Not to trap! Never

Not to trap! Never
“Was it 24hours I took? No!”

The silence that followed her words was worse than any gunshot I’d ever heard. It wasn't just quiet; it was the sound of a foundation cracking.

I stood there, my chest feeling like a hollowed-out cavern, while her voice echoed in the sterile air of the kitchen. Paranoia. She had called it paranoia. The word tasted like ash.

I watched her walk toward the drafting table, her spine rigid, her head held high. She was so beautiful in her anger, so painfully alive. And that was exactly why I couldn't breathe.

"Damien, this is not a good reaction," she had said. "You can’t just scatter everywhere because I stepped out."

My mind spun, frantically trying to articulate the terror that had been eating me alive for the last three hours. How could I tell her that when I walked through that door and found the condo empty, the world didn't just feel wrong, it stopped existing?

I had imagined the worst. Not just Shallow, he was dead, I’d felt the bond snap ,  but the others.

Fabio.

The thought of Shallow’s firstborn son, Fabio, sent a spike of pure, freezing dread through my veins. Fabio was a shadow, a ghost in the pack’s history, and he was still out there, hungry for the throne and the vengeance that was his birthright. Fabio didn't fight like his father; he didn't boast. He took. He hunted in silence. He was the one who had watched from the periphery while I fought for her. If he had taken her, he wouldn’t have left a note. He would have erased her. He would have used her to break me, piece by agonizing piece.

Every second she had been gone, I had visualized it: Fabio’s hand over her mouth, the scent of her fading, the bond becoming a distant, muffled whisper in my mind. The panic had been a living thing, clawing at my throat, forcing me to call in every favor, every operative, every soul I could command. I hadn't been thinking about 'possessive control'; I had been fighting the onset of a madness that only promised me she was dead.

I looked at the men in black who were now silently filing out of the house, their presence fading like smoke. They were gone because she asked. My protection, my safety net, gone because she found it stifling.

I closed the distance between us, my steps heavy, my heart still misfiring. I stopped a respectful foot away, forcing my hands to remain open, to remain empty, to remain not a cage.

"Mon Éloïse," I said, my voice finally finding a steady, calm rhythm, though my internal organs felt like they were vibrating with the need to scoop her up and lock her in a vault. "You are not completely safe yet."

I searched her face, trying to find the bridge back to the trust we had built.

"You don't understand," I continued, keeping my tone low and level. "It isn't just about control. It isn't even about the pack. You think I don't know how I look right now? I see the fear in your eyes, the fear that I'm becoming the very thing you escaped. But Fabio is out there."

I leaned in, just an inch, pleading with my eyes.

"Shallow was a blunt instrument, Éloïse. Fabio? Fabio is the blade in the dark. He is a wounded man and would do anything for revenge. He knows that taking you is the only way to kill me without ever touching me. When I came home and the house was empty... when the air didn't smell like you... I didn't see a woman going to a market. I saw his shadow. I saw him taking you from me in the quietest, most horrific way imaginable."

I swallowed hard, the rawness of my vulnerability exposed.

"I don't want to cage you. I want to keep you breathing. I want to keep you mine. If I have to turn the world upside down to ensure you don't end up a ghost in Fabio’s collection, I will do it every single day. Even if it makes you hate me."

I reached out, but I didn't grab her. I just let my fingertips hover near the soft wool of her sweater, agonizingly close, yet terrified to cross the line she had drawn.

"Tell me how to protect you," I whispered, the Alpha in me desperate for a compromise that wouldn't shatter my own sanity. "Tell me how to be your mate without being your jailer. Because right now, the thought of you walking out that door alone... it’s the only thing on this earth that can actually kill me."

She took a step back, shaking her head, and the motion was like a blade sliding between my ribs. My heart, which had been hammering with relief only moments ago, tightened into a painful, suffocating knot. I could feel the structural integrity of my entire world starting to buckle. If she turned away now, if the fear in her eyes became a permanent wall, this heart wouldn't just ache, it would shatter.

I stood frozen, my hands hanging uselessly at my sides. Every instinct in my wolf was screaming to close the gap, to claim her, to wrap her in such a thick layer of protection that no shadow, Fabio or otherwise, could ever touch her again. But I saw the way she braced herself, the way she looked at me not with love, but with a wary, evaluating detachment.

"What do you want?" she asked.