Chp 14
1692 Words
Zyra POV
The morning crowd hasn’t arrived yet, but the coffee shop already smells like roasted beans and exhaustion. My exhaustion.
I tie the green apron around my waist and smooth down the matching skirt that barely reaches mid-thigh. The fabric is thin, cheap, already fraying at the seams. The logo, an over-smiling cartoon coffee cup feels like mockery.
My hair is tied up tight in a high ponytail, dyed black and glossy under the fluorescent lights. But two strands escape anyway, curling down against my cheeks like they refuse to obey even when I beg them to. I push them back. They fall again.
My life in two strands: stubborn, out of place, impossible to hide.
I exhale, grab the first order slip, and practice my customer smile in the chrome of the espresso machine..
then freeze because the reflection behind me shifts.
At first, it’s just movement. A shadow passing the glass doors. Then a silhouette.
Then a familiar walk, lazy, predatory, slow enough to be insulting.
My blood turns ice-cold.
Dael.
He steps through the door like the shop belongs to him, hood pulled over his head, hands shoved casually in his pockets. The morning light behind him makes him look unreal, tall, dark, a walking omen with red eyes half-hidden beneath shadow. His presence sucks the air out of the room the way fire eats oxygen.
He doesn’t look around.He doesn’t need to. Predators already know where their prey stands. My lungs forget how to function.
Why is he here?
At my workplace?
At seven in the morning?
My fingers tighten around the counter edge, knuckles whitening. I considered ducking behind the pastry display. Running into the back room. Or simply fainting and letting gravity take me away from this nightmare..
But I still force myself.
I have nothing left. No home. No family. No sanctuary. I won’t lose this job too.
So I swallow everything, fear, resentment, the echo of last night when he choked me against the wall and told me I didn’t belong here and lift my chin.
He walks toward the counter without haste, without purpose, like he’s just… wandering forward. But every step radiates menace, a pressure that squeezes my chest tighter and tighter the closer he gets.
When he stops, he’s too close. Not a normal-customer close. Wolf close,
Alpha close.
His hood shadows most of his face, but his eyes…Those burning red track over me slowly, deliberately.
From my ponytail.. to my throat..
to the green skirt…to my bare thighs where the hem rides too high when I shift my weight.
His jaw flexes once.
Dangerous.
Displeased.
I hate that my body reacts. Not with attraction, never that but with instinctive stiffness, every nerve sharpening as if bracing for impact.
He doesn’t look away.
Not even for a heartbeat.
The door behind him rings as a new customer enters, but he doesn’t flinch. Doesn't blink. His world narrows around me, caging me in invisible walls I can’t break.
"Why are you here?" I manage.
My voice is thin, brittle, pretending to sound unaffected when I feel shattered inside.
He doesn’t answer.
Instead, he lowers his hood in one slow movement.
The lights catch his hair, black with streaks of deep red near the roots and then his eyes ignite properly, glowing that unnatural, furious crimson that marks his bloodline. The killer pack. The hunters. The wolves who chased mine until we were nothing but ash and screams.
He stares at me with that same ancestral hatred.
That same generations-old promise to wipe out every silver wolf. Even the last one.
Me.
But there’s something else buried beneath the hatred today, something meaner, sharper, almost hungry.
Possessiveness.
It slashes through his expression like lightning, and my breath stutters.
Finally, he speaks.
One word.
Low, gritted, dark enough to bruise.
"You."
I grip the counter harder. "This is my job. Don’t start anything."
His gaze drags down to my thighs again. Muscles tense in his jaw.
“If you didn’t want anything started,” he murmurs, “you shouldn’t dress like that.”
My stomach drops.
"It’s the uniform," I hissed. "I don’t get to choose."
He tilts his head slightly, studying me like he’s piecing together a puzzle he wasn’t given enough clues for. Like I offend him by existing.
“Does anyone else get to see you like this?”
The softness in his tone is fake, velvet over razor wire.
“It’s a public shop,” I whisper. “Anyone can walk in.”
Red floods his eyes brighter. Not attraction, anger. Violence.
Possessiveness he doesn’t understand. I don't want to.
The same instinct that made him shove Roth’s hand away yesterday.
He leans forward just enough that his breath skims my cheek.
“You don’t get it,” he mutters. “You don’t get what you’re doing.”
“I’m just working.”
His lips curl in a humorless, quiet snarl. “To who?”
