up at the upstairs window.
It was dark, only the faint glow of the fireplace visible.
Caroline was lying there.
Vulnerable. Unaware.
And somehow, she was the greatest storm on this mountain.
My wolf purred inside me.
She is safe. You protected her.
“I just protected order,” I lied to myself as I shook the snow from my shoulders. “Just the f*****g order.”
But when I stepped back into the warmth of the house and caught her scent seeping through the cracks into the living room…
I knew that order would never be the same again.
- Writer
