Chapter 212
ELENA
The world was burning.
Not with fire–something older, deeper. Something inside me, under my skin, roaring through my blood.
The bond wasn’t just stitched back together–it was alive. Pulsing Thrumming in time with my heartbeat.
And it was overwhelming me.
Nox howled in the back of my mind, her voice ragged and wild. It wasn’t words. It was pure, raw emotion: want, claim, mine.
My body ached with it.
My hands trembled with it.
Every nerve ending was raw and too loud, as if the entire world had peeled back a layer to reveal itself in sharp, brutal color.
Derek was standing so close.
Too close.
Not close enough.
His scent wrapped around me–smoke, cedar, something dark and vital–and I leaned into it without thinking, needing more, needing him.
The way he looked at me
Hungry.
Desperate.
Devoted.
It nearly broke me in half.
I was drowning in him, in us, in everything the bond demanded.
The cool night air didn’t help.
The music and laughter from the wedding barely reached me anymore.
There was only the pounding of my heart and the molten pull between us.
I would have followed him anywhere in that moment.
Into the woods. Into the fire.
Into the end of the world itself.
He leaned down, his mouth brushing my jawline, and my knees nearly buckled.
Take me, my wolf whispered.
Now. Here. Always.
I didn’t even realize how close we were to losing ourselves until a sharp voice cut through the haze.
“Alpha.”
The word hit Derek like a slap. He stiffened instantly, his head snapping toward the interruption. I blinked, dragging myself
Chapter 212
back into my body with a shuddering breath.
Brock stood beside us, one hand clamped on Derek’s shoulder, his face grim and unyielding. Derek growled low in his throat, the sound pure threat. But Brock didn’t so much as flinch.
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“You need to come with me” Brock said. He looked over his shoulder at something or someone, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to follow his gaze. “Both of you,” he finished.
Derek snarled something sharp under his breath–something I was half grateful I didn’t fully catch–but Brock squeezed his shoulder harder, anchoring him, not backing down.
I caught motion at the edge of the garden then. A familiar figure standing stiff and alert just beyond the reach of the lanterns.
Chad.
Waiting. Watching.
His posture was wrong. Too tense. Too formal.
There was no wedding joy in his stance–no lingering laughter or celebration.
Something had happened.
I touched Derek’s chest lightly, feeling the way his heart thundered against my palm.
“Derek,” I whispered, tilting my head subtly toward Chad.
He followed my gaze–and I felt the instant shift in him.
The bond between us tightened, snapped taut.
Derek gave one last frustrated huff of breath, but nodded.
Without letting go of my hand, he turned and followed Brock across the clearing, his shoulders squared, his body thrumming with energy barely held in check.
I stumbled once, half–drunk on the force of the bond, but Derek’s hand squeezed mine, steadying me. Silent reassurance.
The wedding faded behind us–golden lights, laughter, music—and we slipped into the cooler dark beyond the garden’s edge.
Chad fell into step beside Brock without a word.
Silent. Grim.
I didn’t like the look on his face.
We entered the house through a side door, the noise of the wedding falling away completely as we stepped into the quiet, shadowed halls.
The packhouse felt different tonight. Heavier. Older.
As if it remembered every secret, every war, every betrayal, it had ever witnessed.
My heels clicked lightly against the tile as we moved toward the Alpha’s office. The sound echoed strangely, too loud in the
silence.
The door was already open when we reached it.
Inside, my father stood behind his massive oak desk, still dressed in his tuxedo. The boutonniere pinned to his lapel–a small white rose–breathed a faint floral scent into the room, soft and almost jarringly innocent against the heaviness that gripped
the air.
He looked up when we entered, his face unreadable.
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“Is everything all right?” I asked, my voice breaking the unnatural silence.
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For a moment, my father just studied me. Not as a daughter. Not as the little girl who used to chase her brother around these halls.
As something else. Something heavier.
Someone he needed to weigh and measure.
Finally, he spoke.
“We caught a wolf on the edge of the property,” he said. His voice was calm. But there was an undercurrent to it—a sharp, dangerous edge that made the fine hairs on my arms lift.
My heart stumbled.
“I told Chad to keep it quiet,” he continued. “I didn’t want to ruin Mason and Erin’s night.”
My stomach twisted.
Derek stiffened beside me, his hand tensing around mine.
“Who is the wolf?” Derek asked, his voice low and dangerous.
My father’s gaze flicked to him, sharp and unyielding, then back to me.
“It’s your rogue friend, Maggie.”
The words hit me harder than I expected.
Maggie.
A flood of memories crashed into me–Maggie laughing around a campfire, Maggie teaching Erin how to set traps, Maggie dragging me out of the river the night I almost drowned.
Maggie, looking back over her shoulder at me that last time, her face a mask of guilt and sorrow.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came.
“She’s been taken into custody by the Moon Sentinels,” my father continued, his voice cold, final. “The Alpha Council Guard is en route.”
Brock shifted uncomfortably at Derek’s side.
The Moon Sentinels weren’t just any enforcers. They were the elite. The wolves you called when you needed more than a simple
arrest.
When you needed control. When you needed silence.
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My stomach dropped.
“What are the charges?” I forced out, though a part of me already knew the answer.
My father’s mouth tightened.
“Trespassing,” he said. “Endangering the Pack. And,” he added after a beat, “involvement in the recent attacks.”
Nox stirred uneasily.
No.
This wasn’t right.
I felt Derek shift beside me, his body practically vibrating with the need to act, to move,
to fight.
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And Goddess, a part of me wanted it too.
I wanted to grab Maggie by the shoulders and demand answers.
Had she been the one to attack the bond between Derek and me?
I wanted to believe there was some other explanation. But I also knew the consequences of tonight couldn’t be undone with good intentions.
Still gripping Derek’s hand, I turned to my father. The room seemed to contract around me, the walls pressing inward.
The air smelled too sweet floral and wrong from my father’s boutonniere–layered over the sharp, copper tang of something
else.
Finality.
My pulse thudded in my ears, louder than the distant strains of music still drifting in from the garden.
Maggie.
Captured.
And there was nothing I could do.
Not yet.
I clenched my jaw, forcing myself to stay still.
Forcing myself to listen.
But something deep inside me–something old and wild–had already started to claw at the surface, demanding to break free.
