Death isn't an option

Chapter Eight

Sleep doesn’t feel like sleep.

It feels like falling.

Gray shoreline. Cold water licking at my toes. A woman made of starlight saying not yet and shoving a burning hand into my chest. A giant wolf on the horizon, eyes like moons. Knox’s voice, raw and broken: June.

I jerk awake with a gasp.

The ceiling is still wrong. Too clean. Too white. The steady beep-beep-beep to my left says I’m still a collection of vital signs on a monitor.

For one blissful second I think: nightmare.

And then my body reminds me.

My shoulder throbs. My ribs ache, deep and tender. My leg feels like someone took a cheese grater to my thigh and then hit fast-forward on healing. The scar under my sternum is a live coal.

I remember claws. Teeth. My own screaming. Blood on Knox’s mouth.

In the fog of earlier—when I woke up and he was there and the doctor said “very lucky”—I pushed all of that into a box labeled shock. Trauma. Hallucination. Easier to pretend it was my brain misfiring than to admit reality had bent.

Lying here now, heart pounding, everything clear and awful, I know better.

I saw him.

I saw a wolf the size of a car shift down into a man. I saw Mara and Kade shrink out of fur and bone. I saw dead wolves on the ground, not coyotes, not dogs, not tricks of the light.

I press my palm to my scar. Heat pulses against my hand, answering.

“There are shapeshifters,” I whisper to the empty room. Saying it makes me feel ridiculous and nauseous all at once. “And one of them runs my campus.”

The monitor beeps a little faster, ratting me out.

The last days rearrange themselves: the bar staff whose eyes caught the light wrong, the too-coordinated bouncers, Knox on every corner of my life, saying it’s not safe with a straight face while apparently living in a world where wolves walk around in people-skin.

And then there’s me—bleeding out on the forest floor, then not. Wounds that should have killed me closed in less than a day. A goddess on a gray beach calling me hers.

No.

I push the blankets back. Enough lying here and letting other people talk at me. I might be deeply out of my depth, but I’m not going to float along like a piece of driftwood while a man who turns into a monster decides what to do with me.

The door opens before I can make it very far. Of course it does.

“You’re awake.”

Knox steps in wearing a dark henley and black jeans, the casual version of him that still looks more put-together than most people at their weddings. There’s stubble along his jaw now, shadows under his eyes. For a second, something like relief flickers across his face.

It’s gone fast.

“I said I wanted to talk,” I say. My voice is a little breathless; I adjust my position, ignoring the pull in my side. “Not nap through another round of being handled.”

One corner of his mouth ticks up. “You coded twice. Forgive me for erring on the side of caution.”

“You keep saying that like I’m going to thank you for it,” I snap. “I’m not.”

He closes the door behind him. The soft click sounds final.

He doesn’t take the chair this time. He comes to the side of the bed, close enough that I have to tip my chin up to meet his eyes. The scar under my palm throbs harder.

“You shouldn’t be sitting up yet,” he says. “Your ribs—”

“Are not the most pressing issue,” I cut in. “We can talk about my ribs when we’re done talking about the part where you turned into a wolf.”

His jaw tightens. Just a little. Enough.

Good. At least he has the decency to flinch.

“I was in shock earlier,” I say. “In case you’re wondering why I didn’t start screaming ‘werewolf’ while your doctor was gaslighting me with words like lucky and responsive tissue. But the drugs have worn off, I’ve had a nap, and now my brain has caught up to the part where reality broke.”

He watches me, expression unreadable.

“I saw you,” I continue. “I saw you...change. I saw Mara. I saw Kade. I saw dead things on the ground that were not dogs. Say the word, Knox. Say what you are.”

Silence stretches.

He could deny it. He could lean into that calm, reasonable tone and call it hallucination, trauma, misremembering. He could decide the easiest route is to make me doubt my own mind.

He doesn’t.

“We’re shifters,” he says. “Wolves. My pack has held this territory for a long time.”

The floor doesn’t tilt but something in my chest does.

“How long is ‘a long time’?” I ask.

“Since before this town had a name anyone remembers,” he says. “Since before there was a campus. Since before that clinic was even an idea on paper. We didn’t appear the day you enrolled, June.”

