Chapter 280

Logan should have gone back inside when Drea left the terrace.

He knew that.

He knew it with the same practical certainty he knew the patrol routes outside the mansion, the weak points in the southern wall, and the exact number of men Noel had stationed near the lower barracks. The right thing would have been to return to his room, clean the blood from his knuckles, sleep for whatever remained of the night, and pretend the sight of Drea in that robe had not carved through what little control he had left.

He did none of that.

For several minutes after she disappeared through the terrace doors, he stood under the stone arch with his chest rising hard and his body still heated from violence. Snow drifted around the open edge of the terrace. His knuckles ached. Sweat cooled on his skin. The bag swayed in front of him, slow and heavy, the leather marked where his fists had landed too many times.

Drea had looked at him as if she had seen something she did not know how to survive.

That bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

Fear he understood. Hatred he could take. He had taken both from her before. But what he had seen tonight was worse than either. It had been confusion, panic, and something close to grief, as if she had woken from a place where he was already dead and brought the vision back with her.

Logan dragged one bloodied hand over his mouth and swore under his breath again, quieter this time. The cold moved around him without touching him. It never had. His body ran warmer than it should have for a wolf who carried winter in his blood, and tonight that heat had nowhere to go.

He went back inside through the side entrance, avoiding the corridor near Drea’s room. That was deliberate. He did not trust himself to stop outside her door and listen. He did not trust himself to knock. He did not trust the part of him that wanted to demand what she had dreamed and why she had looked at him like the dream had put blood on her hands.

By the time he reached his room, his control felt worn thin.

He shut the door and leaned against it for a moment, head tilted back against the wood. The room was dark except for the low fire and the pale wash of moonlight through the windows. The bed was still made. He had not slept in it. He had barely slept at all since Drea had asked him whether he killed her brother and sister, and his answer had not been enough.

It would never be enough.

He pushed away from the door and crossed the room, stripping off what was left of his restraint with his clothes. The damp training trousers came off first. He tossed them aside, then braced both hands on the washstand and stared down into the basin.

His knuckles were split. His jaw was tight. His body was still hard.

That was the insult of it.

Violence had not burned it off. Cold had not. Distance had not.

Drea had stood on the terrace in a robe too thin for the night, hair loose around her face, eyes wide from whatever nightmare had chased her out of bed, and his body had reacted before his conscience could beat it back. Wanting her had become a problem he could not reason through. It did not care that she was furious with him. It did not care that she was frightened. It did not care that the space between them was full of Westside, blood, and questions he could barely answer without hating himself.

His hand tightened on the edge of the washstand.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

He should have wanted less by now. He should have gained discipline from distance, not hunger. Instead, every argument sharpened her in his mind. Every challenge. Every angry look. Every time she held her ground when any other omega would have lowered her eyes and submitted because his title, his size, or his temperature told her to.

Drea did not lower easily.

That had drawn him from the beginning. He could admit it here, alone in a dark room where no one could hear the confession.

He reached for the towel and wiped the blood from his knuckles, slower than necessary. The rough drag of fabric over torn skin grounded him for a moment, but only a moment. His body remained alert, charged, too aware of the memory of her scent in the terrace air.

The scent had changed lately.

He had noticed. Of course he had noticed. Logan noticed everything about her because he was apparently intent on making himself insane.

There was warmth beneath her usual scent now. Something soft and faintly sweet, buried so carefully that he might have dismissed it if he were not already watching her too closely. It came and went. Stronger when she was tired. Sharper when she panicked. He had not named it yet because naming it would require confronting the answer sitting just beyond reach.

He closed his eyes.

Drea’s face rose in his mind. The woman on the terrace, shaken and sleepless, staring at him like she had seen him bleed in some place he could not follow.

His hand slipped lower.

The first firm stroke made his breath catch between his teeth. His head dipped, eyes shut, one hand braced hard on the washstand while the other worked over himself with a roughness that matched the state of his mind. This was not pleasure at first. It was pressure. Need. A brutal attempt to drag the hunger out of his body before it dragged him back toward her door.

He gripped himself tighter, thumb sliding over the slick head, jaw flexing at the sharp rush of sensation. His hips pushed into his fist before he could stop them. Heat gathered low and heavy, spreading through his abdomen, down his thighs, up into his chest until every breath came harder. He could still smell her in his head, warm skin, sleep, fear, and that faint changed sweetness he had been trying not to name.

“Fuck,” he muttered, voice raw.

He did not let himself imagine her yielding easily. That would have been a lie, and some part of him still had enough honor to reject it. He imagined her looking at him instead, furious and trembling, chin lifted, eyes bright with accusation. He imagined her voice when she said his name like a warning. He imagined the way her mouth had parted on the terrace, not in invitation, but in shock, and his body responded anyway, selfish and hard and impossible to reason with.

