chapter 5- Lena
1625 Words
I never saw them coming.
One second, I was beside Daphen moving through the dark pines. The next something slammed into me from the side so hard my feet left the ground, and I hit the frozen ground face first and tasted blood immediately.
"Daphen-"
A hand grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back, and a face shoved into mine. Rotten breath. Wild hollow eyes. The kind of eyes that had stopped being human a long time ago.
Rogue.
"Well, look at this," he breathed. Thick. Wet. Excited. "Pretty little thing running through our woods in the dark all alone."
"Get your hands off me -"
He flipped me onto my back and pinned both my wrists above my head with one hand, and I drove my knee up hard and caught him in the stomach, and he grunted and laughed. Actually laughed.
"She's feisty," someone said from behind me.
I looked. Four of them. Loose circle. All looking at me the same way - that specific hungry look that made my skin crawl completely off my body.
I knew exactly what this was.
"Daphen!" I screamed it as loud as my lungs allowed.
"He went a different way, sweetheart." The leader leaned down into my face. "It's just you and us out here." His free hand moved to my jaw, fingers digging in. "And we have been out here a very long time."
"I want to go first," one of them said. "Three weeks I've been out here. Three weeks without"
"Get in line," the leader growled without looking back. His eyes stayed on me. Dark and crawling and completely without mercy. "I like this one. Look at those eyes."
I turned my face away.
He grabbed my chin and forced it back.
"Don't do that," he said softly. "Don't look away from me." His hand moved from my jaw slowly down my throat, and I felt my whole body recoil, and I had nowhere to go. "There we go. That's better."
I fought. I threw everything I had at him - twisting, kicking, trying to bite his hand when it moved near my face. He pinned my legs down with his knee and laughed every time I struggled like it was entertainment.
"I love it when they fight," he said to the others.
"Hurry up then," someone said impatiently.
His hand moved to the collar of my jacket. Started pulling. I felt the fabric tear at the seam, and the cold air hit my collarbone and something in me just
There is no one coming, some part of my brain said. There is no one coming, and you need to stop fighting and just
No.
No. Fight. Keep fighting.
"Stop moving," he snarled and slapped me hard across the face.
My vision went black for three full seconds.
When it came back he was leaning over me and his mouth was on my neck - wet and disgusting and wrong - and his hand was sliding under the torn fabric of my jacket and I opened my mouth to scream again and no sound came out.
I stared at the sky above the black pines.
Tears running sideways into my hair.
Daphen,] I thought. Not a scream this time. Just - his name. Just that.
The rogue lifted his head from my neck and looked at me with that sick smile and said, "See? Not so bad is-"
The sound that came from the trees had no name.
Every single rogue went completely still.
The leader slowly looked up.
And Daphen walked out of the dark, and he was not the same man who had left my side twenty minutes ago.
His eyes were fully black. Not shifting - gone. His wolf entirely forward. His shirt was torn at the shoulder and his hands - his hands had already shifted, claws out, and he was holding them at his sides with a control that looked like it was costing him everything he had.
He looked at the rogue on top of me.
He looked at the torn fabric at my collar.
He looked at my face.
Something broke open in his expression.
"Get. Off. Her." Each word came out separately. Quietly. The way things go quiet right before something catastrophic.
The rogue scrambled back.
Too slow.
Daphen crossed the distance in two steps and grabbed him by the throat one-handed and lifted him completely off the ground. The rogue grabbed at his wrist with both hands, kicking, choking, face going red, then purple.
"You put your mouth on her," Daphen said. Still that terrible quiet. "You put your filthy mouth on what is mine."
He threw him into a tree so hard the trunk cracked.
The rogue dropped and didn't move.
The other three came at him simultaneously.
I pushed myself upright and watched, and I have never seen anything like it in my life. Daphen moved through all three of them like they were made of paper - one-handed throat grab on the second, claws across the third one's chest when he lunged, the fourth one picked up off the ground and slammed down face first into the frozen earth hard enough to shake the ground.
Fifteen seconds.
All four down.
He stood in the middle of the clearing, breathing hard, blood on his hands and his shirt, eyes still fully black, chest heaving.
Then he turned to me.
The black faded. Slowly. His own eyes are coming back.
He was across the clearing and on his knees in the dirt in front of me before I had time to think and his hands came up to my face - both of them, so careful, so completely gentle after what those hands had just done - and he looked at every part of my face like he was checking for damage.
"Lena." His voice came out wrecked. "Are you -"
"I'm okay -"
"Don't tell me you're okay." His jaw was shaking. "Tell me the truth."
"He hit me." My voice cracked on it. "And he - his mouth was on my -" I stopped. Breathed. "I'm okay. I'm still here. I'm okay."
His hands tightened on my face.
His forehead dropped to mine.
Just for a second. Just one second of his forehead against mine and his eyes closed and his breath coming out ragged and uncontrolled.
"I felt it," he said. Very quietly. "When you went down. I felt it through the bond and I-" His voice broke. "I should have been there."
"You're here now," I said.
He pulled back. Looked at me. His thumb moved across my cheekbone where the rogue had hit me, and the gentleness of it after everything made my throat ache.
"Can you stand," he said.
"Yes."
He stood and pulled me up and didn't let go of my hand immediately. Looked at it - at the bruises already forming on my wrists - and his jaw went tight again.
"Daphen."
He looked up.
"Don't go back there and kill them," I said. "We need to move."
Something moved in his face. It's almost like he hadn't considered not going back.
"The shelter," he said finally. "Now."
He didn't let go of my hand.
The shelter confrontation played out fast - Caden at the table, Shaman alive, the truth about the mother spilling out like something that had been waiting years to be said. The curse placed on Daphen specifically. Their mother alive. The real condition - not an heir but a free choice.
And then Vera's voice at the door.
"Roan brought the eastern unit. Fifteen wolves. Armed."
Daphen stood.
I grabbed his arm. "You can't go out there alone -"
"Fifteen is nothing," he said. Flat. Certain.
"Daphen-"
He looked at me, and the expression on his face stopped every word I had.
"I need you to stay inside," he said. "Not because you can't handle yourself. I saw what you did to that guard with the branch." Something flickered in his eyes. "Because if I'm out there and I'm worried about where you are, I will make mistakes. And I can't afford mistakes tonight."
I stared at him.
"So I need you in here," he said. "Can you do that for me."
Not an order. A request.
The difference hit me somewhere deep.
"Yes," I said quietly.
His hand came up one more time - slow, deliberate - and his fingers brushed the mark on my throat where the rogue's mouth had been. Like he was replacing something. Like he was reclaiming it.
The burn that went through me was so sharp that my knees nearly went.
His eyes went dark.
"I'll be back," he said.
He walked out.
His roar hit the night like a physical thing - deep and feral - and absolutely furious - and the screaming started immediately.
The Shaman put her hand on my arm.
"Three women before you," she said quietly. "He never once went out to fight for them." Her smoke-colored eyes held mine. "He didn't even know he was doing it."
I pressed my fingers to my throat where his had been.
The mark was burning like it had never burned before.
And in my chest - behind four months of damage and betrayal and everything Caden had done - something was coming back to life that I had been absolutely certain was dead.
That terrified me more than the rogues ever could.
The screaming outside stopped.
Silence.
Then the door opened, and Daphen walked back in.
Blood on his face. Shirt destroyed. Breathing hard.
He looked at me first. Before anyone else in the room. Straight to me.
"It's done," he said.
And then his legs went out from under him.
- Writer