The sheer casualness of it makes me want to laugh. Or throw up.

“So I’ve been walking around in your little… zoo,” I say. “Eating at your bar. Sitting through your safety lectures. All while half the people around me could sprout fur and fangs at any minute. And you just… conveniently left that out of the student handbook?”

A muscle jumps in his cheek. “We leave it out of most handbooks,” he says. “Humans don’t tend to respond well to being told the world is stranger than they think.”

“I’m responding great,” I say. “Ten out of ten, no notes.”

The monitor betrays me with a spike.

He glances at it, then back. “I told you it wasn’t safe,” he says quietly. “I wasn’t exaggerating.”

“You said it like you were talking about crime statistics,” I hiss. “Not murderous giant wolves.”

“Rogues,” he corrects. “Packless wolves who've gone mad. Not my people.”

“Excuse me if that distinction doesn’t make me feel better,” I say.

We stare at each other. My heart slams. The scar burns. The room feels too small.

“I want to leave,” I say finally. “Now. Today.”

His eyes narrow. “No.”

“That wasn’t a question,” I say. “You can either discharge me properly, or I can sign myself out and walk.”

“You’re in no condition to—”

“Walk?” I cut in. “Watch me.”

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The movement sends a spike of pain through my torso; I bite down on a noise that wants to be a whimper. My feet find cold floor. My head swims, but I stay upright.

Knox’s hand clamps gently but firmly around my wrist, just above the IV. “June.”

“Don’t,” I say. The word shakes but holds. “Don’t you dare touch me like I’m a child you can just put back in a crib.”

His fingers flex. For a second, he looks like he’d like to drag me back down and tie me to the bed if that’s what it takes. Then his jaw works and he loosens his grip by a fraction.

“You’re not safe,” he says. “Those rogues found you once. They—or others—could try again. The second they realize you’re still breathing—”

“The second they realize the thing they mauled and left for dead is walking around, yeah, I get it,” I cut in. “But staying here while you play secret monster doctor is not an option. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who has access to me. I don’t even have my phone.”

“You’re in a secured facility,” he says. “My people are guarding you. No one gets in without—”

“Without your permission,” I finish. “Exactly. You’re the problem and the gatekeeper. That’s not reassuring.”

His eyes flash. The glow I saw in the woods flickers there, banked but still present.

“I am not the problem,” he says. “I’m the reason you’re still breathing.”

“And I’m supposed to be grateful,” I say. “Is that it? Thank you, Knox, for deciding my life was worth saving so you could put me in your very nice cage?”

His mouth goes flat. For a moment, something raw and dangerous flickers under the surface.

“You really think that’s why you’re here?” he asks.

“I think you don’t do anything that doesn’t serve you,” I say. “You said it yourself—I’m important. A risk. A security issue. I’m not a person to you. I’m a problem you can’t afford to lose control of.”

His grip on my wrist tightens again, just for a heartbeat, then eases.

“You’re right,” he says. “You are a security issue. You are a complication I didn’t plan for. You’re also someone whose heart stopped in my arms twice in one night, and I’m not interested in letting it happen a third time because you’re stubborn.”

The words land like a punch.

I look away first.

“The doctor said I’m stable,” I say, staring at the wall instead of his face. “He said I’m healing ‘remarkably well.’ If you keep me here against my will, that’s kidnapping. I can sign myself out. I looked at the form on the board when he left--I will walk out of here in a hospital gown if I have to.”

He follows my gaze to the wall, then back. He believes me. I see it.

“And then what?” he asks. “You call the police? Campus security? Tell them there are werewolves in the woods and a man turned into one in front of you? You go back to your dorm alone and wait to see if the next rogue pack hits you harder?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I let someone else deal with your mess instead of letting you manage me like an asset.”

We lock eyes. The air between us hums.

“Fine,” he says at last, the word ground out like it costs him. “You want out of the clinic? You get out. On my terms.”

I exhale slowly. “Of course.”

“You leave here with me,” he says. “We go to Ridge House. I explain what I can somewhere you’re not an easy target. Then, if we can agree on conditions that don’t get you killed or expose my people, you go back to campus.”

“And if we can’t agree?” I ask.

His gaze doesn’t waver. “Then you stay.”

