Chapter 41 41
At night Thunder slept in a hidden nook by the greenhouse, wrapped in coarse cloth, wolf tucked like a coiled spring beneath his ribs. He smelled of earth and a hundred different conceits. He dreamed in a loop: her face turning toward him, the small softness of it that had once barely belonged to him. He would jolt awake and listen for boots, for the long patient silhouette of Gregor pacing, for the soft clack of Sugar’s heels like punctuation.
Once, while the moon still rode low and silver, he slipped into the pantry with the pretense of collecting compost. The kitchen slept; the chef’s heavy breath filled the room like a drum. He set his palm on the cool wood of the table where Margaux had left a cup the day before.
The cup still smelled of jasmine tea and the faint hint of an expensive perfume; it clung to the ceramic like a ghost. He closed his fingers around the rim and for a moment imagined he could close his whole palm over that phantom and carry it back to his chest.
He left a folded scrap of paper tucked behind a jar of dried oregano that night—a childish thing, a smear of ink with the simple words: You do not belong to them. It was not a threat. It was not even eloquent. It was a mark, proof that he had been there. Proof that he could touch her life and leave without being seen.
That little theft made his heart pound so hard he thought it might tear itself loose.
But the scrap did not remain a private secret for long. Sugar found it three nights later, laughing in that sharp, amused way of hers before she crumpled it as if she had found a dead insect and tossed it into the fire. The laugh was small and cruel; it made Thunder want to smash everything in sight. He learned quickly how useless rage felt when it had to be hidden behind a shovel and a braided smile.
Paranoia bloomed like mildew in the corners. He watched the way Gregor’s men circled the perimeter, how rumors turned into more rumors until a rumor became a weapon. He heard them talk, sometimes by the stables where thieves and servants let their voices go rough with drink. “Careful of the prince,” one would mutter. “Careful of Gregor. Wolf’s head on a pike and the royal crown will smile.” They thought in terms of power—alliances, treaties, leverage. Thunder thought in terms of her pulse and how it used to beat for him.
Obsession sharpened into plans. He was not a stupid man—he knew the cost of violence against an Alpha and a prince. He knew what the council could do when insulted. He knew what it meant to mark a war with blood. But knowing did not silence the wolf; it taught him to be clever.
Direct strikes were for men with armies. He did not have an army. He had patience and proximity and the ability to blend into soil and shadow.
He began to test limits.
He would let a boot-lace come undone and watch how a maid untied it, how she bent and how her skirt brushed Margaux’s gown when serving.
Thunder memorized shift rotations and sent little provocations to see the reaction: a window left slightly ajar that should have been shut, a hedge clipper left where a sentry might trip.
Each tiny test taught him how they responded—how quick was Gregor and how slow was the prince’s reaction. Each reaction carved a small map into his mind: an opening here, an overzealous guard there.
At times, his own wolf urged him toward a different cruelty. Make her remember you, it snarled. Make her hate them. Make her scream your name. Thunder hated that voice because it betrayed the tenderness that still clung to him—the tenderness of a boy who had once dreamed of shared beds, of lineage, of a house that bore both their names. He kept that softness like a brittle coin in his fist. The wolf wanted blood; the man wanted her.
He tried letters once—unsigned, meaningless scraps left where a maid might find them folded under a sugar bowl: You are not safe with them. Remember who you are. They were pathetic things. Sugar burned one in mockery before his eyes at the pantry door one afternoon, eyes glittering like a blade. “How dramatic,” she had said, folding the ash like a favor. “Some people should stick to pruning.” He had wanted to grab her wrist, to twist it, to force confession out of her theatrical mouth, but instead he had set down his trowel and walked away. Patience, he told himself. Patience was a weapon you sharpen.
The hatred made him cleverer. He learned to watch the architecture of their days to know where safety thinned. He marked the moment Gregor went to council meetings and when the prince slipped away to his rooms.
He watched the way the queen’s concierge moved through corridors and the brief window when Margaux tended to the roses and was utterly alone—if only for a breath.
And one dawn, when fog sat low over the garden like a slow, white hand, he acted.
It was not the ferocious, poetic charge he imagined in solitary nights. It was small and clean and full of the sort of cruelty practiced by men who cannot wage open war. He found a pale blue ribbon, the kind maids used for tying napkins.
He left it pinned to the hem of Margaux’s favorite sleeve—an intimate thing, a mark that would be read as an accident if they were not looking too hard. He pried a single seedpod off an ornamental plant and set it in the box where she kept her jewelry—a token that would be found, that would test the touch of their guards.
When he crossed the courtyard later that morning, disguised again by mud and labor, he watched the reaction from the greenhouse like a man watching an animal that does not know it is being hunted.
Margaux lifted the hem of her gown, saw the ribbon, then bared a mouth that was not quite a smile and not quite a shudder. She touched the seedpod and her fingers trembled as if holding a live thing. She did not cry out. She did not call for help. She turned slowly and tucked both into the palm of her hand like she had hidden contraband.
That night, when he pressed his face to the glass of the greenhouse, giving himself away to no one but the glass and the leaves and the moon, he watched her wipe the seedpod clean with a handkerchief and then hold it to her chest for a long, private moment. The sight undid a part of him that had been trying to harden into a blade.
He should have been satisfied—proof that he left marks on her, that his presence could burrow like root systems under the firm lawn of her life. But he was not. Each small victory only provoked another hunger.
It was also dangerous. He knew that if they found him—really found him—if Alpha Gregor’s men recognized the cadence of his boots beneath the dirt or a maid glimpsed the scar at his knuckle, he would be taken and not only beaten. His name would be dragged through the court, his family dishonored, and his life would be used as an example of what happened when one defied the royals and the pack. That thought should have stopped him. Sometimes it did. More often it did not.
Instead, he crafted a new plan in the dark places: not a confession, not yet, but a signal.
He had no love for assassination, no taste for the spectacle of open blood. He knew the consequences. But he also understood leverage. A scare at the right time, a whispered rumor, a thread pulled that made the tapestry unravel—those things would force hands. He could bait Gregor into a mistake. He could push the prince into a move that revealed his weakness. And once cracks formed in their armor, he would step in with fire.
Walking the villa paths as a gardener—knees bent, hands in soil—Thunder kept his true movements invisible. But as he leaned over a rose bush and pruned a wayward stem with a precise, surgeon’s cut, the human piece of him whispered the thought he tried to deny:
If I cannot have you as mine, then I will make sure no one keeps you safe.
The dirt fell between his fingers like tiny clocks ticking down. He tasted iron on his tongue and found he no longer cared whether the countdown had to end in war.