I blink. "What?"
“To me.” His voice dips lower. “You’re doing it to me.”
My pulse spikes.
A ringing sound fills my ears.
He thinks this is about him..
my job, my uniform, the way the strands of hair frame my face.
Everything in Dael’s universe becomes personal.
A threat.
An attack.
Or a challenge.
I hate him for it.
His eyes follow the fall of breath from my chest as I inhale shakily.
Then he straightens, but only a fraction.
"Take my order," he says.
I force my expression into something serviceable. Something professional. Something that doesn’t reveal he terrifies me to the bone.
"What would you like?" I ask, voice steady only because I clench my teeth.
He looks at the menu board behind me, then back at me.
“I’ll take whatever keeps you here talking to me longer.”
My entire body locks.
My throat dries.
“That’s not..” I choke on the word. “...an item.”
He shrugs. “Make one.”
His fingertips tap the counter, slow and rhythmic, the same way a wolf taps claws before sinking them in.
Every motion says he’s not here for coffee.
He’s here for me.
A couple walks in behind him, chatting loudly.
Dael doesn’t shift. He doesn’t give them space. He stands in the center of the entrance like a wall, forcing them to awkwardly squeeze past him.
He doesn’t even blink.
He’s not here to be polite.
He’s here to invade.
I clear my throat. "Dael, I’m working. Please don’t.."
"What time does your shift end?" he asks abruptly.
I froze again.
"Why do you care?"
He raises a brow. “‘Care’ isn’t the word.”
“Then what is?”
He leans closer until the counter presses into my hips, until the scent of smoke and cold night wraps around me like a trap.
"It’s called making sure you don’t get hurt," he murmurs.
A bitter laugh rips from my throat. "By who? Your friends? Or you?"
For the first time, a flicker of something not guilt, but irritation cuts across his face.
Like he’s offended I would group him with anyone else.
Like hurting me is a right reserved only for him.
“I don’t let others touch what I’m watching,” he says quietly.
My breath catches.
"Watching," I whisper. "Not owning."
His eyes burn at that.
A customer behind him clears their throat.
He turns slightly just enough to throw them a look sharp enough to cut skin.
They immediately step back, deciding to wait.
He returns his focus to me.
“Ask again,” he says.
“What?”
“What I want.”
I swallow. “What do you want?”
His answer is immediate.
Unfiltered.
Dangerous.
"You."
The word hits me like a blow hot, cold, everywhere at once.
I stumble back a step.
My heart thrashes like prey caught in teeth.
He watches every reaction with brutal, fixated intensity.
And in that moment, I realize something horrifying:
He’s not here because he followed my scent.
He’s not here because he remembered I work mornings.
He’s here because he couldn’t stay away.
Because something about me, my curse, my lineage, my survival pulls at him like gravity pulling a planet apart.
He hates it.
He hates me.
But he wants me close enough to ruin.
My voice cracks. “Get out.”
His brows lift in cold amusement. “Why?”
“Because I need this job. And you…you're standing here, you're making it complicated.”
Something shifts in him.
Something violent.
“I’ll stand where I want,” he says darkly. “And I’ll come when I want.”
“Why?” My voice breaks again.
He doesn't blink.
"Because you unsettle me, little wolf."
The nickname slashes through my ribs.
Cold, Intimate, Possessive.
Before I can respond, he lifts a hand and traces the air near my cheek not touching, but close enough that the heat of his skin ghosts across mine.
“I should kill you,” he murmurs. “Every instinct says I should.”
My breath stalls.
“But,” he continues softly, eyes dropping to my mouth, “there’s something wrong with me. Something that wants to see what you’ll do next instead.”
His eyes rise again, pinning me in place.
“And I don’t like it.”
I whisper, “Then leave.”
He steps back.
One slow, deliberate movement.
For a heartbeat, I think he will.
My pulse unwinds an inch.
Then—
his gaze drops to my skirt again, then to my exposed legs, then back to my eyes.
His voice is a dark promise.
“I’m not done with you.”
He turns, hood falling back over his face, and walks out of the shop without ordering anything.
Without looking back.
But the bell over the door hasn’t stopped ringing before I realize—
His scent still lingers.
His threat still hangs in the air.
And I’m shaking again.
Because Dael didn’t come for coffee.
He came to warn me:
I’m already in his orbit.
And wolves like him don’t let their prey escape.
- Writer
