The Alpha's Vampire Princess

Chapter 4: Ask, Don’t Claim

MAVERICK



I did not sleep after Demi vanished. Sleep required trust that the world would still be there when I opened my eyes, and mine had walked out of the reception in a gold dress, carrying fear in her scent and my name on her skin. For hours, I swallowed every careful lie Hannah gave me: Demi felt unwell. Demi needed privacy. Demi was overwhelmed and resting. Each excuse was polished sharp enough to cut, and every one made my wolf pace harder beneath my skin.

I searched anyway. The halls first, then the guest wing, then the garden paths silvered by moonlight. Dominic caught me twice before I reached the corridor Hannah had disappeared down with her. The second time, he put a hand on my chest and said my name like a warning. I let him stop me because forcing my way to a frightened mate’s door would have made me exactly the monster she had looked at and seen. But restraint did not feel noble. It felt like being skinned alive one breath at a time.

By morning, panic had stopped pretending to be patience. The pack house felt too small for me. I had spent years believing my mate would arrive when fate was ready. I found her under wedding lights, felt something ancient lock around us, and lost her before the night was over.

The reception replayed in pieces: her hand in mine, the shock in her eyes, the scent of sugar and fear, the way she vanished before I could decide whether to speak or breathe. The bond was still there. Thin. Angry. Pulling.

Maybe she ran because of my reputation. The scarred beast of Black Mountain made a useful bedtime threat in half the country. Maybe she had seen the truth beneath the stories and wanted no part of it. That thought sat low in my gut, heavier than rage.

I gave myself one minute to stand there and hate the empty space she had left behind. Then I put on my boots. Brooding had never saved anyone. Answers might.

Her trail cut through the woods and ended in tire marks. She had left by car. Crescent City was the obvious answer, but I needed more than obvious. I needed someone who had helped her run.

The tire marks told me only that she had left. The pack house would tell me who had helped her do it. I turned back before my wolf could drag me after a cold trail and force answers out of the wrong people.

Only one person in Dominic’s house was stubborn enough to stand between me and my mate.

Hannah.

I heard Hannah before I reached Dominic’s office. Her voice cut through the half-open door, sharp enough to draw blood.

“You can’t just send him after her,” Hannah snapped. “She was terrified.”

“And hiding her fixes that?” Dominic asked. His voice stayed calm, which meant his temper was close. “If she’s his mate, she deserves the truth and the choice.”

I pushed the door open before Hannah could answer.

“Tell me where she is.” I kept the growl out of my voice. Barely.

Hannah crossed her arms. “And then what? You chase her down because the bond hurt your feelings? She looked at you like you were the end of the world, Maverick.”

The words landed. I deserved them. Demi was human as far as I knew—breakable in all the ways humans were, frightened, and thrown into a bond with a wolf most people crossed borders to avoid. Wanting her did not give me the right to corner her.

“Then I go slowly,” I said. “I don’t force. I don’t corner. I ask, and she decides. But I won’t disappear from her life without giving her the chance to know me beyond the rumors.”

Dominic studied me. He knew better than anyone what those rumors had cost. We had met at Alpha Academy when I was still more wound than boy, all scar tissue and temper. He had never flinched from either. His small nod mattered. Hannah, however, looked ready to bite me herself.

“One condition,” she said. “No alpha intimidation. No bond manipulation. If she says no, you listen.”

“Fine.”

Dominic slid a business card across the desk. Sweet Temptations. Vanilla and sugar still clung faintly to the paper, or maybe that was my mind trying to punish me.

The name fit her too well. Sweet, dangerous, and impossible to forget. I could see her behind a counter, flour on her cheek, pretending she did not carry enough fire to make an alpha forget his own name.

Demi Noell had run. I intended to find her—not to claim or drag, but to ask.

“She deserves the truth,” I said. “And the chance to refuse it. If she walks away after that, I’ll live with it.” My wolf snarled at the lie. He wanted a trail, a door, her scent under our hands. I gave him a business card and restraint. “But I need her to know I am not another cage.”

Hannah’s grip on her own elbows loosened. Not trust. Not yet. But something less sharp.

“Be gentle with her,” she said. “She’s been through enough.”

“I will.” I closed my fingers around the card. The paper bent under my grip. This time, I would not let fear speak for me. This time, Demi would get a choice—and I would make sure she had a reason to stay.

The drive back to Black Mountain did nothing to quiet the pull in my chest. Every mile hardened one decision: I would not go to Demi as a hunter with a claim. I would go as a man with a question she could refuse. By the time I crossed my own threshold, dawn had sharpened the peaks pale behind the windows, and the Sweet Temptations card was still trapped in my fist. I had barely made it halfway down the main corridor before my brothers found me. Or, more likely, before they stopped pretending they had not been waiting. Parker leaned against the wall with his arms folded, Tate sat on the windowsill swinging one boot like he had no survival instinct, and Tatum stood between them, quiet enough to be dangerous. For a second, all three of them looked too much like the boys they had been after the attack—watching me for cracks, pretending not to be afraid of what they might see.

