DEREK
The bond between us didn’t just hum now–it roared.
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It flooded my veins with golden heat, a tidal pull that stripped everything else away until there was only her.
Elena.
Every breath I dragged into my chest tasted like her. Every beat of my heart thundered with her name. It was unbearable and exquisite all at once–like trying to stare straight into the sun.
The strength of it slammed into me without warning, no gentleness to it, no steady build. It was all at once, a storm breaking open inside my ribs.
It felt exactly like the first time.
Exactly like the day I found her.
The memory gripped me hard enough to steal my breath, and I let it pull me under.
***
I’d been patrolling the roguelands alone that day. No backup. No orders.
Just the endless stretch of broken forest under a dull, gray sky, and the hollow ringing of my own failures trailing me like a ghost.
My father’s death still sat heavy in my gut, a raw wound I didn’t know how to stitch shut.
Silverclaw was unraveling under my hands, and I wasn’t strong enough to stop it. Cassandra had just left- abandoning me for a life of exploration and distance, choosing somewhere else over the future we were supposed to build.
I told myself I didn’t care.
That I’d rather be out here with the rogues than in Silverclaw’s halls, pretending I was whole.
When I caught the trail, it was pure instinct that kicked in first.
Movement between the trees.
Flickers of figures slipping low and fast through the underbrush.
Rogues.
It didn’t matter that they looked young, or that they didn’t smell of the rot that clings to the rogues who turn humans into shifters on purpose.
The rules were simple. Rogues were a threat. Rogues didn’t belong near packlands.
I circled downwind, heart pounding, muscles tight.
Prepared to do what needed to be done.
I saw who I would later learn was Maggie first–then Carly and Erin.
Thin, hollow–eyed. Feral in the way that only true rogues ever became.
I bared my teeth.
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I was already moving to strike–already sinking into the rush of violence my wolf craved–when I caught it.
Her scent.
It stopped me cold.
One breath.
And the world tilted on its axis.
Warm rain on hot stone. Violets crushed underfoot. Wildness and something so painfully right that it buckled my
knees.
Possessive instinct slammed into me so hard it almost hurt.
Mine.
MINE.
It wasn’t a thought. It was a law of nature.
My wolf snarled inside my skin, confusion and need twisting into one burning thing.
I stumbled, breathing hard, my body rebelling against the order it had understood a second ago: Kill. Purge. Protect the pack.
Now there was a new order.
Older. Deeper.
Protect her.
Find her.
Never let go.
I pushed forward through the trees, driven by something I didn’t understand but couldn’t resist.
And there-
Huddled behind the others, thin and wary, her hair tangled and dirty, but her eyes–Goddess, her eyes–steady and defiant.
Her.
I didn’t know her name. Didn’t know her story.
It didn’t matter.
Every fiber of my being recognized her.
And for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to belong to someone.
Even broken. Even lost.
She was mine.
And nothing—no law, no duty, no past–was going to change that.
***
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I snapped back into the present with a ragged breath, the weight of the bond hammering through me so hard it almost dropped me to my knees.
The force of it wasn’t just emotional. It was physical.
I could feel it inside my muscles, inside my blood–hers threading through mine, stitching us back together in ways no magic could undo.
I swayed forward instinctively, tugging Elena closer.
She stumbled into me without resistance, breath hitching as our bodies aligned. The contact made everything worse and better.
–
Heat surged under my skin.
Need, fierce and raw, boiled up until it overran everything else.
It was like being back in my teenage skin, every nerve ending stretched thin and hungry, no discipline strong enough to hold it back.
Elena smelled like sunlight and wolf and home. She looked up at me, lips parted, pupils blown wide, and Goddess help me, the way she clung to my shirt made something inside me snap.
Iwanted to tear her away from this garden.
From the crowd.
From the world.
I wanted to push her against the nearest tree and bury myself so deep inside her there would never be another breath she took without me.
My hand tightened on her hip, muscles locking with the effort it took to stay still.
I leaned down, my lips brushing the shell of her ear.
“Come with me,” I rasped, the words rough with need.
She nodded before I even finished speaking.
I half turned, already ready to drag her into the shadows, into the sanctuary of the trees, into us-
-and the scent hit me.
Sharp and wild, cutting through the night air like a blade.
Elena’s arousal.
It wasn’t delicate. It wasn’t shy. It poured off her in waves, rich and aching, curling around my senses until my hands shook with the effort it took to stay upright.
My wolf surged against my skin, howling with triumph.
She felt it too.
The bond.
The hunger.
The unbearable pull that made it impossible to think of anything but her.
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I tightened my grip on her hand without thinking, dragging her flush against my side, breathing her in like she was the only oxygen left in the world.
Elena made a small, broken sound low in her throat, and it shattered the last shred of discipline I had.
Her body was trembling with it, with need, with the same possible ache clawing through me.
She would let me take her right here, I knew it with a certainty that wasn’t even thought, just instinct. She would tear herself open for me, and Goddess, I would crawl into her and never come out.
My vision blurred at the edges.
My hands itched to touch skin, bare skin, to feel her heat and softness under my palms.
I leaned down, my lips brushing the corner of her jaw, and felt her shudder against me.
“Mine,” I almost whispered into her skin.
The word never fully made it out.
Because that’s when a hand clamped down on my shoulder
Hard.
A low snarl ripped from my throat, and I spun, fangs flashing, ready to shred whoever dared interrupt.
It was Brock.
His face was carved from stone, mouth a grim line, eyes hard and urgent.
“Alpha,” he said tightly. “You need to come with me.”
He looked over his shoulder and I noticed that the Moonstone Gamma Chad was standing there looking just as tightly wound as Brock.
He flitted his eyes to Elena, ignoring the obvious vibe of the moment and said, “Both of you.”
“I said “I snapped, but he didn’t let go.
He squeezed my shoulder hard enough that the pain cut through the haze of sexual need coursing through me.
I came to my senses.
Something had happened.
