Chapter 5
1457 Words
Emma
For a second I honestly thought the heart monitor was going to rip itself off the wall and sprint for help. The beeps jumped into a panicked rhythm, my pulse clawing up my throat. The white room, the IV, the too-clean everything—all of it blurred around his words.
“Nope,” I said. My voice came out thin. “Absolutely not. Wrong girl.”
“It isn’t a choice,” Lucian said quietly. “It’s a fact.”
“Funny,” I shot back, fingers knotting in the blanket, “because I don’t remember signing a contract with the universe. You don’t just get to show up, say ‘surprise, soulmate,’ and expect me to swoon.”
The monitor tattled on me with another sharp spike. He glanced at it, then at me.
“Breathe,” he said, calm and maddeningly steady. “Slowly. Your body’s still recovering.”
“Don’t ‘just breathe’ me,” I snapped. “You don’t get to control me.”
“You hit your head,” he said. “You lost blood, inhaled smoke. I’m not trying to control you, Emma. I’m trying to keep you conscious.”
I hated he was right. I inhaled anyway. In, out. The beeps shifted from freak-out to only moderately hysterical.
“Let me be very clear,” I said when I could talk. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. An hour ago, werewolves were a Netflix category. So if you expect me to accept that I’m your Mate because you had a feeling, that’s not happening.”
“I don’t expect you to accept it,” he said. “You don’t owe me trust. But I owe you the truth.”
He moved his chair closer, elbows on his knees.
“For my kind,” he went on, “the Mate Bond is sacred. Unbreakable. We don’t take it lightly. We don’t trade it. We don’t betray it.”
I snorted. “The last guy who said ‘forever’ had his pants around his knees and a coworker’s mouth on—”
“I’m not him,” Lucian cut in, quiet steel under the words. “Whatever he did, whatever humans do, that’s not how this works for us. Cheating on your Mate is like tearing yourself apart. The Bond doesn’t bend for convenience.”
“You say that now,” I said. “Everyone thinks they’re special until things get hard.”
“I’ve had power and opportunity my entire adult life,” he said. “If I were going to treat commitment like a toy, I’d have done it already.”
Something in my chest twitched. I shoved it down.
“Congrats,” I muttered. “But it’s wasted. Because I don’t believe you. Or any of this.”
He opened his mouth like he was about to argue—
“The wolf,” I said before he could answer. “The crash. That whole… scene. That was smoke and a dying brain. You keep talking about mates and bonds, but as far as I’m concerned, I hallucinated it. And I might still be hallucinating you.”
Resignation moved through his face.
“All right,” he said. “Then you need proof.”
Before I could ask what that meant, he was at the door.
“Doctor Kwan.”
She appeared a second later, tablet in hand, the same nurse behind her. “Yes, Alpha?”
“Is it safe for her to go outside for a few minutes?” he asked. “No stairs, no strain. I’ll handle everything else.”
Her gaze flicked to the monitor, to me. “Fresh air will help,” she said. “But nothing strenuous.” She stepped to the bed. “If you feel dizzy or short of breath, you tell us immediately. Understood?”
“Outside where?” I asked.
“The courtyard,” Lucian said. “Just beyond the doors.”
Doctor Kwan unhooked the monitor; the machine fell silent. A moment later, she slid the IV from my hand.
“You’re not discharged,” she reminded me. “This is temporary. No heroics.”
The nurse rolled a wheelchair to the bed. I tried to sit up; the room tilted.
“Okay,” I muttered. “Fine. Wheels.”
Before the nurse could help, Lucian’s shadow fell over me. One second he was at the door; the next he was right there.
“Wait—”
An arm slid behind my shoulders, another under my knees. He lifted me like I weighed nothing.
“Seriously?” I squeaked, grabbing his shirt. “Personal space?”
“The chair is too low for you to pivot safely,” he said, like this was a safety briefing. “This is easier.”
Arguing required more energy than I had. He settled me into the wheelchair; the nurse adjusted the footrests and tucked a blanket around my legs. Then we were moving.
The infirmary was a small, expensive-looking clinic—pale walls, soft lighting, a few doors, a tiny reception desk with a Christmas wreath. Neat. Normal. If you ignored that everyone called him “Alpha.”
Glass doors slid open ahead of us.
Cold air kissed my face.
He rolled me into a wide courtyard. Snow lay in smooth drifts around a pale stone path and evergreens strung with warm lights. Beyond the low wall, more stone-and-glass buildings spread out, and above them, rising against the dark sky, the edge of something massive: turrets, balconies, glowing windows.
A palace. An actual palace.
“Oh,” I whispered. “You weren’t kidding.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t.”
He stopped the chair on a flat stretch of path, then came to stand in front of me.
“Stay seated,” he said. “If you feel faint, tell me.”
“Why do I feel like you’re about to scar me for life?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he unbuttoned his black shirt.
My brain stalled. “Wait—what are you doing?”
He shrugged the shirt off, folded it, set it on a stone bench. Boots and socks went next, then his trousers, until he stood there in nothing but dark briefs and far too much bare, winter-proof muscle.
Heat climbed up my neck despite the cold. “Okay. Wow. Nope.” I twisted my head away, staring hard at an innocent tree. “You know there are easier ways to prove a point than public nudity.”
“Werewolves aren’t shy about nudity,” he said, unbothered. “We often need to be nude to shift, so it’s natural for us.”
“That’s great for you,” I said. “I am extremely human and extremely unused to people stripping in front of me without buying me dinner first.”
There was a brief rustle as he removed the last barrier. The air went still.
“Emma,” he said. “Look at me.”
“No,” I said automatically, eyes locked on the tree.
Then the sounds started.
Cracks and pops, like someone twisting bubble wrap. Bone and muscle shifting.
Every instinct yelled don’t look. Curiosity won anyway.
Slowly, I turned my head.
A man blurred into something wrong and then right again—skin rippling, limbs warping, dark fur flooding over reshaping muscle. In the space of a breath, where Lucian had been, a massive black wolf shook snow from its shoulders. Not a normal wolf. Bigger, heavier through the chest. Midnight fur swallowed the courtyard lights. Gray eyes—the same gray as his—locked on me.
My breath caught.
It was him. The wolf from the ditch.
He padded closer, slow and careful, paws silent on the stone. He stopped a few feet away and sat. I could see the puff of his breath in the cold, smell pine and something warm and wild under the clean bite of snow.
All my neat, safe explanations—concussion, smoke, dying brain—crumbled.
“Oh my god,” I whispered.
Then his body shuddered again.
I didn’t look away this time.
Bone and muscle flowed, fur sinking back into skin. A moment later he stood upright again, human and naked in the snow.
I kept my gaze firmly above the waist as he crossed back to the bench and dressed with quick, practiced movements. Shirt, trousers, boots.
When he turned back to me, there was a hint of a boyish smirk at the corner of his mouth, softening the sharp lines of his face.
“Well,” Lucian said, gray eyes holding mine. “Now do you believe me?”
- Writer
