But alongside it, something twists.
A different pull. Sharp and curious, almost painful in its unfamiliarity.
His eyes find mine for one second through all the chaos, and the hunger does something to me.
It doesn’t quiet.
It shifts.
And I hate that I notice.
Attraction coils low and sudden, an ache that doesn’t feel like hunger at all, something warmer, deeper, and infinitely more confusing.
Ihateit.
Iwantit.
And for one fractured second, even with the hunger gnawing through me like a living thing, I find myself wondering what it would feel like to step closer instead of tear him apart.
My hands hit him, and he doesn’t move nor yield. He holds the line, steady in a way that doesn’t belong in this overwhelming, sensory-saturated nightmare of a moment. It cuts through the chaos like a single, unmistakable note through noise, and something in my ribs, pulled tight since I came back to myself, loosens. Barely, but enough.
“I told you she wasn’t stable.” His voice is low, and so fucking sexy, and I hate that my body notices the sound of it.
I hate that I notice him at all.
“And I told you this is a security concern, Rogue.” The silver-eyed man’s voice carries no heat and no give. “An uncontrolled scion inside this compound is a threat to every person in this building.”
I snap my head to silver eyes, baring my fangs at him, the hunger flaring.
“She’s not a threat.” The certainty in it is absolute, with no room for negotiation. My head recoils back to the wolf. I don’t understand why he is defending me, or why I want to rip his throat out, and rip his clothes off in equal measure.
I’m so fucking confused right now.
“She was about to launch herself at my Old Lady.”
I twist back around to silver eyes, panting, even though I am not breathing.
A beat of silence stretches through the room, the tension pulling tighter than I have the vocabulary to describe.
“Contain her,” the man demands finally, and there’s something in those two words that brooks no argument, a weight behind them that settles into the air. This man is in charge and has the last word on what will happen to me. “Until we know who made her and why. Until she can be managed… contain her… orIwill.”
The room contracts.
Every instinct in my new, terrible, blood-hungry body lights up simultaneously, the same sequence that drove me through the diner’s back kitchen, the same sequence that drove me through dark streets with no destination, the animal logic of a creature that has one primary directive when cornered…
Run.
My body moves. My body was always going to move. The decision was never really a decision. It was physics, the physics of a creature too new, too hungry, and too overwhelmed to do anything except obey the impulse screaming the loudest. My feet hit the floor, and my legs carry me toward the hallway with every ounce of speed this body apparently has access to. It’s more than I expected, more than any human speed I’ve ever generated, more than the speed I used fleeing the diner, because something about the proximity of all these heartbeats has fed the hunger into a sharper, more urgent key. Still, the wolf’s hand closes around my wrist.
The force of it pulls me up short, and then my momentum carries forward against that anchor, and the physics of it swing me back and around. I hit his chest again, both his arms coming around me from behind, and this is restraint, actual, immovable,inhuman restraint, a grip that doesn’t bruise but doesn’t yield, and the sheer animal solidity of him registers somewhere beneath the panic, something my new senses log without being asked. Beneath the leather and the cold night air clinging to his jacket, something else lives in his scent. It’s wild, deep, and old in a way that bypasses conscious thought entirely and presses directly against the most primitive layer of whatever I’ve become, something that whispers predator in a register that isn’t language and isn’t fear but lives in the neighborhood of both. The scream that tears out of me is three parts terror and one part something I cannot name, something that sounds nothing like fear and everything like it simultaneously.
“Let me go!” The words rip out of my throat, raw and broken, and my elbows drive backward, my feet kicking, every ounce of this strange new strength throwing itself against his hold. “Let me go, let me go, let me—”
He doesn’t let me go.
He’s warm, really warm. Heat sinks into my skin the second I touch him, and something in my chest reacts hard enough to throw me off balance. It’s something deeper and messier that doesn’t seem to know what the hell to do with being handled gently.
“Charlie.” His voice is right beside my ear, and it carries the texture of gravel and restraint, of something held back with conscious effort, and the sound of my name in it,my name,which he shouldn’t know, which I haven’t told him, does something unexpected to the frequency of my panic. “Charlotte… listen to me.” His arms don’t tighten further. They hold steady, remain consistent, and do not escalate. “Stay with me. Right here.”
