Chapter Twenty Two – His
Cass couldn’t move.
The weight of him was everywhere—his chest pressed to hers, his arms braced beside her head, his breath brushing her cheek. The river roared around them, but all she could hear was the pounding in her ears and the rasp of his voice lingering in the air.
You’re mine.
Alder lay beneath her now, bare skin against bare skin, both of them heaving from the chase. His eyes, those molten golds, never left hers.
Neither of them said anything for a long time.
It should have been cold. It should have felt wrong. But the heat between their bodies defied logic, steam curling where skin met skin, where want pulsed in places Cass didn’t want to acknowledge.
She shifted slightly, as if to rise, but his hands gripped her hips, firm and possessive—not restraining, but grounding.
"Don’t run again," he said, voice low, almost hoarse. "Not from this. Not from me."
Cass’s breath hitched. Her mind screamed at her to push him off, to claw away, to deny the bond and what it was doing to her. But her body—traitorous and primal—stayed still.
His fingers slid along her waist, slow and reverent, like he couldn’t believe she was real. “You have no idea what it took not to chase you before now. The second I caught your scent, I knew. And I hated it.”
Cass’s jaw clenched. “Good. I hate it too.”
His grin was a crooked flash of danger. "You’re fire in a body. It’s maddening. But it’s mine now."
“You don’t even know my name.”
“Don’t need to,” he said. "I know what you are. You’re mine."
Her nails dug into the slick riverstone beneath them, trying to find some anchor. But he was the anchor. And that terrified her.
She could feel his heart pounding beneath her thighs, his breath still unsteady.
He slid one hand up her spine, slow and electric. "You feel it too. You can lie to your mind, but not to your wolf."
Cass's voice came out a whisper. "This changes nothing."
But her body betrayed her with a shiver. Not of cold.
Of recognition.
Of surrender.
Even if only for a moment.
Alder’s hand lingered at her lower back, his thumb grazing the curve of her spine. His expression had softened, but there was something fractured in it—like he was fighting a war inside himself.
He didn’t want this. He hadn’t asked for her.
She could feel it in the way his touch trembled, in the way his gaze kept flicking away and then back again, like he was trying to memorize her and erase her at the same time.
But he said nothing.
Because in this moment, he couldn’t make himself let go.
“You don’t want this,” Cass said quietly, reading the hesitation in his bones. “You didn’t ask for me either.”
He didn’t deny it.
His jaw flexed, and for a heartbeat, it looked like he might finally say something honest.
But then she spoke again, this time louder, stronger. "I reject you."
The words came with finality. With steel.
They echoed through the river, through the bond, cutting through the heat like ice.
Alder didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Then slowly—slowly—he smiled.
Not cruel. Not mocking.
Just... amused. Like she’d just played the first move in a game he hadn’t realized he wanted to win.
“You think it’s that easy?” he murmured.
Cass’s heart thundered, but her voice held steady. “It is for me.”
He brushed a wet strand of hair from her cheek, the motion almost gentle.
“Good,” he said. “Because I like a challenge.”
Cass’s breath caught as his fingers slid down her thigh, slow and deliberate, like he was testing both of their limits. Her body betrayed her again, pressing closer, hunger rising like a wave she didn’t remember inviting.
She hated the way he made her feel.
She hated that his power aroused her—that something in her wolf responded to his dominance like it had been waiting for it all along.
Still straddling him, she leaned in, nose to nose, their foreheads nearly touching. Her lips parted. She could feel every inch of him beneath her, hard and ready, restrained only by the thread of control he hadn't yet snapped.
“You want to reject me?” he asked, voice guttural. “Do it again.”
She didn’t speak. Her body trembled above him—not from fear, but from tension, from the kind of need that only came with danger and destiny intertwined.
“I said I reject you,” she repeated, but her voice wavered. Not from uncertainty—she meant it—but from the raw truth of what still burned between them.
Alder’s smile was slower this time. Darker. Not cruel, but reverent.
“You can hate me tomorrow,” he said, lifting his hips just enough to drag a gasp from her throat, “but right now, you want me.”
Cass closed her eyes.
Because he was right.
And when her mouth finally crashed into his, it wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet.
It was war.
Their bodies moved like they were already halfway there—fluid, raw, inevitable. Cass kissed him like she wanted to forget, like she needed to burn something out of herself, and he met her with teeth and hunger and the kind of restrained force that promised ruin.
He rolled them over, water splashing around them as his body pressed hers into the slick riverstone. She gasped into his mouth when he pinned her wrists above her head with one hand, the other trailing down her ribs, over her waist, to where her hips arched into him.
She was wet from more than the river now.
Alder groaned as he felt it, dragging his mouth down her throat. “You say you don’t want me,” he growled against her skin, “but this—this says otherwise.”
Cass bit his shoulder, not gently. “Shut up.”
He laughed—low, guttural—and shifted lower, dragging her thighs around his waist. She gasped as he entered her in one slow, claiming thrust, their bodies colliding in a heat that had no place in the cold river.
There was no gentleness. No hesitation.
Just need. Just teeth. Just nails raking down backs and breathless curses gasped between half-broken kisses.
She clawed at him like she wanted to tear him apart.
He held her like he never wanted to let her go.
And when they finally shattered—together—it wasn’t the river that drowned them.
It was everything they couldn’t say.