Katrina’s POV
He stood at the edge of the clearing like something out of a story I no longer believed in.
Taller than I remembered.
Broader in the shoulders. Stronger in the way he carried himself. His body was wrapped in full warrior regalia, black and silver leather, polished to a dull sheen, reinforced with dark obsidian plating along the chest and forearms.
A deep crimson sash cut diagonally across his torso, the color stark against the black, tied precisely beneath the curve of his ribs. A heavy cape was draped over one shoulder, the edges embroidered with the insignia of the Alpha’s house, threaded gold forming the crest that ruled over us all.
It suited him too well. Regal. Fierce. Dangerous. Like someone born for power. Like someone meant for her.
The cape caught the breeze and flared gently behind him. The motion made him seem larger somehow, like the forest bowed around him. He looked like a legend given flesh.
Like someone who belonged to Cassandra now.
His golden eyes locked on mine. They were steady, sharp, unreadable. But there was something flickering behind them, buried under the tension in his jaw, beneath the warrior stillness of his stance.
Shock. Awe. And something else I didn’t dare name.
I opened my mouth to speak, to demand why he was here, what he was doing, if he had come to finish what the night had broken, but before I could even draw a full breath, something pulsed deep inside me.
A voice.
Not spoken aloud, but real, undeniable, threaded through every part of me, rooted in bone and soul.
Mate.
I gasped—the sound tore from me without warning, sudden and sharp, like air after drowning. My chest tightened. My eyes locked onto his as the space between us seemed to ripple, fold inward, collapse. The air grew dense, like the very molecules between us had changed.
He heard it too.
I saw it in the way his body stiffened—shoulders squared, chest frozen mid-breath. His hands curled slightly at his sides, as if they were suddenly unsure of what to do. There was no question—he’d felt it. The word. The bond. That ancient, irrefutable truth that pulsed in both our veins.
Mate.
It changed the shape of the silence between us.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, and though the words came out, they barely held together. My voice shook. I folded my arms across my bare chest, not just for warmth—but for armor. To protect whatever was left of me that hadn’t already been unravelled.
Adolphus didn’t answer at first.
He stared at me like I wasn’t something broken, but something sacred. His gaze traveled slowly, not with hunger—but with reverence. As if seeing me meant remembering something lost.
“You shifted…” he said, barely more than breath. “You have a wolf now.”