Chapter 2: Mine
1474 Words
Chapter 2: Mine
His words hung between us like a blade that had already decided where to cut.
It belongs to me.
I stared at him, breath trapped somewhere between my throat and my chest, every instinct screaming at me to back away. But the night had gone too still. The forest seemed to be listening. Even the wind had thinned into silence, as if the world itself wanted to hear what he would say next.
“You cannot mean that,” I said, though my voice came out weaker than I wanted.
A slow, dangerous curve touched his mouth. Not quite a smile. More like he had been waiting for me to say something foolish enough to amuse him.
“I never say things I do not mean.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you need.”
I shook my head once, hard. “You do not know me.”
His gaze moved over my face, my hands, the tear tracks still cooling on my skin, then lower, just for a second, to the place where my palm had pressed against my stomach earlier. Something unreadable passed through his eyes.
“I know enough.”
The forest suddenly felt smaller. Closer. Like the dark was folding itself around us.
I swallowed. “If you think I am going anywhere with you, you are insane.”
He looked almost pleased by that. “You say that like it is a problem.”
My pulse kicked hard. “Who are you?”
He did not answer right away. Instead he took one slow step forward. Then stopped, as if he enjoyed the distance more than the closeness. Like he wanted me to feel every inch of it.
“A stranger,” he said at last.
My jaw tightened. “That is not good enough.”
“It has to be.”
I should have run then. I should have shifted, vanished into the trees, left him standing there with his calm voice and his impossible eyes. But my body would not move. Not because I was brave. Because something in me had gone still. The same terrible stillness that comes right before a storm breaks.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
“You are exhausted,” he said quietly.
“I am fine.”
“You are trembling.”
“I am angry.”
His gaze sharpened. “That too.”
That should have infuriated me more. It did, but not enough to drown out the strange, raw awareness crawling beneath my skin. He was too close without touching me. Too calm after what had just happened. Too sure of himself in a way that made me want to slap him and lean toward him in the same breath.
I hated that.
I hated him for making my body react like this when my heart had barely survived one betrayal already.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why are you here?”
The silence that followed was too deliberate.
Then he said, “Because you were left alone in the dark.”
My throat tightened. “That is not your concern.”
“It became my concern the moment he broke the bond.”
The words struck harder than I expected.
Not because they were kind.
Because they were true.
The memory hit me again all at once. Kael’s cold voice. The crowd. The way his hand had held hers without hesitation. The snap of something sacred tearing inside me while everyone watched. I looked away before the shame could rise again, but the stranger moved with it, not touching me, just staying in my line of sight.
“You should go back,” I said, even though I already knew I would never do it. “They will not stop looking for me.”
A dark glint appeared in his eyes. “I know.”
My stomach dropped. “What does that mean?”
“It means you are not as alone as you think.”
The trees shifted. Somewhere deeper in the forest, a branch cracked.
I stiffened. He heard it too. His entire body changed, not with panic, but with focus. The air around him sharpened.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“Trouble,” he said.
Before I could ask what kind, he turned and looked through the trees, his expression turning colder by the second. I followed his gaze and saw movement between the trunks. Not one shape. Several. Dark figures slipping through the brush with the kind of certainty that only comes from hunting.
My blood turned to ice.
“They found me,” I whispered.
He did not look at me when he answered. “Yes.”
I went rigid. “You knew?”
“I expected it.”
That made my stomach twist. “And you did not think to mention it before now?”
He finally looked at me, and there was something almost amused in his face. “You were busy threatening to leave.”
Another crack sounded closer this time. Then a low whistle cut through the trees, sharp and controlled. A signal. My pulse hammered.
“How many?” I asked.
His eyes stayed on the dark. “Enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to make things inconvenient.”
That was not reassuring.
I took a step backward. “We need to go.”
He glanced at me then, and for the first time since I had met him, something like approval flickered across his face.
“You do learn quickly.”
“I am serious.”
“So am I.”
Another movement flashed between the trees, and this time I caught the glint of metal. My breath snagged.
They were armed.
My body reacted before my mind could catch up, every muscle tightening, every nerve flaring. I looked from the shadows to him and back again. “Who are they?”
His voice lowered. “The kind of men who do not come this far unless they are certain they will get what they want.”
That answer was worse than no answer at all.
Then one of the figures stepped into the moonlight.
My heart dropped straight through the ground.
He wore my pack’s crest.
Not on his coat. On his throat.
A mark of rank.
A warning.
The man raised his chin and stared at me like I was something that had wandered out of place and needed to be collected.
“Elara Voss,” he called, his voice carrying through the dark. “By order of Alpha Kael, you are to come back quietly.”
My stomach turned.
Quietly.
As if I had any choice.
As if I had not already been thrown away.
The stranger beside me let out a sound so soft it was almost a laugh. But there was no humor in it.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
I looked at him, and he looked back at me with an expression that made the air inside my lungs feel too thin.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
I stared. “You have no right to tell me what to do.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth for the briefest moment, then lifted again. “And yet, you still listen.”
Another figure stepped out from the trees. Then another.
Three.
No, four.
My heart began to pound so hard it hurt. One of them smiled when he saw me, and the sight of it made something sick rise in my throat. I knew that face. I had seen it in the pack grounds. He had laughed when Kael rejected me.
The stranger beside me moved one step closer, until the heat of him brushed against my arm. Not enough to touch. Enough to make the threat of it burn.
“They brought someone important,” he said softly.
“What do you mean?”
His eyes never left the man with the pack crest.
“I mean,” he said, “they did not come to bring you home.”
The man in front raised his hand. In it was a silver chain.
My breath stopped.
That chain was not for bringing someone back.
It was for binding them.
For forcing a bond to obey.
“Run,” the stranger said.
I turned to him in shock. “What?”
He looked at me then, fully, and whatever I saw in his face made my blood run cold.
“Run,” he repeated, voice suddenly low and lethal. “Because if they get that chain on you, you will not make it to morning.”
The first wolf lunged.
And the stranger beside me smiled like a man who had been waiting all night for the chance to kill...
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