The vampire's fated wolf

7.The murderer's return

LYRA

The air between us became electric. My breath caught in my throat. Every instinct screamed to shift, to tear that smirk off his moonlit face and show him exactly what a humiliated wolf could do to his throat. But this was a pressurized cabin at thirty thousand feet. I was still a Thorne Chen, and I would not give a vampire the satisfaction of a public scene.

I turned my face to the window, locking my eyes onto the white blanket of clouds below us. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm.

"Go back to your seat."

He stood there for a heartbeat longer, his presence thick and suffocating. Finally, he withdrew. Refusing to look at him again, I fought against the strange, humming warmth in my blood. I did not want to know why his voice triggered that reaction, or why the air felt so empty the moment he walked away.

As I stared at the back of his seat, my wolf was no longer snarling. She was dead silent. She was waiting.

Then, a sharp, burning pain hit the middle of my chest, the exact spot where the bond with Kaelen had been ripped out.

A gasp escaped my lips as my fingers dug into the fabric of my hoodie. This was not grief, nor was it the cold ache of the rejection. Something else was happening. An invisible iron hook sank into my marrow, dragging me toward the front of the plane. It was pulling me toward him.

With Kaelen, the bond had been a warm sensation, a constant comfort. This was different. This hook did not care about my feelings. It felt less like a soulmate and more like a predator claiming territory.

I looked down at my hands. My claws were clicking out on their own. The tips were sharp and black, impossible to stop. My claws were preparing to fight an enemy, but my blood was yearning to be claimed.

MALAKAI

Stepping off the plane, I kept my eyes locked on the silver haired wolf as she walked across the tarmac toward a black SUV waiting to pick her up.

The memory of the Oslo terminal still echoed in my bones. That exact moment the air changed had been a physical blow to my chest, sending a shockwave through my dead heart. That frozen muscle had been still for decades. But seeing her in the airport, it had violently restarted with a single, painful thud.

From three rows back, the powerful, steady thump of her heart had carried through the cabin. It was not the thin pulse of a human. It was forceful. Every beat sent a vibration through the floorboards that resonated in the soles of my boots, and my own chest gave a violent twitch in response.

Stopping on the stairs of the jet bridge, I gripped the railing for support. I did not understand it, and I did not want it.

Every instinct fed into me since my first kill screamed to lunge. The urge to tear her apart burned deep, especially since she belonged to the species that had murdered my mother five years ago. Yet as she climbed into the SUV, the hatred I had nurtured felt thin, like a veil being shredded by the wind.

She was broken. It showed in the hunch of her shoulders on the plane and the way she hid behind her hoodie. Meeting her eyes had confirmed it. She was the girl from the news. The Alpha's daughter who had been disgraced at her own engagement. What more could be done to break someone who was already on the ground?

My instincts had wanted her to snarl. She needed to be a beast so the disgust I was supposed to feel could be justified. Instead, the sensation was entirely different. I was being drawn to her.

For hours on the flight, that cramped metal tube had been saturated with her scent. Every time her heart rate spiked, my own pulse jumped in agonizing synchronization. It was a silver tether hooked into my marrow. Every mile flown toward London twisted the hook deeper.

The black SUV pulled away, taking her scent with it. A feeling of being slowly dismembered set in as the physical distance between us grew.

By the time the exit doors of the terminal slid open, the London air hit with the smell of damp pavement. My skin felt too tight for my bones, and my vision swam in a haze of red. This agony was unlike anything I had ever felt in my entire life.

"You look like hell, Malakai."

A voice pulled me back into reality. It was my sister.

Mina leaned against a sleek black car, her arms crossed tight. Pushing off the frame when she spotted me, her stormy grey eyes scanned my face with intense focus.

"Good to see you too, Mina," I managed to mutter.

She stepped forward and wrapped me in a quick, tight hug. My body stayed stiff, catching the unnatural, feverish warmth radiating through her coat. Vampires were never this warm, but my mind was too distracted by my own agony to question it. Pulling away, she punched my arm.

"That is for not calling. And this," she punched again, even harder, "is for making me worry. Do you know what it has been like here? Father has been pacing the halls like a caged animal. The staff are terrified to breathe."

"And what about how he sees you?" I asked, my eyes narrowing.

"I am already used to the fact that he hates everyone," Mina replied, shrugging off our father's coldness. "But at least the staff should be able to work comfortably without fear."

She leaned in, her nose wrinkling as she caught my scent. Her playfulness vanished completely, replaced by a sharp, calculating gaze.

"You smell awful, Malakai," she whispered, her voice dropping so the driver could not hear us. "You smell like a wolf, but underneath that, there is dead blood. And it is not yours. What happened in Norway?. Malakai, Who did you kill?"