CHAPTER 4
1832 Words
Elara didn’t move for a long time after Rowan vanished into the trees.
The porch boards were cold under her bare feet, the spilled stew already congealing into something that looked too much like blood. The forest had gone unnaturally quiet (no wind, no ravens, no distant owl). Just the low thrum of the Compact under everything, waiting.
Seventeen days.
She finally went inside, locked the door out of habit more than belief, and stood in the middle of the small living room with her hands clenched at her sides. The mark on her arm gave a single, almost gentle pulse (like a reminder, or a question).
Rowan was on the roof. She could feel him now: a heavy, watchful presence directly above her, heat bleeding through the cedar shingles. If she closed her eyes she could pinpoint exactly where he sat, knees drawn up, staring out at the dark the way other people stared at oncoming storms.
She should shower. Eat something that wasn’t adrenaline and venison. Sleep.
Instead she found herself climbing the narrow ladder to the loft, pushing open the small hatch that led to the widow’s walk no one had used since the 1940s. The night air hit her like cold water.
Rowan didn’t turn, but every line of his body went rigid the second her head cleared the roofline.
“I told you to lock the door,” he said to the darkness.
“I did.” She stepped fully onto the roof. The shingles were rough and icy under her soles. “You’re brooding loud enough to wake bears. Figured I’d see what flavor of self-loathing we’re on tonight.”
He huffed (not quite a laugh). “Go back inside, Elara.”
“No.” She walked the narrow peak until she stood beside him. The ridge fell away below them in black waves of trees, silvered wherever moonlight touched. Far off, something howled (long, mournful, answered by a chorus that made the hair on her arms rise).
Rowan’s profile was all hard angles and shadows. Blood from the earlier fight still crusted along his hairline. He hadn’t bothered to clean it off.
“You almost kissed me,” she said quietly.
His jaw flexed. “I know.”
“And then you ran away like I’d pulled a grenade pin.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “I was trying to be good.”
“Newsflash, wolf boy: good is overrated.” She sat (carefully, because the roof was steep and she had no interest in becoming a cautionary tale). Their shoulders didn’t touch, but the heat radiating off him made the cold night bearable. “Talk to me.”
For a long time he didn’t. When he finally spoke, his voice was raw.
“My mother used to say the bond was a leash with two ends. The Alpha thinks he’s holding it, but the bearer is the one who decides whether to heel or drag him into traffic.” He turned his head then, gold eyes catching starlight. “I’ve spent my whole life making sure no one ever got close enough to pull.”
Elara’s throat tightened. “And now?”
“Now the leash is around my throat and the other end is in the hands of a woman who could ghost the entire supernatural world without breaking a sweat.” He looked away again. “I’m not afraid of the Hollowed, Elara. I’m afraid of you.”
The confession hung between them, fragile and terrifying.
She reached out (slowly, deliberately) and threaded her fingers through his. His hand engulfed hers, rough and trembling just slightly.
“I’m afraid of me too,” she whispered. “But I’m still here.”
Rowan turned fully toward her then, moving like a man afraid the moment would shatter. He lifted their joined hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles (once, twice), reverent, like she was something sacred instead of a glitch in his carefully ordered universe.
“I will wait,” he said against her skin. “However long it takes. Seventeen days or seventeen years. I’m yours to keep or to break.”
The bond flared between them, warm and steady and achingly gentle. Elara felt the truth of it settle in her bones: he meant every word.
She leaned forward until their foreheads touched. His breath was warm against her lips.
“I’m not ready for forever,” she said.
“I know.”
“But I’m not ready to walk away either.”
His free hand came up, cupping the back of her neck with exquisite care. “Then we stay right here. In the messy middle. Until you know.”
They stayed like that (foreheads touching, hands linked, the forest breathing around them) until the sky began to pale in the east and the first bird risked a tentative chirp.
Rowan walked her back down the ladder at dawn, steadying her when her foot slipped on the rungs. At the bottom he paused, thumb brushing her lower lip once (just once) before stepping back.
“Training at ten,” he said, voice rough with everything neither of them had said out loud. “Wear something you don’t mind getting ruined.”
He was gone before she could answer, melting into the trees like smoke.
Elara touched her mouth, still tingling from the almost-kiss that hadn’t happened, and felt the mark on her arm pulse in perfect rhythm with her heartbeat.
Seventeen days.