My jaw clenches. “So those are my options? Cage A or Cage B?”

He lets go of my wrist and steps back, giving me space like it’s magnanimous. “Those are the options that don’t end with you dead in a ditch or my pack on the wrong side of a human war.”

The scar under my sternum pulses painfully at the word pack. My hand lands there without thought. His eyes flick down, then up.

“What’s Ridge House?” I ask. “Another clinic? A lab? One of those private estates you threatened me with?”

“It’s home,” he says simply. “Pack land. My family’s house. It’s where I can keep you safest.”

The thought of being taken to his home—whatever that looks like—makes my stomach twist. It feels intimate and threatening at the same time.

But the thought of staying here, anonymous and drugged and at his mercy, makes my skin crawl worse.

“You’ll let me go back to campus,” I say slowly. “If I… cooperate.”

“If you accept protection,” he corrects. “You don’t have to like it. You do have to be alive enough to hate me for it.”

I take a breath. The ribs complain, but they hold.

“Fine,” I say. “Take me to your wolf house.”

***

The SUV is bigger than my first apartment.

Black, glossy, heavy. The doors close with that expensive thunk that says they’re thicker than they look. The windows are tinted enough that I can see out, but no one can see in.

Mara is at the wheel, hair braided back, eyes scanning the road like she’s one bad second from shifting again. Kade rides shotgun. Another dark SUV slips into the lane behind us as we pull away—escort, not coincidence.

I sit in the back with Knox, seatbelt across my bandaged ribs, fingers digging into the leather. Every bounce of the road sends a dull ache through my body. The scent in here is faint but unmistakable now that I know what I’m smelling—him, under the expensive soap and leather. Wild and smoke and something sharp.

“This is not ominous at all,” I mutter.

He glances over. “You wanted out of the clinic.”

“I wanted out of that clinic,” I say. “I didn’t ask to be moved to a mobile panic room.”

His mouth twitches. “If I wanted a panic room, you’d be in one.”

“Oh, right.” I snort. “The private estates. The mountains. I remember your sales pitch.”

“If I wanted to box you in,” he says, tone mild, “you’d have woken up in one of my houses where there are no neighbors, no cell service, and no staff you can bully into slipping you discharge papers.”

The mental image lands like a stone in my gut—me in some glass-and-stone fortress, surrounded by nothing but trees and cliffs and wolves. No campus. No Ian. No witnesses.

I flinch before I can stop myself.

His gaze sharpens.

“I’m not taking you there,” he says after a moment, voice softer. “That’s not what this is.”

“No?” I say. “Because from where I’m sitting, this still looks a lot like you putting me where you want me.”

“I’m putting you where I can keep you alive,” he says. “There’s a difference.”

“To you,” I say. “Not to me.”

He studies me for a second, then looks out the window, jaw tight.

We hit a red light. The other SUV idles behind us, a dark shadow in the mirror.

“How many of you work on campus?” I ask abruptly. “At Blackridge. In security.”

He doesn’t even pretend to misunderstand. “Enough.”

“Enough meaning…?”

“Enough to cover the territory,” he says. “Some are human. Some aren’t. All report to me.”

“And I never noticed,” I murmur.

“You weren’t supposed to,” he says.

I stare at his profile. It hits me how many times I’ve walked through his world blind. How many eyes have been on me. How many teeth.

“Do Ian and Talia know?” I ask. “Any of the humans?”

“No,” he says. “Unless they’re explicitly brought into pack business, humans live human lives. That’s the point.”

“And me?” I ask. “What am I?”

He doesn’t answer.

The silence is worse than any label.

We clear town. The SUV turns off the main road onto a long, tree-lined lane. A gate waits at the end, iron and stone, discreet cameras tucked into the pillars.

As we roll closer, something hits me.

Not physically. Not a sound. More like… pressure.

The hairs on my arms lift. The scar at my sternum warms. It feels like walking into the moment before a storm breaks—charged, expectant.

“What is that?” I whisper.

"It's the pack land boundary," Knox replies.

The gate swings open without anyone getting out. We pass through.

As we do, the pressure deepens. The land under the tires feels different—heavy with attention. Threads brush over my skin, like invisible webs reaching out. My scar flares, heat licking at my ribs.

