Chapter 9
1140 Words
The morning came with no kindness.
Grey light spilled across the cracks in the blinds, painting long stripes over the hardwood floor like prison bars. My head throbbed, not from sleep but from the absence of it. I had tossed and turned all night, replaying the dream until it felt less like fantasy and more like memory carved into bone.
The woods. The chase. The heat in my lungs. And then him. Always him.
Kade’s face had followed me into waking. His smirk. The way his eyes burned like they belonged to a predator that didn’t need to chase me, because he knew I’d return. The worst part was how a piece of me didn’t want to resist.
I sat up, running both hands down my face until my palms pressed into my eyes. Ava stirred inside me, restless.
You’re still thinking about him.
Her tone carried judgment, but beneath it was something more dangerous. Curiosity.
“I can’t help it,” I whispered into the silence. My voice sounded foreign, hoarse from crying. “It felt real.”
It wasn’t real. Ava’s growl was faint, unsteady. It was a dream. Our mind playing tricks because our heart is weak.
“Then why,” I snapped, throwing the blanket off my body, “does it feel like I can still smell him?”
I froze, chest heaving. Because I wasn’t wrong. The faintest trace lingered in the room, dark spice and storm air, as though he had been here. Watching. Waiting.
A shiver crawled down my spine. I pressed a hand to my throat, my pulse erratic.
The knock on the door nearly made me leap out of my skin.
Three sharp raps. Not timid. Not hesitant. Confident.
My breath hitched.
It couldn’t be him.
I padded across the cold floor, the oversized sweater swallowing me whole. The boards creaked beneath my feet as I moved toward the door, my fingers trembling as they hovered over the knob. Ava snarled softly, not in warning this time but in agitation.
Open it.
I sucked in a breath, twisted the knob, and pulled.
It wasn’t Kade.
It was Damien.
My heart plummeted, colliding with ribs too fragile to contain it.
He stood in the doorway, dressed in black like sin itself, his hair still damp from a morning shower, curling against his forehead. The faintest shadow clung to his jaw, sharper than usual, as if he hadn’t slept either. His eyes — gods, those ocean eyes — swept over me, landing on my bare legs, and for a second, his jaw clenched the way it had at the ball.
“Elena,” he said, his voice rough, lower than I remembered.
Every part of me screamed to slam the door. To end it here. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
“What do you want?” My tone was brittle, splintering like glass about to shatter.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on my throat, then my lips, then back to my eyes, as though searching for something he had lost. Finally, he exhaled through his nose and said, “We need to talk.”
The words sliced through me. We. Talk. As though he had the right.
I folded my arms across my chest, more shield than comfort. “Talk? Now you want to talk? After everything?”
Damien’s eyes flickered — guilt, frustration, something darker — before he stepped inside uninvited. His presence filled the room like storm clouds swallowing the sky.
“You humiliated me,” he said, his voice low, almost trembling with restrained anger.
My laugh was sharp, humorless. “You humiliated me. Every day since you chose her. Since you let Selene stand where I was meant to. Don’t twist this.”
“Elena—” He stopped himself, dragging a hand through his hair. His shoulders were taut, his composure fraying. “You don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Oh, so now I’m too stupid to understand?” The venom in my tone surprised even me.
“That’s not what I meant.” He stepped closer. I stepped back. The air between us was tight, suffocating. “You think I don’t feel it? Every time you’re near me, every time your scent cuts through the air—” His voice cracked, raw with something I didn’t want to name. “Rejecting you didn’t break the bond. It should have. But it didn’t.”
My chest seized. For a moment, my anger faltered.
I searched his face — the strain in his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the truth he was trying so hard to bury.
“Why are you here, Damien?” I whispered.
Silence stretched, long and heavy. Then he said, so softly I almost missed it, “Because I can’t stop thinking about you with him.”
The floor fell out from under me.
Kade. He meant Kade.
My lips parted, but no words came. My heart was a hammer in my chest, frantic, loud, desperate.
“How do you even—” My voice failed.
“The entire ballroom saw.” His tone sharpened with jealousy, his eyes darkening. “Saw you dancing with him, saw his hands on you. Saw you smile at him.”
I laughed again, bitter, broken. “Oh, so that’s what finally got to you? Not the nights you left me alone. Not the way you paraded Selene in front of me. No. It was me daring to breathe near another man.”
“Elena.” He said my name like a prayer and a curse all at once. He took another step toward me.
I didn’t move this time.
His hand lifted, hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair from my face. My skin burned where he touched me, traitorous warmth blooming despite everything. Ava whimpered inside me, torn between rage and longing.
I wanted to lean into his hand. I wanted to bite it off.
The air snapped with tension. His lips parted. For a heartbeat, I thought he would kiss me.
But then —
A shadow moved past the window.
My breath stalled. Damien’s head snapped toward it.
We both froze.
Another knock at the door. Softer this time. Deliberate.
My blood turned to ice.
Damien growled low in his throat, a sound that rumbled the floorboards. His wolf was near the surface, ready to tear.
“Elena,” a voice drawled from the other side. Smooth. Confident. The voice from my dream. “Are you going to let me in, or should I wait until your… visitor leaves?”
Kade.
Damien’s eyes blazed with fury as he turned back to me. My pulse raced, heat flooding my body, not from fear but from something far more dangerous.
And I knew, in that moment, the real storm was only just beginning.
- Writer
