Bound To The North

Chapter 2

The word hits like a blow.

Not spoken aloud — felt.

It slams into my chest, rattles my ribs, coils tight around my spine. My wolf rears back with a violent snarl, claws scraping against the inside of my skull.

No.

The presence shifts.

Footsteps finally echo across the marble — slow, unhurried, deliberate. Each one sends a low vibration through the floor, through my bones. He’s tall. Heavy. Every step carries certainty, ownership.

I bare my teeth instinctively, shoulders squaring despite the chains.

“You’re wrong,” I snap into the open space. My voice echoes, sharp and brittle. “Whatever you think you feel — you’re wrong.”

A low chuckle rolls through the hall.

Warm. Amused.

Dangerous.

“I wondered how long it would take,” he says calmly. “Your father always said you were stubborn.”

That stops me cold.

My heart stutters. “Don’t speak about him,” I hiss.

He steps into view.

And the world tilts.

He isn’t masked.

Dark hair, cut short and neat, dusted faintly with silver at the temples. His face is carved, brutal in its symmetry — sharp jaw, high cheekbones, a mouth that looks like it rarely smiles and means something entirely different when it does. His eyes—

Gods.

The same blue-green as the man in the snow.

But deeper. Older. Infinite.

Alpha.

My wolf slams against my chest, howling, rage and pull and terror twisting together so violently I stagger. The guards tense, but he lifts one finger and they freeze instantly.

“Leave us,” he says quietly.

They hesitate.

His gaze flicks toward them — not angry, not loud.

They retreat immediately.

The doors close.

Silence crashes down.

I lift my chin, even as my pulse betrays me. “So,” I say, forcing steel into my voice. “You’re the one hiding behind stolen men and chains.”

A corner of his mouth lifts. Not a smile. A warning.

“You were never supposed to be taken like this,” he replies. “That was… an unfortunate acceleration.”

I laugh, sharp and humorless. “You trafficked me.”

“No.” He stops a few paces away. “I bought a promise. Someone else broke it.”

My nails dig into my palms. “You think that makes this better?”

“No,” he says honestly. “I think it makes it inevitable.”

The pull tightens.

My wolf presses forward, furious and trembling. He is wrong. He is danger. He is—

Mine.

I gag against the tape as the bond snaps fully into place — a live wire igniting between us. Heat floods my chest, burns through the cold, through the pain, through the fury.

I hate him.

I hate that my body knows him.

I hate that my wolf recognises him.

He watches it all — the flinch, the tremor, the way my breathing changes — with quiet intensity.

“You feel it,” he says softly.

I glare at him, eyes blazing. “I would rather die.”

Something dark flickers in his gaze then — not anger.

Respect.

“That,” he murmurs, stepping closer at last, “is exactly why this is going to be difficult.”

He reaches out — not to touch, not yet — and gestures toward the chains.

“Welcome to the north, Lyla Vale,” he says.

“Alpha or not… you are mine now.”

My wolf screams.

And I swear, on blood and bone and moonlight —

I will burn his world to the ground before I ever kneel.