I grip the seatbelt tighter.

We wind up a long drive lined with old trees. The house comes into view around a bend—a big stone structure with gables and deep eaves, newer glass tucked into old bones. Lights glow warm in the windows. There’s a porch, a sweep of gravel, a sense of age and rootedness.

And under it, a hum.

Wards.

I don’t know how I know the word, but I do. There’s something in the walls and windows, in the way the air feels thicker as we pull up, that says there are more than cameras keeping this place safe.

Mara parks. Kade hops out first, scanning the perimeter. Wolves in human skin doing their invisible job.

The door on my side opens. Knox offers a hand.

I ignore it and slide out on my own. My leg twinges; my ribs bite. I straighten slowly, forcing myself not to hunch like prey.

The gravel crunches under my bare feet—they found me slippers somewhere, but I still feel exposed in the borrowed clothes and hospital-level exhaustion, facing a house that hums like a living thing.

The land’s attention presses harder. My scar throbs. Something in me rises to meet it, an answering note in the same key.

“Welcome to Ridge House,” Knox says.

It feels less like a welcome and more like a sentence.

The sitting room looks like something out of an expensive magazine—dark wood, soft rugs, art that isn’t trying too hard. It smells like coffee and old books and something else—wolf, layered and familiar.

Two people stand when we walk in.

The man is older than Knox, broad-shouldered, hair gone silver at the temples but still dark elsewhere. He has the kind of stillness that reads as power more than age—like he’s spent a lifetime making quick decisions and now doesn’t have to rush for anyone. His gaze slides over me, assessing but not unkind.

The woman beside him has dark hair streaked with white, pulled back in a low knot. Her features are softer, but her eyes are… sharp. Like she’s seen too much and remembers all of it. She takes me in with one long, intent look that makes me want to fidget and stand up straighter at the same time.

“June,” Knox says. “These are my parents. Damon and Lila Graves.”

Retired Alphas. The thought arrives fully formed, even though he hasn’t said the word.

“Ms. Cole,” Damon says, inclining his head. “You’ve had quite a week.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I say.

Lila steps closer. She doesn’t reach for me, just comes into my space enough that I can see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the faint scar along her jaw.

Her gaze drops to my chest. To the place where my scar burns under the borrowed shirt.

The air hums.

My sternum flares white-hot, like Nyra just pressed her palm there again. For a second my vision flickers—the room, the gray shore, the giant wolf on the horizon, all overlaying each other.

Then it’s gone.

Lila’s eyes narrow slightly, like she felt it too.

“You brought her back hot,” she says to Knox, but her eyes are still on me. “That’s good.”

“I didn’t bring her back,” Knox says. “She wasn’t done.”

The back of my neck prickles. They’re talking about me like I’m not here. Like I’m something they passed back and forth with a goddess.

“Okay,” I say, more sharply than I intend. “We’ve established that I’m not a regular ER case. Can we also establish that I’m right here and can hear you?”

Damon’s mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. “Fair enough,” he says. “Sit. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

I don’t want to sit. Sitting feels like conceding ground. But my legs are shaking, and the last thing I want to do is collapse in front of Knox’s entire family, so I perch on the edge of the nearest armchair.

Knox takes up a position slightly behind me and to the side. Not hovering, but in my orbit. Guard and jailer and something else.

Damon leans his hands on the back of another chair. “You already know more than most humans ever do,” he says. “The question is what you think you know.”

“That you’re werewolves,” I say. “That your son turns into one. That there are more of you. That your… pack?—” the word feels strange in my mouth, “—has been living here while the rest of us pretend monsters only exist on Netflix.”

“Accurate enough,” Damon says mildly.

“You nearly died on our land,” Lila adds. “That's our responsibility. That gives us… interest in what happens to you next.”

“Interest,” I repeat. “That’s a very polite word for ‘claim.’”

Her eyes meet mine. There’s no apology in them. “You walked through our boundary,” she says. “Something old in you woke up. Nyra touched you long before last night, but the rogues ripped the scar open. That makes you a problem for more than one of us.”

Nyra. Hearing her name from someone else’s mouth sends a chill through me.

I look at Knox.

“This is the part where you explain why I can’t just walk out of here and go back to my dorm like nothing happened,” I say.

