CHAPTER 2_ Mine[Part 2]
1061 Words
The word is a low growl, almost a whisper, but it hits me like a shout. It wraps around my ribs, my lungs, my frantic heart. My knees dip.
“I—” My tongue trips. “Do I…do I know you?”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. His eyes flick down to my mouth again.
“Not yet,” he says.
His thumb skims along the sensitive spot behind my ear.
My whole body arches toward that tiny touch like he just flipped a switch I didn’t know I had.
“Alpha! Humans are filming—”
He doesn’t look away from me. “Get them out,” he says.
Feet pound. Chairs scrape. People are shoved toward the doors. Hank curses. Glass crunches.
Far away. Muffled.
“You need to let me go,” I whisper. “Whatever this is, I didn’t ask for it.”
His hand tightened at my nape, not enough to hurt, just enough to pin me in place.
“I’m aware,” he says. His voice has a raw edge now. “So am I.”
He steps closer, crowding into my space. My back hits the table behind me; his chest brushes my arm. Heat rolls off him.
His heartbeat thuds against my ribs, too fast, too hard. I'm catching mine.
“Stop,” I breathe.
He does the opposite.
His mouth crashes down on mine.
There’s no warning. No soft first brush. It’s a storm front hitting land—sudden, violent, all at once.
His lips are hot, hard, moving over mine with a dark hunger that scrapes against something deep and wild in me. His fingers curl in my hair, angling my head, his other hand clamping around my hip and hauling me flush against him.
I should fight. Push. Scream.
My mouth opens on a gasp. His tongue slips in, and the world blows apart.
Heat rockets down my spine, pools low and hot in my belly. My fingers clutch his shirt, feeling hard muscle and coiled violence under the thin fabric. He tastes like smoke and winter and something that feels unsettlingly like *finally*.
A needy sound breaks from my chest. He swallows it, kissing me deeper, tongue stroking mine in a way that empties my brain of everything but more.
His other hand slides from my hip to the small of my back, dragging me closer. Every line of him presses into me—chest, stomach, the hard line lower I try very hard not to think about.
Time stretches thin. There’s just his mouth, my pounding heart, and the invisible cord between us cinching tighter with every second.
“Alpha! Cameras!” someone shouts.
Ronan—because I know now that’s his name—tenses, then tears his mouth away.
I sway. The room tilts. His arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me upright.
He’s breathing hard. So am I. His eyes are almost black, pupils blown, lips wet and swollen.
“Don’t ever—” I start, then realize I don’t know if I want to say "do that again" or "do that ever."
His gaze flickers over my face like he’s memorizing it. For a heartbeat, there’s something like pain in his eyes.
“You can’t stay here,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“You can’t stay,” he repeats, voice going cold. “The moment I touched you, you stopped being safe in this place.”
I let out an ugly little laugh. “You don’t know me. You don’t get to decide where I’m safe.”
“My wolves know my scent on you,” he says. “They know the bond. They’ll test me through you. Hurt you to see what I’ll do.”
“Your…wolves.” The room tilts again. “You’re insane.”
He leans close, lips brushing my ear. His voice rolls over my skin in a shiver.
“I’m the only thing standing between you and them right now, little human,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to trust me. You just have to listen.”
His scent wraps around me again, muddling fear and something darker.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say, proud my voice only cracks a little. “I have a life. A job. A mother in the hospital. I can’t just—”
“I don’t have time to argue.”
He bends, grabs the backs of my thighs, and throws me over his shoulder.
“Hey—!” The word punches out of me as my stomach hits solid muscle. The bar swings upside down. My fists slam into his back. “Put me down! You can’t just—”
His arm locks over the backs of my knees, pinning my legs. He strides for the door like I’m weightless.
“I’ll call the cops!” I shout.
“Your cops don’t deal with this,” he says.
He shoulders through the door.
Cold night air cuts across my cheeks.
Four huge silhouettes crouch just beyond the flickering parking lot light.
For a moment, denial insists they’re big dogs.
Then one lifts its head. Moonlight hits fur and teeth and eyes that gleam too bright to be real.
Wolves. Massive. Real. Muscles ripple under their coats when they shift their weight. Their eyes lock on me, nostrils flaring.
A growl rises from one chest, echoed by another and another until the night vibrates with it.
Every instinct I own screams runs.
Ronan’s voice slices through the growl like a blade.
“The first one who takes a step toward her,” he snarls, “loses his throat.”
The wolves freeze.
The growling cuts off, but the air is still electric, heavy with their breathing, and the sharp scent of fur and wild.
Hanging upside down, heart battering my ribs, I stare at them and understand three things in quick succession:
This man isn’t pretending to be a monster. He is one.
Those creatures out there listen to him. Fear him.
And whatever “mine” means to him, I just got dragged into it.
“Welcome to my world, Lilah Hart,” he says, stepping off the concrete into the black mouth of the trees.
The wolves melt into the shadows as he carried me into the dark.
---
- Writer
