CHAPTER TWO : THE WHO WOULD NOT LET ME GO
1765 Words
I wake to warmth.
Not the gentle kind. Not the kind that belongs to blankets or sunlight or a cozy room.
This heat is different. It seeps into my bones, heavy and suffocating, curling low in my stomach and spreading outward like a living thing. My first thought is that I’m burning up with a fever. My second is that I’m not alone.
I suck in a sharp breath and my eyes fly open.
Dark wooden beams stretch above me, unfamiliar and shadowed. Firelight flickers somewhere nearby, casting slow-moving shapes along the walls. The air smells like pine and smoke... And something deeper, richer. Something that makes my pulse jump for no reason I can explain.
I try to move, but my body is a little bit hesitant. Pain flares through my ankle, sharp enough to steal my breath. I gasp and instinctively curl inward, clutching the blanket wrapped tightly around my body.
Blanket...
I freeze.
I don’t remember being wrapped in anything.
My memory rushes back all at once... Snow, darkness, golden eyes, arms crushing me against a burning chest.
"Mine."
My heart slams violently against my ribs.
“Easy.”
The voice comes from my left, low and steady.
I jerk my head toward the sound and nearly choke on my own breath.
He’s sitting in a chair near the fire, one arm resting along the back, his posture relaxed, but there’s nothing relaxed about the way his eyes track every movement I make. He’s watching me like I might bolt at any second. Like he expected.
Up close, he’s even more intimidating.
Tall. Broad shouldered. Dark hair falling loosely around a sharp, scarred face. Firelight dances across his features, highlighting the hard planes of his jaw, the faint lines near his eyes that speak of violence survived and violence given...
And his eyes...
They’re not gold now, they’re gray!
Steel cold. Alert. Focused entirely on me.
I scramble backward on instinct, ignoring the pain screaming through my ankle. The blanket tangles around my legs as I hit the headboard with a dull thud.
“Don’t,” he says sharply, already moving.
He’s on his feet in an instant, crossing the space between us with alarming speed. He stops just short of the bed, hands raised... Not in surrender, but restraint.
“You’re injured,” he states.
“I don’t know you,” I snap, my voice shaking. “Where am I?”
“A cabin.”
“That’s not an answer.”
His jaw tightens. “It’s the only one you need right now.”
I laugh weakly, panic bubbling up in my chest like a wildfire. “That’s not how this works. You don’t get to drag me out of the woods and decide what I need.”
Something flashes across his face... Annoyance, maybe, or something darker.
“I didn’t drag you,” he says. “I carried you.”
“That’s not better.”
For a moment, silence stretches between us, thick and heavy. The fire pops softly, the only sound grounding me in the room.
He exhales slowly, like he’s choosing his next words carefully.
“My name is Kael,” he says. “You collapsed in the forest. Your ankle was badly twisted. I brought you here because you would have frozen to death otherwise.”
I swallow hard.
“And the thing I saw?” I ask quietly. “The eyes. The—”
“A wolf,” he says.
The word lands between us, heavy and deliberate.
I stare at him, searching his face for mockery. A joke. Anything that will keep my mind sane.
I find none.
“That wasn’t a wolf,” I whispered. “It was too big.”
“Yes.”
My breath catches. “Then what was it?”
Kael’s gaze sharpens, his shoulders tensing like a predator sensing danger.
“You don’t need that answer tonight.”
Anger flares through the fear. “You don’t get to decide that either,” i shout in annoyance!
His eyes darken. “I do if it keeps you alive.”
Something in his tone shuts me up.
Not because I agree, but because my body reacts in a way I don’t understand. Heat flares low in the pool of my stomach, sudden and intense, stealing the air from my lungs. I gasp softly and clamp my mouth shut.
Kael notices...
Of course, he does...
His gaze drops briefly..., too briefly, to my throat, my collarbone, the place where my skin feels strangely warm and sensitive. Then he looks away, like these something hiden there he doesn't want me to notice.
I don’t miss the way his hands clench into fists.
“What did you do to me?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he says immediately. “You’re safe.”
“That’s not an answer either.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “You’re warm because you were hypothermic. The fire. The blankets. That’s all.”
