His Savage Devotion

Chapter 8

Angelus

The wind carried her scent before I saw her.

Crisp like winter water. Soft like dawn. It hit me mid-stride, my paws pounding the forest floor just outside the Half Moon Pack’s territory. My breath caught, heart slamming in my chest.

Her.

The world narrowed to instinct, to memory clawing up from lifetimes ago.

I didn’t think. I shifted.

Caz blinked once—then vanished behind the rush of my mind. My body was mine again. I, Angelus, ran toward the pull. Toward the tether I’d once lost, long ago.

And then I saw her.

She was standing still in the clearing, wind brushing her silver fur. Those eyes—brown and mournful—met mine, and I forgot how to breathe.

“Stella,” I said aloud, my voice not echoing in air, but in something deeper.

She stepped forward, paws silent against the mossy ground. She didn’t shift. Neither did I. Not yet.

We stared, drinking each other in.

“I wondered if it would be you,” I said, something like awe in my voice. “Even in this new life… I knew.”

Her eyes shimmered.

“It’s you,” she whispered.

I closed the distance between us. I could feel her trembling, like I was, though neither of us showed it. Not truly.

“I waited for you.” My voice cracked. “All those years ago, with Juliet. And when she left, when she married Koa—I broke.” I bowed my head. “I failed you.”

“No,” she said, stepping closer. “You didn’t. We were never given the choice. I loved you. I still love you. I’ve carried it—across lives. Through Selene’s silence. Through the ache.”

I let my muzzle brush hers, gently. Reverently.

“I thought the pain would fade,” I murmured. “But it didn’t. It lived in me. Just as you did.”

Her breath hitched.

“I dreamed of you,” she whispered. “Every life I woke without you, I felt less.”

She leaned against me then. And for the first time in countless years, I let the weight of her calm the storm in me.

“We were meant to run together,” I said. “To build, to love, to live. And instead…”

“Instead, we died with everyone else,” Stella whispered. “I watched the world fall apart because I didn’t fight hard enough. Because she—I—chose fear.”

“No more,” I said, with a soft growl. “Not in this life.”

She lifted her gaze. “Do you think Selene gave us another chance?”

“I know she did.” My voice was steel. “We will not waste it.”

She leaned into me, their silvery-white and black fur mixing. Her scent wrapped around me like a memory and a promise all at once.

Together, we stood there—two ancient souls in borrowed skin. Two wolves reforged by time and regret.

Together again.

At last.

Stella

I remembered the scent of him before I remembered his name.

It drifted through the trees like a memory I had buried in my bones — pine smoke, frost, the charge of lightning before it strikes. My breath caught. My heart stilled.

Then I saw him.

Angelus.

Goddess, even now, just the sight of him unraveled me.

He was every inch the shadow I remembered—massive, quiet, eyes like green fire. But his presence wasn’t fearsome. It was home. A home I hadn’t let myself grieve in centuries.

He said my name like a prayer. Like I hadn’t been lost. Like he hadn’t waited lifetimes.

And when he stepped toward me, I didn’t run.

I should have. For Taryn. For the life I swore I’d protect this time. But my soul had been incomplete for too long. I wasn’t strong enough to turn away from him.

I pressed my muzzle to his, our foreheads meeting.

I inhaled him. Let his warmth anchor me. Let it hurt.

“Do you remember the grove?” I whispered, not aloud—but into that shared space where wolves speak without words. “The last time we saw each other?”

He did. I could feel it ripple through him—sharp, fast, unbearable.

I continued, “You waited for her at the altar. For me. I never came.”

“You wanted to,” he answered, and I could feel his sorrow hum through my bones.

“I did.” My eyes burned. “But Juliet was so afraid. She thought duty would keep our people safe. She thought walking away from you was noble.”

“Our humans all died anyway,” he said, voice like a wound. “And still I searched.”

A pause stretched between us—heavy, sacred.

“I’m so sorry, Angelus.”

His eyes met mine. And in them, I saw a lifetime of pain. Of yearning. But no resentment.

“We were never meant to end that way,” he murmured. “But we begin again now.”

I wanted to believe it. With everything I had.

But I was scared.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” I said.

He stepped closer, his nose brushing the side of my neck. “Then don’t.”

My eyes fluttered shut. My breath shuddered. I leaned into him, and for one fleeting second, the weight of the past lifted.

But reality still loomed like fog at the edges of dawn.

“I can’t hold on to you yet,” I said, the words cracking open something inside me. “Taryn isn’t ready.”

He pulled back slightly—not with rejection, but with reverence. “Then I’ll wait. I always have.”

I smiled softly.

“Just don’t run too far,” I whispered. “I don’t want to chase you again.”

“You never had to chase me, Stella,” he replied. “I was always yours.”

And then we stood there, not as warriors, or relics of tragedy, but as wolves reborn.

Two pieces, finding their place again.

Taryn

The world snapped back with a jolt.

One moment, I was weightless—suspended in some distant, unreachable place—and the next, I was on all fours in the dark woods behind my father’s house, my lungs dragging in air like I hadn’t breathed in hours.

Pain thrummed behind my eyes. My legs ached. My skin prickled with leftover adrenaline.

I shifted before I realized I was doing it.

The shift wasn’t smooth this time. It stuttered, sharp and reluctant, like Stella didn’t want to let go. Like she wasn’t ready to give me my body back.

Then, all at once, I was kneeling in the dirt, naked, breathless, human again.

“Stella,” I rasped, arms curling around myself. “What the hell was that?”

Silence.

I tried again, pushing through the dull throb in my head. “You pushed me out. You’ve never done that before.”

Nothing. Not a whisper. Not a flicker of presence. Just… distance.

“Stella, talk to me.”

My voice cracked. I pulled my legs to my chest, curling in on myself as the cold night air whispered across my skin.

She didn’t answer. Not in words. But I felt something. A tremor in my chest. Guilt? Sadness?

Longing.

“Please,” I whispered. “What happened out there?”

I tried to summon her—tried to pull her forward like I had before. But all I felt was resistance. Not anger. Just… refusal.

She was shutting me out.

“Was it him?” I asked quietly. “Was it Caz? Or his wolf?”

The way she pulled back in response was answer enough.

I swallowed the tight knot in my throat. “Why won’t you tell me? I deserve to know.”

Still, she remained silent. Guarded. Like if she told me, the truth would unravel everything.

And maybe it would.

I sat there for a long time in the dirt, trying to calm the riot in my chest. Trying not to feel betrayed by my own soul.

Stella had always been my constant. My compass. The part of me that never lied.

But tonight… she was something else. Someone I didn’t recognize.

And that terrified me more than anything.