Chapter 34 – The Watcher in the Dark
Ronan
I stayed away. Waiting at the forest’s edge for him to come back. Tail tucked between his legs, ready to beg me to give him another chance.
Nothing. No sign of him. So I’m going back to find the little shit.
The forest is silver with moonlight and laced with Eli’s scent.
I follow it like a bloodhound, head down, eyes narrowed. Every step, the bond yanks tighter. Like it’s dragging a hook through my chest. Raw and sharp and maddening.
He’s close. I can taste him on the air. Salt-slick fear, fever, blood and sweat. His scent isn’t clean anymore. It’s frayed at the edges. Strained. It makes something ancient inside me rise, stretch and salivate.
My wolf stirs, restless. Pacing behind my ribs like a thing in a cage.
Take.
Mark.
Breed.
I bare my teeth and push it down.
The trail weaves through ice-crusted brush, across half-frozen mud, into a pocket of rock and moss so cloaked in magic even my senses hesitate.
Old wards. Weak now, but lingering, like dried blood under fingernails. Protective charms, carved generations ago by wolves who believed in spirits more than fangs.
I slip through the veil of scent and spell and shadow and there he is.
Collapsed in a splintered ruin of a cabin, curled beneath a torn coat, ribs rising too fast and shallow.
Eli.
His skin is pale where it’s not flushed with fever. One arm flung out beside him, fingers twitching like he’s still running in his dreams.
His shirt’s gone, ripped into strips and knotted over the wound at his side. It’s deeper than I suspected. I shouldn’t have left him.
I freeze in the doorway. My lungs forget how to work. I don’t move. Can’t. I just… watch.
The sight of him shouldn’t shake me this way.
I may have claimed him, but he’s still just another wolf. Fragile. Disobedient. Infuriating. He refuses my help. Disrespects my claim on him.
And still, my wolf kneels before him like a penitent thing. Like he’s something holy.
He mumbles in his sleep, lips dry, face twisted in a grimace. One word, my name, slips out like a curse.
Or a prayer.
“Ronan…”
It damn near undoes me.
I cross the threshold before I even decide to. Kneel beside him in the dark, breathing shallowly. I could wake him. I should.
Drag him back. Chain him down. Remind him who he belongs to.
But I just sit there.
He shifts again, mouth parting, neck exposed. Bond mark flushed.
My hand moves before my brain catches up. I brush a damp curl from his cheek. His skin is burning.
“You stupid, stubborn little fucker,” I murmur. “I should punish you for running.”
He doesn’t wake.
“But I can’t even touch you.”
I want to. Every cell in my body is screaming for it. To taste him. To pin him. To make sure he never forgets the feel of my cock filling him up.
Instead, I study his face. Memorize the way his lashes twitch. The scar under his jaw. The stripes criss-crossing his back and chest. The way he curls in on himself, even in sleep. Like he’s still waiting for the next blow.
Like no one ever taught him what safety feels like.
My throat goes tight.
I glance down at the bandages. Sloppy work, but it kept him alive. Just barely.
He survived Redmaw scouts. The cold. The pain. He’s half-starved, half-mad with fever, and still breathing.
Eli doesn’t know how to die. He only knows how to fight. Even when he has zero chance of winning.
I stand slowly, bones creaking, muscles aching with the effort of restraint. I can’t stay. If I stay, I’ll take him. And he’ll never forgive me for it.
Hell, I might not forgive myself.
The stupid bastard didn’t eat the meat I left before. I doubt he even saw it. I should let him suffer, but I don’t want him dead.
I want him aware. Alive enough to feel the bond crawl under his skin. To know it won’t let him go. No matter how far he runs, it’ll pull him back by the throat.
This world doesn’t belong to runaways. It belongs to the wolves willing to bleed for what they own.
He thinks he’s clever, hiding out here. Thinks distance will break the bond. That if he gets far enough, I’ll forget how he tastes.
He doesn’t understand yet.
There’s nowhere he can run that my scent won’t reach him. No pack that will shelter him once they realize what he is. Who he belongs to.
And I won’t stop. Not until he learns the truth.
That even if he runs to the ends of the earth, this thing between us won’t loosen. It’ll only snap harder.
I step back into the doorway and reach into my coat. Pull the rabbit I snapped an hour ago from my satchel. Still warm, blood slick on its neck.
I lay it at the cabin’s threshold. Not cleaned or skinned.
Raw and real like what I’m going to do to him when he comes back to me.
Then I bite into my palm and smear blood across the doorframe. Marking the territory, and what’s inside it, as mine.
If any other wolf tries to cross it, I’ll carve their spines out and feed them to the forest.
This is my territory. My bond. Mine.
I glance back once more. He shifts again, moaning softly, lips moving without sound.
“I’ll give you one more day to come to your senses, little pet,” I whisper, “And then I’m coming for you.”