I don’t believe him, but I don’t have the strength to argue.
My eyelids feel heavy, my body exhausted in a way that goes deeper than muscles and bone. I sag back against the pillows, watching him warily.
“Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” I ask.
Kael doesn’t answer right away.
“There are reasons,” he says finally. “And complications.”
My fingers tighten around the blanket. “Complications like monsters in the woods?”
His gaze snaps back at me, sharp as a blade.
“Watch your language.”
I huff out a breath. “So that’s a yes.”
Silence.
Then, quietly, “You don’t belong in this territory.”
That sends a chill through me. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he says carefully, “that you were in danger long before you heard the first howl.”
I shake my head. “You’re not making sense.”
“No,” he agrees. “I’m not.”
He turns away abruptly, pacing toward the window as if he needs distance. Snow drifts quietly outside, blanketing the world in white. The forest looms beyond the glass, dark and endless.
“You should rest,” he says, his voice rougher now. “Your ankle needs time.”
“And then what?” I demand.
He hesitates.
“Then we figure out what to do with you.”
I don’t like the way that sounds.
“What do you mean, do with me?” I ask sharply.
Kael turns slowly.
The firelight catches his eyes... And for just a second, they flicker gold.
Possessive. Hungry. Controlled.
“You’re not leaving tonight,” he says.
My heart pounds. “You can’t keep me here.”
“I can,” he says simply. “And I will.”
Fear coils tightly in my chest. “You don’t own me.”
His gaze drops to my chest again, lingering a fraction longer this time.
“No,” he says quietly. “Not yet... Not yet fully though.”
The words send a strange shiver through me, equal parts terror and something else I don’t want to name. I know if I do it may come to life.
“I want my phone,” I say, grasping for control. “My bag. Anything.”
Kael nods once. “It’s on the table.”
I glance to my right. My bag sits neatly beside the bed. My phone rests on top of it.
Relief floods me.
I reach for it, but froze.
The screen is black.
“No signal,” Kael says before I can speak. “You’re too far out.”
My chest tightens. “Of course I am.”
“You can try again in the morning,” he adds. “If the storm clears.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
He doesn’t answer.
I look back at him, really look at him, and something in my chest twists painfully. He’s dangerous. I know that instinctively. Not just because of the forest or the eyes or the impossible strength.
But because part of me feels drawn to him. Like my body recognizes something my mind refuses to accept.
“Why did you say that word?” I ask quietly.
He stiffens. “What word?”
“You know which one.”
The fire crackles between us.
His voice drops when he finally speaks. “I shouldn’t have.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Kael’s gaze locks onto mine, intense enough to steal my breath.
“Because something inside me recognized you,” he says. “And it reacted before I could stop it.”
My pulse raced. “Recognize me how?”
He steps closer to the bed, stopping just out of reach. The air between us feels charged like an invisible force of electrical energy, heavy with things unsaid and uncharged.
“You don’t want that answer,” he murmurs.
“I do.”
“No,” he says softly. “You think you do.”
My throat tightens. “You’re afraid.”
His mouth curves into something dark and humorless. “No. I’m afraid of what happens if I’m not.”
Another wave of heat ripples through me, stronger this time. I gasp, my fingers digging into the blankets as my body betrays me again.
Kael swears under his breath and turns away sharply.
“This is why you need to sleep,” he says. “The bond is agitated.”
I freeze.
“The what?”
He goes very still.
Slowly, he looks back at me.
“I said too much.”
My heart pounds violently. “You don’t get to say things like that and then stop.”
“Yes,” he says quietly, “I do.”
He strides to the door, pausing with his hand on the frame.
“I’ll be outside,” he adds. “I won’t touch you.”
The promise feels strange. Heavy.
“Kael,” I call after him.
He hesitates but doesn’t turn.
“You saved me,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
For a long moment, he says nothing.
Then, very quietly, “Because if I hadn’t… no one else would have.”
The door closes behind him.
I lie there in the flickering firelight, my ankle throbbing, my skin warming in all the wrong places, my heart racing with fear and questions I’m not ready to ask.
Outside, the wind howls.
And somewhere deep in my chest, something ancient stirs... restless, aware, and dangerously awake.
- Writer