For the first time, it didn’t feel like a countdown.
It felt like a beginning.
The sun was barely over the ridge when Elara stepped outside again, boots laced, hair twisted into a knot that would survive whatever Rowan had planned. She’d found a pair of black tactical pants and a thermal shirt that actually fit (someone, probably Mara, had left them folded on the porch rail sometime before dawn). A note in sharp, slanted handwriting read: Try not to let him break you on day one. –M
Rowan was already in the clearing behind the cabins, shirtless despite the frost, moving through a series of slow, lethal forms that looked like tai chi designed by a serial killer. Every motion was controlled violence: elbows striking air hard enough to whistle, knees driving upward, hands curling into claws that could gut a bear. He didn’t look up when her boots crunched on gravel, but the rhythm changed (subtle, predatory). He knew exactly where she was.
Elara stopped at the edge of the packed dirt circle the pack used for sparring. “You said ten. It’s nine-fifty-eight.”
Rowan finished the form, exhaled once, and turned. Sweat gleamed on his skin even in the cold. “You’re early. Good.”
He crossed the distance in three strides and stopped just outside arm’s reach. Close enough that she could see the faint white scar that ran from his left collarbone to the top of his ribs (old silver poisoning, she guessed). Close enough that the heat rolling off him cut straight through her jacket.
“Rules,” he said. “No claws, no fangs. You tap or say stop, we stop. No ego. No holding back. You want to learn to survive what’s coming? You learn to hit me like you mean it.”
Elara rolled her shoulders. “And if I actually hurt you?”
A slow, dangerous smile curved his mouth. “Then I’ll be very proud and very turned on. Try not to aim for the face; Mara gets cranky when I bleed on her floors.”
He tossed her a pair of fingerless gloves. She caught them one-handed.
They started slow: footwork, balance, how to use hips instead of arms. Rowan corrected her stance with hands that were careful but never hesitant (fingers pressing into her waist, sliding down to adjust the angle of her hips, thumb brushing the inside of her wrist when he repositioned her guard). Every touch was clinical and absolutely not. The bond hummed between them like a live wire, translating every point of contact into heat that pooled low and treacherous.
By the time he moved them into actual strikes, Elara was breathing hard and trying not to think about how easy it would be to lean in and bite the sweat-slick skin of his throat.
Rowan blocked her first punch without looking. “Again. Mean it.”
She did. Again and again until her knuckles throbbed and her lungs burned. He never hit back (just redirected, absorbed, let her feel the difference between human strength and what waited under his skin).
Then he changed the game.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“What?”
“Trust me.”
She did (God help her, she did). The world went dark.
The first attack came from behind: an arm like iron banding across her throat, not squeezing, just reminding her how fast death could be. She reacted the way he’d taught her (elbow to solar plexus, stomp on instep, twist and drop her weight). Rowan let her go with a soft grunt of approval.
“Good. Again.”
They drilled until her shirt clung to her back and her legs shook. Until every breath tasted like pine and exertion and him. Until the line between training and something else blurred completely.
He took her down for the seventh (or eighth) time, sweeping her legs so she landed flat on her back with his weight pinning her wrists above her head. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Rowan loomed over her, hair falling forward, gold eyes feral.
“Yield,” he growled.
Elara arched up instead, close enough that her lips brushed the shell of his ear. “Make me.”
The sound he made was inhuman.
For one suspended heartbeat she thought this was it (the moment restraint snapped). His pupils were blown wide, fangs just barely lengthening, the bond roaring between them like a storm about to break.
Then Mara’s voice cut across the clearing like a whip.
“Alpha. We have movement on the north ridge. Hollowed. Three, maybe four. They’re testing the wards.”
Rowan froze. Slowly, agonizingly, he released Elara’s wrists and pushed himself up. The absence of his weight felt like falling.
He didn’t look at her as he stood. “Training’s over for today.”
Elara sat up, chest heaving. “Rowan—”
He was already walking away, every muscle locked tight. At the tree line he paused, just long enough to speak without turning.
“Next time you tell me to make you,” he said, voice ragged, “I won’t stop.”
Then he shifted mid-stride (black wolf exploding out of human skin) and vanished into the forest.
Elara stayed on the ground a long time, staring at the sky, tasting blood where she’d bitten her tongue to keep from calling him back.
Sixteen days.
She wasn’t sure either of them would survive the wait.
- Writer