“So,” Tate said carefully, which meant he was trying not to sound careful. “Silver Pine border call. Rogues that close to a wedding night still feels too convenient.”

Parker’s gaze narrowed. “Kevin panicked through the link. Dominic dragged you in. You handled it.”

“And then you came back looking like someone gutted you with a cake knife,” Tate added. “So, are we discussing rogues, politics, or whatever happened to your face when I said the word wedding?”

Parker shot him a look, but there was no bite in it. His gaze dropped to the little bakery card I still had not let go of. “That’s not a patrol report.”

“No,” I said.

Tatum’s attention sharpened. He had always been the one who heard the things I did not say. “The border problem wasn’t the only thing that happened.”

I looked down at the Sweet Temptations card until the letters blurred. Vanilla still clung to the paper, impossible and stubborn.

“I found my mate.”

Silence struck the corridor harder than any shout.

Tate blinked once. “At Dominic’s wedding?”

“At Dominic’s wedding,” I said.

Parker’s jaw tightened. “And judging by the way you look, she did not throw herself into your arms.” My fingers closed around the card until the edges bit into my palm. “She ran.”

Tatum stepped closer, voice low. “Did she run because of the bond, or because she thought you would hurt her?”

The question struck where I had no armor. I looked away, down the corridor toward the doors, toward the road that led away from Black Mountain and back to her. “Maybe both.” My voice roughened despite the effort to keep it steady. “She looked at me like I was every story ever told about Black Mountain. Like if she stayed too close, I would turn into the beast people warned her about.”

For once, none of them joked. The silence between us filled with old memories: smoke over the pack house, our mother’s blood on stone, my hands too small to carry the twins and too stained to be clean again. I had raised them with teeth bared because softness had seemed like an invitation for the world to take more. Now fate had given me a mate who might need gentleness before strength, and I did not know whether I had any left that was not broken.

Parker pushed off the wall. “Then stop trying to prove you’re not a beast by standing there like one,” he said. I looked at him sharply. He held my stare, stubborn as ever. “She saw the stories first. Fine. Everyone does. But stories don’t sit outside Tatum’s door for three nights because he’s too scared to sleep. Stories don’t carry Tate through his first shift when he thinks his bones are breaking wrong. Stories don’t keep a pack alive at thirteen because no one else knows what to do.” His jaw tightened. “Let her meet the man who did those things before you decide she already ran from him.”

Tate’s boot stopped swinging. The humor drained from his face, leaving someone older underneath. “You kept us alive,” he said. “You taught me how to shift when I was scared of my own claws. You made breakfast for us for six months because nobody else remembered we were still children.” His smile tried to appear and failed. “You were awful at pancakes, by the way. Truly criminal. But you stayed.”

Tatum held my gaze. “Let her see that part,” he said. “Not the Alpha everyone bows to. Not the scarred story people whisper about. The brother who stayed when staying was all we had.” His gaze dropped to the card in my hand. “If she is your mate, she deserves the truth from you. All of it. But she also deserves to decide whether she can carry it.”

The bond pulled again, thin and insistent, somewhere beyond the road to Crescent City. I had spent years knowing how to command warriors, punish threats, and hold a pack together by sheer refusal to fall apart. I had no idea how to ask a frightened woman to trust me without making my need another cage.

“What if I am the thing she should run from?” I asked before pride could stop me. The question left the corridor colder. Parker looked away first. Tate swallowed. Tatum did not move. Then Parker stepped in and gripped my shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “Then we stand behind you while you learn not to be.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he hated it. I heard it anyway.

Tate came next, throwing an arm around my neck with more force than grace. “And if you ruin this by brooding at her until she flees the continent, I will personally sabotage your entire whiskey collection.” Tatum’s mouth twitched. Parker muttered, “Finally, a useful threat.” I should have pulled away. Alphas did not stand in corridors, letting their younger brothers hold them together. But my knees felt less steady than I wanted to admit, and their hands were warm, familiar, alive.

For one breath, I let myself lean into them. Not much. Not enough for anyone outside this hallway to see. Just enough for the boys I had carried through grief to carry a piece of me back. “I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted. Tatum answered first. “Then do what you taught us. Start with not running from the hard thing.”

I looked down at the Sweet Temptations card again. Vanilla still clung to the paper, impossible and stubborn. Hope, I was beginning to learn, did not arrive softly. Sometimes it arrived as three brothers blocking a hallway, refusing to let you mistake fear for fate. I straightened slowly. “I’ll go to her when I can offer more than panic.” Parker nodded. Tate grinned through suspiciously bright eyes. Tatum stepped back, but his voice followed me down the hall. “Ask, Mav. Don’t claim.”

I did not trust myself to answer, so I lifted one hand without turning around. They would understand. They always had, even when I made it difficult. Behind me, Tate said something low enough that I almost missed it. “She must be something if she makes him look scared.” Parker replied just as softly, “Good. Maybe scared is better than alone.” I kept walking, the card in my fist and my brothers at my back. Ask. Don’t claim. For Demi, I would learn how.