Chapter 6 BLOOD AND BRUISED PRIDE

Jenna

There are things you don't forget. The weight of teeth at your throat. The moment your body decides that survival matters more than pride.

I learned both tonight.

I tried to take over — one desperate push, one attempt to pull Audrey back — but she snapped her warning so low in my chest that I retreated without a word. So I watched. Helpless. My own wolf, wearing my own skin, going to war with a man whose wolf could swallow her whole.

Audrey was relentless, I’ll give her that. She went for the soft underside, claws raking earth, teeth searching for flesh. But Alcander’s wolf was patience made into muscle. He didn’t panic. He didn’t rush. He simply wore her down — and then he had us.

His jaws closed around our neck.

Not enough to kill. Enough to make the point.

Submit.

The growl didn’t need words. It was ancient, that command. Older than language, older than whatever it was we were becoming to each other. Audrey snapped her jaw, once, twice, clawing at ground that wouldn’t help us. His front paws came down — one on our shoulder, one pressing our snout flat — and the world narrowed to the pressure of his teeth and the blood running warm through our fur.

He clamped down harder. A warning. His last warning.

I felt it then — the crack inside my wolf. Not bone. Something quieter than bone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She went limp.

I didn’t answer her. What was there to say?

—

Alcander released us slowly. Then — and this was the part that undid me — he licked the wound.

We ran before I could think about what that meant.

Audrey zigzagged through the trees, crying without sound, just her breath coming in broken hitches as the forest blurred around us. She ran until the sound of running water cut through the dark, and then she slowed. A stream appeared between the roots and stones, silver-black under a half moon.

She waded in until the cold covered our paws. We both looked down at our reflection.

A copper wolf. Grey eyes. And at our neck — matted fur, dried blood, each tooth mark a small, precise devastation.

“I’m sorry, Jenna. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing.”

I watched our reflection ripple in the water.

“I have no words, Audrey.”

She flinched. But it was true. She had challenged an Alpha — the Alpha, the kind that other Alphas crossed roads to avoid — in a fight she’d never been built to win. And now we both knew what came next. She had submitted in wolf form. Sooner or later, I would have to do the same in human form.

He’d looked into our eyes the whole fight. He knew it was her, not me. He’d remember that.

Slowly, she pulled herself back into the corners of my mind and handed me my own body.

“I’m sorry,” she said once more before she sealed herself away.

I stepped deeper into the stream, dipped my head under the current, and let the cold water take some of the blood. When I walked out, I didn’t shake off the chill. It felt right — penance I hadn’t agreed to but somehow needed.

I shifted.

—

The house was dark when I reached it. Not a single pack member on the grounds. I pushed the front door with my nose, found it shut, and — not my finest moment — shifted just long enough to turn the handle before bolting naked through the door.

I didn’t make it three steps.

His chest stopped me. Bare. Warm. Immovable.

We went down together — his back hitting the floor, me landing squarely on top of him — and for one suspended, ridiculous second, neither of us moved. His arms had caught my hips on instinct. His eyes, when I looked up, were blue. Not the dark, unreadable grey I’d catalogued in the kitchen this morning.

Blue. His wolf was still close.

He let out a low grunt. I made some embarrassing sound I will never admit to.

I stood. Accidentally stepped on his hand. Ran.

I heard him get up behind me but I didn’t stop — grabbed a shirt and basketball shorts from his closet, pulled them on in three seconds flat, and opened the door.

He was there. Of course he was.

Icy blue eyes. Broad shoulders filling the doorframe. Every inch of him still taut from the shift, from the fight, from whatever it was he felt when he looked at me that made the air between us feel like the moment before a match strikes.

“Don’t.” His voice was quiet. That was almost worse than if he’d shouted. “Ever. Leave. Me. Again.”

I nodded. A good, functional nod.

He caught my elbow before I could escape past him. Pulled me close enough that I could see the exact shade of blue his eyes held — the kind that wasn’t cold at all, now that I was standing in it.

“And never,” he said, each word deliberate, unhurried, “never run past the boundaries again.” He released my arm. “Mate.”

The word dropped into the room like a stone into still water. He walked out before the ripples could reach me.

—

I found the library by accident.

Down the far hall, past three closed doors, was a room so stuffed with books that they’d given up on shelves halfway through and started stacking on the floor. A small loveseat sat pressed against the far window, and above it — a glass roof.

I stood there until the stars fully came out. Counted them the way I used to as a child, when sleep wouldn’t come and the world felt too large for one person to carry.

I made two promises to myself before I left: come back to this room tomorrow. And find a phone.

The second one was more urgent.

The first felt more true.

Back in his room, I sat on the edge of the bed and faced my reflection in the mirror across the wall. The bruising had deepened to the same dark purple from the first night, now framed by the perfect arc of his wolf’s bite. A brand, almost. An ownership I hadn’t agreed to.

We need to get out of here.

The silence that answered me was my wolf’s, and it was heavier than any argument.

I lay back on the pillow and let the dark take me.

Somewhere down the hall, a door closed.

And I told myself that was the only reason my heart was still beating that fast.