I stood on the balcony just above the courtyard, a glass of untouched wine in my hand, watching the flicker of lanterns sway in the night breeze. The celebration continued below, laughter and music drifting up through the cool air, but I couldn't bring myself to rejoin it.
Not when every nerve in my body was screaming at me to do something I knew I shouldn't.
Atlas still stood near the fire, his silver-blonde hair catching the warm light like spun moonlight, his laughter soft but sincere as he talked with Noelle and the others.
Even from here, I could see the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the way his whole face transformed with joy. He looked happy. Free. Nothing like the broken, terrified man who had stumbled across my borders weeks ago.
I turned away from the sight of him, jaw tight, hands trembling. "Stop it." But I didn't need to say it aloud. Sirius was already there.
"Go to him," my wolf snarled in my head, pacing restlessly. "Enough pretending. Enough restraint. He's ours. Hyde is waiting for us. Can't you feel it?"
"Shut up," I muttered under my breath, gripping the railing harder than necessary, the iron biting into my palms.
"He wants us," Sirius growled again, insistent and heated. "Did you feel him when we ran? Did you feel him when he shifted for the first time? That bond, Draven—it's real. It's more real than anything I've felt in years."
"It's just a rut," I hissed, low and furious. "Nothing more. My cycle's approaching and I'm responding to a new wolf. That's all this is."
But even I didn't believe it. The pull hadn't started tonight. It had begun the night he'd transformed. When I held his shaking, broken body in my arms and felt him change in my hands—when his bones cracked and reshaped and he rose, not as the scared, wounded man who arrived at my borders, but as something new.
Whole. Wild. Himself. A magnificent silver-white wolf with eyes that held the same stunning blue as his human form. That night, something inside me shifted, too.
A door I'd long since locked—barred and buried beneath years of grief and duty—had cracked open. And through it had come a wave of feeling I hadn't allowed myself in years, feelings I'd thought I'd buried forever. It had all come rushing back, wild and sharp and dangerous.
Desire, yearning and want. And beneath it all… something worse. Something that terrified me more than any enemy ever had. Hope.
I took a long, slow breath, trying to steady myself, trying to rebuild the walls that had kept me safe for so long. But Sirius didn't let up.
"He's your mate," he whispered now, not snarling but certain. "Can't you feel it? I do. I've known since the first time you laid eyes on him. Hyde is mine. Atlas is yours. The bond is there, whether you accept it or not."
"No," I snapped, stepping away from the railing. The glass in my hand cracked slightly, spiderwebbing at the stem from the force of my grip. "You don't get to say that," I growled.
My voice echoed faintly in the silence of the stone hall behind me, but it wasn't enough to silence the storm raging inside my chest.
"He can't be my mate. I had one. Annabeth was mine. The Moon Goddess doesn't just give you another when she takes the first away. That's not how this works."
Sirius was silent for a beat, then murmured darkly, "Maybe she didn't take her. Maybe fate did. Maybe this is her way of giving you another chance."
I clenched my jaw so tight it ached, pain radiating through my skull.
Annabeth's name was a blade. Even after all these years, the sound of it in my mind cut deeper than anything else could.
She'd been my first, my only. My future, my forever. We'd planned everything together—leading the pack side by side, building something lasting, growing old together in a way that wolves rarely got to do.
And then… she was gone. Taken from me in a single violent night that I still couldn't think about without feeling like my chest was caving in, like my lungs were filling with shards of glass.
I had buried her together with my heart. And I'd told myself there would be no second. That wolves like me didn't get second chances. That I didn't deserve one. And yet… Atlas.
Every time I was near him, I felt like something ancient was stirring inside me, awakening from a sleep I'd forced upon it. Not lust. Not simple want. Something older. Deeper. Recognition, as if my soul had known his long before we ever met, as if we'd been connected across lifetimes.
Sirius howled again in my chest, low and guttural, full of a longing that matched my own. It made my skin feel tight, like I was about to shift even though my body stayed still.
I let out a harsh breath, running a hand through my hair in frustration. "It's just a rut," I said aloud again, this time like I was trying to convince myself. "That's all this is. The cycle's coming fast, and he's new, and I'm responding to his energy. It'll pass. It always passes."
But Sirius didn't respond with a snarl this time. He didn't push or fight. He simply went quiet—and that scared me more than his growling ever had. Because in that silence, I could hear what he wasn't saying.
This won't pass. Not this time. He's different. You know he is. My fingers still tingled from earlier that day—when I'd placed the pack mark on his chest. My palm had rested just above his heart, pressed against warm, smooth skin. I'd felt it beat beneath my hand like a drum, strong and alive. And I had wanted…
Goddess, I had wanted. To lean in. To brush away his tear. To cup his face in my hands and kiss him until neither of us could breathe. To claim him in front of everyone and damn the consequences.
The thought alone burned through me like wildfire, searing and unstoppable, and I cursed under my breath, tossing the cracked glass onto the stone floor. It shattered, sharp and precise, echoing like thunder in the quiet night. I couldn't want him. I couldn't need him.
Because if I gave in to that—if I accepted the bond Sirius swore existed—I didn't know who I'd be anymore. The walls I'd built, the distance I'd maintained, the cold Alpha mask I wore—all of it would crumble. And worse, I didn't know if I'd survive losing him, too. I'd barely survived Annabeth. Losing a second mate would destroy me completely.
So I would stay here, alone on this balcony, watching him from a distance I refused to close. I would hold the line. I would be Alpha before anything else, no matter what it cost me, no matter how much it hurt.
Let Sirius want. Let my blood burn. Let my heart ache with every breath I took. I would not let Atlas become my weakness. Not now. Not ever.