His strokes grew faster.

The washstand creaked under his grip. His shoulders tightened, muscles pulling across his back as he fucked into his fist with short, punishing thrusts. He hated the sound of his own breathing. He hated that the ache sharpened every time he thought of her hands clenched in the blanket, of her throat moving when she swallowed, of the robe hanging loose at her collar when she stood outside in the dark.

He wanted her angry.

He wanted her alive.

He wanted her looking at him like he mattered enough to wound.

His hand twisted, slick skin sliding against his palm, and pleasure hit hard enough to make his knees tense. He bowed over the basin, teeth bared, pumping himself faster now, chasing release with the same ruthless focus he brought to battle. His mind supplied the memory of her under him from nights before, the heat of her body, the sound she made when she stopped fighting herself for one dangerous second, the way she had gripped him like she hated him for making her want.

A low groan broke from his throat.

He tightened his fist and stroked through it, rough and relentless, his hips jerking with each pull. The pressure built fast now, hot and unforgiving, dragging through his spine and settling at the base of him until the whole room seemed to narrow around the wet slide of his hand and the image of Drea’s mouth refusing to soften.

Then a knock struck the door.

Logan froze.

The sound came again, urgent and sharp.

“My Alpha.”

His release vanished under a surge of rage so clean it almost steadied him. He stood motionless for one second, hand still around himself, eyes fixed on the door as if he might burn through it with his stare.

The messenger on the other side did not knock a third time.

Smart.

Logan exhaled through his nose, controlled and dangerous. He reached for the nearest cloth, cleaned himself with brisk irritation, then pulled on a loose pair of trousers. He did not bother with a shirt. Whoever had come to his door at this hour had better have a reason worth the interruption.

He crossed the room and opened the door.

The messenger stood outside with his head bowed, but his eyes lifted once and widened before he forced them down again. He was young, one of the night runners assigned to outer communications, and he looked as if he had sprinted across half the mansion with death at his heels.

“What,” Logan said.

The runner swallowed. “A letter, Alpha.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed. “From whom.”

The messenger held out a sealed envelope with both hands. “Kael.”

The name cooled the last of the heat in Logan’s blood.

He took the envelope.

The wax seal was dark red, stamped with a mark Logan recognized from old border reports: a hooked crescent over a clawed line. Kael did not write unless he wanted the writing remembered. A southern warlord, half-Alpha and half-myth, depending on which frightened survivor told the story. He had kept out of Snow business for years, which meant either he had grown reckless or someone had given him a reason to move.

Logan stepped back into the room. “Who delivered it.”

“Rider left it at the outer post and fled before the guards could detain him.”

“Fled where.”

“Southwest.”

“Alive?”

“Yes, Alpha.”

Logan’s mouth tightened. “Then someone let him.”

The messenger went pale. “I will have the sentries questioned.”

“You will have Noel questioned first.”

The runner blinked, startled.

Logan’s gaze sharpened. “Did I stutter?”

“No, Alpha.”

Logan broke the seal with his thumb and unfolded the letter. The handwriting was bold, dark, and almost elegant in its brutality.

You have something we want Logan Frost. Surrender it and this might not end in bloodshed.

For a moment, the room went perfectly still.

The fire snapped softly behind him.

Logan read the line again, slower.

Something we want.

Not someone.

Something.

His grip tightened on the paper until the edge creased.

The messenger waited in miserable silence.

Logan lifted his gaze. “Wake Noel. Wake Cole. Double the guards on Drea’s hall. Quietly.”

The runner’s expression flickered. “Drea?”

Logan’s voice dropped. “Did that sound like a question you were invited to ask?”

The runner bowed at once. “No, Alpha.”

“Go.”

The messenger turned and hurried down the corridor.

Logan shut the door, but he did not move away from it. He looked down at the letter again, and the heat that had ruled him minutes ago was gone now, replaced by a colder, more familiar thing.

Threat.

Calculation.

The shape of a blade before it was drawn.

Kael wanted something inside Snow territory. The timing was too precise. Drea had been sick. Drea had frozen the blanket. Drea had been hiding something with both hands and frightened eyes. Kathryn knew something. Alice knew something. Logan had not named it because a part of him had been waiting for Drea to trust him with it.

His jaw locked.

If Kael knew before Logan did, then someone inside his walls had already spoken.

Logan turned toward the window, where snow brushed softly against the glass.

For one brief moment, he saw Drea on the terrace again, pale and shaken, shaking her head before she ran.

Then he looked back at the letter.

“You have something we want,” he read under his breath.

The paper frosted at the edges between his fingers.

Logan’s eyes lifted toward the corridor beyond his room, toward Drea’s chamber and whatever secret she was carrying.

His voice came out low and lethal.

“Let him try.”