Chapter two
707 Words
I didn’t know where he was taking me.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t dead.
Yet.
Kael walked several steps ahead of me, silent and tense. His presence radiated power, the kind that pressed against your skin and made you think twice about speaking without permission. I could feel the eyes of his wolf, even when his back was turned.
Still, I followed. What choice did I have?
The path twisted deeper into the forest, until we broke through a veil of mist and stepped into a clearing unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Massive stone walls loomed ahead—ancient, covered in ivy, and humming with protective runes. Guards with sharp eyes and sharper blades stood at the gate, but when they saw him, they lowered their weapons instantly.
“Alpha Kael,” one of them greeted with a fist over his chest. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s not my blood,” Kael replied without looking at him.
His voice was rough gravel, and I couldn’t help the way it sent a shiver down my spine.
The guard’s eyes slid to me. His brows furrowed.
“She’s with me,” Kael said sharply, and just like that, the man looked away.
We passed through the gate and entered Nightfang territory.
It felt… different. The air was denser, charged. Wolves moved in the shadows between the dark cabins and the open training yards. They paused as we passed, eyes narrowing, sniffing the air.
And I knew the exact moment they caught it.
The scent of the bond.
Their Alpha’s mate.
Kael kept walking like he didn’t notice the way heads turned or the murmurs that started to ripple behind us. I tried to shrink into myself, but it didn’t help. I could feel the stares—some curious, some disgusted, and more than a few angry.
He led me into a large cabin that smelled like leather and smoke and something uniquely him. The door slammed shut behind us, and silence settled like dust.
I turned to face him. “You don’t want me here.”
His jaw clenched, and he didn’t deny it. “You’re a complication.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“And yet here we are.”
He ran a hand through his rain-drenched hair, pacing like a storm in a cage. I stood there dripping and shaking, waiting for the rejection that was surely coming.
“I’m not like the others,” I said, swallowing hard. “I don’t even shift. I’m broken.”
Kael stopped in his tracks. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“You don’t know what you are.”
I stared at him. “And you do?”
His eyes flared. “I know you’re not nothing.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
Why would the feared Alpha Kael say something like that?
He turned away from me again. “You can stay here. Until I figure out what to do.”
“Stay… here? In your house?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I have guest rooms.”
My cheeks burned, and not just from embarrassment. “Right. Because the idea of touching someone like me—”
“Don’t,” he cut in sharply, his voice like steel. “This has nothing to do with what I want.”
I hesitated. “Then what?”
He looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I saw pain behind the anger.
“I made a vow a long time ago,” he said quietly. “I would never take a mate.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he walked past me, opened a door down the hall, and gestured inside.
“You’ll sleep here. Don’t leave the house without my permission.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a rule.”
He shut the door, leaving me alone with nothing but my own heartbeat and a thousand questions.
I collapsed onto the edge of the bed, the softness foreign beneath my rain-soaked clothes.
What was I doing here?
Why did the bond choose him—someone as closed-off and dangerous as Kael?
And more importantly…
Why didn’t it scare me?
- Writer