“You can’t,” he says.

Damon nods. “Even if we believed you’d keep quiet about what you saw—and we don’t—you’re a blinking beacon right now. To us. To anything else that’s paying attention. You’re not just a student anymore, June.”

“You’re a Crownwitch,” Lila says quietly. “And everyone who matters will know it soon enough.”

The word slams into me. I don’t fully understand it yet, but every part of me recognizes it. The scar pulses in agreement.

I swallow. “I want to go back to campus,” I say. “To my life. My classes. My friends. Whatever I am to you, I didn’t ask for it. I’m not moving into your… wolf compound.”

“We’re not asking you to,” Damon says. “Not yet.”

Knox’s gaze cuts to him. There’s a conversation there I’m not privy to.

“You can return to campus,” Knox says, each word deliberate. “Sleep in your own bed. Go to your classes. That part, you get back.”

“But,” I prompt.

“But,” he agrees, “you don’t do it alone.”

I knew that was coming. It still makes my teeth clench.

“Define ‘not alone,’” I say.

“Plainclothes protection,” he says. “Rotating. Some you’ll recognize, some you won’t. They’ll blend in—other students, staff, locals. They’ll keep distance unless there’s a problem.”

“So bodyguards,” I say. “I get a personal secret service whether I want one or not.”

“You get to stay alive,” he counters.

“And if I say no?” I ask.

His look is flat. “Then you stay here. Or somewhere less comfortable. But you don’t go back to campus as an unprotected, untrained Crownwitch with a target painted on your back.”

Anger burns up my throat. “You can’t just decide where I live.”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I can. I’d prefer not to have to enforce it the hard way, but don’t mistake my patience for lack of options.”

Damon’s voice cuts in, calm and immovable. “We are not debating whether you get protection, June. We’re debating what kind.”

Lila’s gaze softens a fraction. “No one here wants you to feel like a prisoner,” she says. “But if you walk out of our sight without safeguards, you won’t make it to midterms.”

My hands curl into fists on my knees.

“What else?” I ask. “Besides my own personal security circus.”

“No more wandering alone near the treeline,” Knox says. “No late-night shortcuts through pack boundaries. You stick to routes we approve. They can be as invisible as you want them to be, but they exist.”

“So I’m geo-fenced like a dog.”

He doesn’t flinch. “If that metaphor makes it easier for you to follow the rules, sure.”

“And if I don’t?” I ask.

He meets my eyes. “Then I come get you,” he says. “And next time, we don’t have this conversation again in my parents’ sitting room. We have it somewhere with locks you can’t pick and gates you can’t walk through.”

The message is clear. This is his version of being nice.

It should terrify me more than it does.

What terrifies me is the part of me that is tired enough to want someone else to draw the lines.

I shove that thought down.

“So my choices are supervised freedom or actual captivity,” I say. “Great. Love that for me.”

“You’re alive,” Damon says. “That’s more than you were twelve hours ago.”

I look at him. At Lila. At Knox.

At the room that hums faintly in my bones.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll take your invisible chains over the literal ones. For now.”

Knox’s shoulders loosen a fraction, like he’d been braced for a different answer.

“We’ll have a car take you back tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll have a detail. You’ll have my number. If anything feels wrong, you call. If you decide to test the fence, understand I will not be as patient about it next time.”

“I’m not a dog,” I mutter.

His gaze dips to my scar, then back. “No,” he says. “You’re something much more dangerous.”

I stand, slowly. My body protests but obeys.

“I’ll go back to campus,” I say. “I’ll go to class. I’ll pretend I don’t know the world is sideways now. But don’t mistake compliance for trust, Knox.”

He inclines his head, something complicated flickering behind his eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

I walk out of the room, across polished floors that hum with magic, past walls that watch me. On the front steps, I pause and look back at Ridge House.

The wards buzz at the edge of my senses, brushing against my scar like fingers testing a tether. The land’s claim presses at my heels.

Tomorrow I’ll go “home.” I’ll sleep in my own bed, attend my lectures, text Ian.

And every step I take will be shadowed by wolves and watched by a goddess.

Freedom, with a leash I can’t quite see yet but can already feel tightening around my ribs.