Oh, she was so good.
Raena Duskborn was so damn skilled at making me uncomfortable that it bordered on an art form. She knew exactly how to stand, precisely how to speak, and how to look at me like she was carving truth out of my skin with nothing but her eyes. She did not need claws to cut me open; a single, unbothered smirk did the work.
She excelled at making me feel things I had no business feeling, pulling emotions I had locked in a vault years ago and dragging them into the light as if they had a right to live.
She is the devil in disguise, I thought.
You love it, my wolf whispered.
Oh, shut the fuck up.
She left me trembling in the cold night with my breath ragged, my body hot, and my heart loud enough to bruise my ribs. And her? She just smiled, tossed her hair over her shoulder, gave me that look that said pathetic, and walked back into the dinner hall like nothing had happened—like she had not just turned my entire world inside out and left me standing there like a fool.
Inside, I could see her through the glass, talking to people as if it were the easiest thing in the world. She was laughing and smirking, existing like a goddess who had no idea—or maybe she did—that she was driving me insane.
I stayed outside, leaning on the railing while my fingers twitched, imagining a hundred different versions of what should have happened instead of the disaster that actually did.
What if I kissed her?
What if I never let her walk away?
What if I went further—what if I crossed the line I swore I would never cross?
Then the image returned, a memory I had never asked for and one that always cut too deep: my mother.
I was maybe ten, hidden behind the stairs with my knees tucked under my chin. The night had been thick with silence until my father’s voice cracked through it like thunder.
“Stop crying, Lysandra! You think tears fix anything?”
She was standing near the fireplace with her arms crossed and her whole body trembling. She always trembled, as though she did not belong to that house or that marriage, as though she were a guest in her own life.
He brought another she-wolf that night. She was blonde and loud, laughed too much, and wore red lips like war paint.
My mother said nothing. She just stood there while the woman giggled and clung to my father’s arm like a prize.
“You’re my wife, not my chain,” he shouted, slamming a goblet on the table. “This is how it works, Lysandra. I am Alpha. You deal with it.”
And my mother… my mother only bowed her head. That silence still haunts me more than the shouting ever did.
That night, I understood something that I have never forgotten: power without control is nothing but cruelty dressed in gold.
I snapped back to reality with a jolt. The air stung my lungs, my fingers had curled into fists again, and my jaw ached from clenching.
That is the thing that matters. I am not afraid of pain; I am afraid of causing it. I am terrified of becoming a man who thinks shouting equals strength. I am terrified of hurting someone the way my father hurt my mother—slowly, relentlessly, until there was nothing left of her but a quiet, shaking shell.
People think I am reserved, distant, and cold. They think I am too soft to be Alpha. But I am not soft; I am scared.
Not of her. No—not of Raena. She is fierce and dangerous, a survivor who has outsmarted arrogant wolves twice her age. She could ruin me if she wanted to, yet she has not. She has done nothing except challenge me, tempt me, and haunt me in every thought and every breath.
And somehow, that reality makes me want to protect her even more.
Even if she is my enemy. Even if our packs hate each other’s blood and history has already carved a line between us that no one should cross.
I would not want to hurt her—neither physically nor emotionally, not even by accident. Because once you witness someone survive with fire still alive in their eyes, the last thing you ever want is to be the reason that flame goes out.
I stared up at the stars, desperate for something—anything—to make sense.
At the end of the day, I am not afraid of her.
Okay, maybe I am.
Just a little, if I am honest with myself.
She is beautiful in a way that makes you forget rules, powerful in a way that makes you question fate, and seductive in that quiet, deadly way—like a flame inviting your hand closer just to see if you will burn.
But that is not the fear that keeps me up at night.
It is just me. I am afraid of myself.
I am afraid of what lives under my skin: the heat, the hunger, and the anger I bury so deep that I pray it will never rise. Because if it ever does surface, I do not know whether I can cage it again.
I do not want to become the man who brought my mother to her knees. I do not want to be a name that makes another she-wolf flinch. I do not want to be remembered for the bruises I leave—on skin, on hearts, or on legacies.
So yes, that is why I keep my distance. Raena Duskborn may be the devil in disguise, but I am the storm my father created. And in the end, storms do not fall in love; storms destroy.