Fangs On Ice

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR: The Wolf Inside

Dominic's POV

The moment she ran, my wolf nearly tore out of my skin to chase her.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to hunt, to catch, to claim. Three years of carefully constructed walls crumbled in the span of a heartbeat, and I was left standing in that hallway with my claws half-extended and my eyes burning gold.

Theo grabbed my arm. "Dom. Dom, you need to breathe."

"She knows."

"Yeah, I figured that out when she sprinted like her life depended on it." He tightened his grip. "What are you going to do?"

I did not answer. I just moved.

The parking garage was four floors down and across the building, but I knew a shortcut through the maintenance corridors. I had mapped every inch of this arena when we first arrived, back when I was twenty-two and terrified and trying to keep fifteen wolves alive in a city that did not know monsters walked its streets.

I found her near her car, keys shaking in her hand, and something in my chest cracked open at the fear in her eyes.

She was afraid of me.

“Good,” my wolf whispered. “She should be.”

But the man disagreed. The man had been watching Maren Cole for three years, noticing the way she laughed at Theo's terrible jokes, the way she stayed late to ice Jonas's shoulder when he was too proud to ask, the way she looked at the team like we were hers to protect.

She had no idea how dangerous that made her.

The conversation in the garage was the hardest thing I had ever done. Harder than taking over the pack at twenty-two. Harder than burying my father. I told her everything, watched her face cycle through disbelief and terror.

My wolf howled with something that felt dangerously like triumph, and I had to clench my fists to keep from reaching for her.

Then my pack arrived.

Nadia came through the lobby door first, her eyes glowing and her expression murderous. Theo followed, then Marcus and Elena, all of them radiating tension that made the air feel thick. They had heard everything through our bond, felt my wolf's reaction to this human, and they were not happy.

"That will not end very well," Nadia had answered the question Marren had asked. Scaring the human even more than she should be.

I stepped between them and my wolf, the one I had been fighting all night, finally settled into something cold and certain.

*She is under my protection.* I said through the pack link.

*She is a liability.* Nadia's voice through the link was flat. *Pack law is clear, Alpha. Humans who discover us are dealt with. You do not get to make exceptions because your wolf thinks she smells nice.*

Maren made a small sound behind me. I did not turn around.

*I am Alpha. I decide what the law means.*

*The elders will not see it that way.*

*Then the elders can take it up with me directly.*

The tension stretched until it was almost unbearable. Nadia was my third, loyal to the bone, but she was also practical in ways that sometimes made my stomach turn. She would kill Maren right now if she thought it would protect the pack. She would not enjoy it, but she would do it.

"Take her home," I said finally. "Theo, you drive. Stay outside her building until I send word."

"And where are you going?" Theo asked.

"To deal with my pack."

The drive to pack territory took two hours, and I spent every minute of it trying to get my wolf under control. He was pacing inside my skull, agitated in a way I had not felt since my father died. Something about Maren had triggered instincts I did not fully understand, instincts that went beyond simple attraction or protectiveness.

My wolf wanted to mark her. Claim her. Make her ours in every way that mattered.

Which was insane, because she was human and terrified and I had just turned upside down her entire understanding of reality.

The pack house was a sprawling cabin deep in a secluded part of the forest, far enough from the city that we could run in our wolf form for miles without being seen.

I parked and sat in the darkness for a long moment, gathering myself, but a tap tap sound broke through my meditation.

It was John, one of the pack pubs.

“Alpha, she is waiting for you.”

I didn't need to ask who. I simply nodded and followed the boy into the pack compound.

Irina was waiting on the porch.

My aunt was fifty-eight years old, silver-streaked hair pulled back in a severe bun, and she had the same grey eyes I saw in the mirror every morning. She had raised me after my father's death, trained me for leadership, supported me through every challenge.

Lately, something about her felt wrong.

"I heard what happened," she said as I approached. "The human woman. She knows."

"Yes."

"And you let her live."

"Yes."

Irina's expression did not change, but I felt her disapproval like a physical weight. "Your father would never have been so careless."

"My father is dead." The words came out harder than I intended. "I am Alpha now. My decisions."

"Your decisions affect the entire pack, Dominic. Every wolf in this territory is at risk because you could not control yourself around one human woman."

"I am handling it."

"Are you?" She stepped closer, and her eyes flashed gold. "Or are you letting your wolf make choices your brain would never approve of? I have seen how you look at her. I have seen you watching her at games, at practice, finding excuses to be near her."

My jaw tightened. She was not wrong. I had noticed Maren from her first day with the team, her competence and her sharp tongue and the way she refused to be intimidated by men twice her size. I had told myself it was professional interest, Alpha instincts cataloging a new presence in my territory.

I had been lying to myself for three years.

"The elders are coming," Irina said. "Tomorrow night. They want to discuss the situation."

"There is nothing to discuss."

"There is everything to discuss." Her voice dropped, and something flickered in her eyes that I could not read. "Viktor Soren is circling, waiting for weakness. If the Council thinks you are compromised, they will remove you from leadership. And then who protects your precious pack?"

"Is that a threat?"

"It is reality." She turned and walked back toward the house. "Deal with the foolish human, Dominic. One way or another. Before someone else does it for you."

I stood in the darkness long after she disappeared inside, my wolf snarling and my mind racing.

The elders would demand Maren's death or her memory wiped. I could fight them, but that would fracture the pack at the worst possible moment. Viktor was watching, waiting for exactly this kind of internal conflict.

And somewhere in the city, a human woman was sitting in her apartment trying to process the fact that monsters were real.

I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Theo.

*Do not let her out of your sight.*

Then I went inside to prepare for a war on two fronts.