I’m limping back to the cabin when the sky opens up—not a gentle rain, but a cold autumn downpour that soaks through my sweat-damp clothes and stings the open cuts Sera left on my knuckles. Every step sends lightning through my ribs. My left eye is swelling shut, throbbing in time with my pulse, and my right ring finger has taken on a purple hue that suggests sprain rather than break.
Small mercies.
I’m fumbling with the door handle, shivering, when the warmth hits my back—not the weather, but the steady pulse of the bond. Rhett.
He appears silently, as he always does, his massive frame filling the doorway behind me, blocking the rain. He carries a medical kit in one hand and a clean towel in the other.
"She's hurting you," he rasps.
"She's teaching me." I wince as I push the door open. "There's a difference. Allegedly."
I collapse onto the narrow bed, boots still on, too exhausted to care about the mud I'm tracking onto the blankets. The cabin spins slightly. Adrenaline crash. Glycogen depletion. I catalog the symptoms like Jarek would, trying to maintain distance from the fact that my body feels like tenderized meat.
Rhett closes the door with a soft click. Sets down the kit. Kneels before me with a gravity that should feel servile but instead feels like reverence.
His hands—massive, scarred, capable of snapping femurs—hover over my injuries with the precision of a surgeon and the gentleness of a prayed. He starts with my face, tilting my chin toward the firelight, examining the purple bloom spreading across my cheekbone.
"Swelling," he observes, damaged voice scraping low.
"I noticed."
He ignores my snark, reaching for supplies. The antiseptic burns when he dabs at the split in my lip, but his fingers bracket my jaw, steadying me against the flinch. His scarred throat works as he swallows, the pink, puckered tissue shifting with the motion.
"I should be teaching you," he says quietly, wrapping gauze around my sprained finger with practiced efficiency. "Protecting you. Instead I watch someone else make you bleed."
I try to pull my hand back. He doesn't let go—not rough, just immovable. "You can't protect me from everything, Rhett."
"I know." His dark eyes meet mine, and the depth of grief there stops my breath. It’s an ocean I've only seen the surface of until now. "That's what terrifies me."
He moves to my ribs, lifting my shirt with careful fingers. The bruising is spectacular—Sera’s knee work, purple and green spreading across my flank. Rhett inhales sharply, a wounded sound that rumbles from his chest.
"I failed them," he whispers, not looking at me, focused on wrapping the elastic bandage around my torso. His hands tremble. "My pack. My mate. My children. I stood frozen while hunters cut their throats because I was afraid. Because I thought if I just didn't move, if I made myself small, they wouldn't see me."
The confession breaks something open in the air between us. Through the bond, I feel his shame—acidic, ancient, eating him from the inside.
"I can't fail you too," he says, his voice cracking on the words. His forehead presses against my knee, a gesture of submission so profound it hurts to witness. "I can't watch you die because I wasn't strong enough to be what you needed."
My hand moves before my mind catches up, cupping his face, lifting it. His skin is rough with stubble, warm despite the chill in the room. The scar across his throat brushes against my palm—the raised tissue a roadmap of his survival, his tragedy, his endurance.
"Then don't fail," I say softly. "Be here. That's all I need."
His eyes widen. The bond between us flares—not the sharp, consuming heat of Grogan, not the restless fire of Hrollok, but something deeper. Steadier. A hearthfire in the dead of winter.
He rises slowly, his massive frame unfolding until he towers over me. But there's no threat in it, only worship. His thumbs trace the edges of my bruises, mapping the damage with sorrow and something else—something that burns hotter than regret.
"Abby," he breathes, asking permission.
"Yes."
The kiss begins chaste—just lips, pressure, breath shared. But the bond demands more, and we answer. His tongue sweeps against mine, tasting of copper and pine, and his hands span my waist, lifting me as if I weigh nothing. I wrap my legs around his hips, my arms around his neck, pressing against the hard wall of his chest.
He carries me to the bed with that same terrible gentleness, laying me down as if I were made of glass after all. But when he covers me with his body, the weight of him is exactly what I need—anchoring, real, present.
"Tell me to stop," he rasps against my throat, his lips finding the pulse point.
"Don't you dare."
He doesn't.
His hands are slow, methodical, learning my body with the same care he'd shown bandaging my wounds. He removes my clothes piece by piece, kissing each bruise, each abrasion, healing me with reverence when medicine couldn't touch the ache. When I arch against him, needing friction, needing closeness, needing him, he groans—a sound torn from the depths of his grief and transformed into something like prayer.
"Please," I whisper, the word breaking. "Rhett, please."
He enters me slowly, filling me with a thickness that makes my breath catch, my fingers digging into his shoulders. He stops, checks my face for pain, but I urge him on with my heels against his lower back.
"More," I demand. "All of you. Give me everything."
He moves with a rhythm that matches the pulse of the bond—deep, steady, overwhelming. Each thrust pushes the exhaustion from my bones, replacing it with heat, with connection, with the certainty that I am held by someone who will not let go.
I feel the pressure building, not just in my body but in the bond—a tightening, a gathering, a lock waiting to click into place.
"Now," I gasp, tilting my head, exposing my throat. "Mark me. Seal it."
He growls, the sound vibrating through his chest and into mine. His mouth finds my shoulder, the curve where neck meets muscle, and his teeth—sharp, inhuman—break the skin.
The pain is white-hot, exquisite, tied directly to the pleasure building between my legs. I cry out, climaxing around him as he spills inside me, the bond snapping into focus with a physical click I feel in my sternum.
Rhett gasps against my skin, licking the wound closed, sealing the mark. The bond between us solidifies, glowing warm and steady in my chest—a hearthfire now stoked to permanence.
"I've got you," he whispers, gathering me close, wrapping his massive body around mine like armor. "I've got you, Abby. I'm here."
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