The truck cab fills with silence so heavy it pressurizes my skull. I clutch the letters against my chest—paper proof that my entire existence is a forgery. My father's name is a lie. My bloodline is a fiction. I’m a cuckoo’s egg dropped into a nest of wolves, and Margot died trying to crack me open for a debt I never actually owed.
"Everything I knew about myself," I say, and my voice sounds like something scraped from the bottom of a grave. "It’s all counterfeit. I’m not even human the way I thought. I’m just... residue."
Theron doesn’t answer. His knuckles stay white on the steering wheel as he navigates the switchbacks, jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. He’s vibrating with something—sympathy, maybe. Or recognition.
He pulls over at a scenic overlook, tires crunching on gravel. The engine dies. Below us, the valley spreads out in bruised purple shadows, the settlement invisible beyond the ridge.
He turns to face me, and the haunted look in his amber eyes stops my breath.
"I understand more than you think," he says quietly. He kills the headlights. In the sudden dusk, his features look carved from stone and sorrow. "Growing up Blackpelt means knowing your blood is poisoned before you’re old enough to spell your own name. You carry corruption you didn’t choose. Can’t escape."
He shifts, his hand finding mine across the center console. His skin is fever-hot.
"Every time I care about someone," he continues, his voice dropping to a rasp, "I wonder if this is the moment it starts. The obsession. The madness." His thumb traces my knuckles, trembling. "My father loved my mother so completely it consumed him. He couldn’t let her breathe without him monitoring the air. He never hit her. He just... smothered her until she forgot how to inhale alone."
"Theron," I whisper.
"That’s what Blackpelt love becomes,” he says, his eyes burning. "Corrosive. Consumptive. I’m terrified that one morning I’ll wake up and the charm will have crumbled, and all that will be left is the need to own you completely."
"You're not him."
"You don’t know that." But his fingers curl around mine, desperate, clinging. "I don’t know that."
I reach across the console, cupping his face with my free hand. His stubble rasps against my palm, and beneath my touch, he shudders like a frightened animal.
"Then choose," I say fiercely. "Choose to be different. Your blood might be cursed, but your hands are yours. Your choices are yours."
He stares at me, amber eyes wide and wrecked. The bond between us—unsealed, restless, starving—suddenly roars to life, filling the cab with electric heat.
"Abby," he breathes, and it sounds like surrender.
The kiss happens naturally—a collision of grief and understanding, two broken things recognizing their fractures fit together. He tastes like smoke and honey and the sharp edge of restraint snapping. His hands bury themselves in my hair, angling my head, his tongue sweeping inside my mouth with desperate precision.
I’m crawling across the console before conscious thought catches up, straddling his lap in the confined space, the steering wheel digging into my back but I don’t care. He groans against my lips, a sound torn from deep in his chest, his hands spanning my waist to pull me flush against him. He’s hard already, straining against denim, and the friction when I grind down makes us both gasp.
"God," he rasps into my mouth, his teeth catching my lower lip, biting just hard enough to sting. "I’ve wanted this—wanted you—since the first time you snarled at Hrollok."
I tear at his shirt, buttons scattering into the dark like thrown pearls. My fingers find heated skin, the hard planes of his chest, the frantic thunder of his heart beneath my palm. He smells like pine and gasoline and something darker—male, hungry, his.
"Here," he growls, his mouth dropping to my throat, sucking bruises into the skin there with a desperation that makes me arch. "Now. I need to be inside you. Need to claim you before the madness takes me instead."
"Yes." I’m ripping at his belt buckle, my hands shaking with urgency. "Seal it. Claim me. Choose this instead of the curse."
He growls—feral, claiming—and his mouth crashes back to mine. His hands are everywhere, mapping my body with a hunger that skates the edge of violence but holds back, always holding back, tethered by willpower alone. I tear my own shirt over my head, desperate for skin-to-skin, and the moment my breasts press against his bare chest, we both moan.
"Fuck," he snarls, his hands dropping to my jeans, stripping them down my hips with rough efficiency. "You’re perfect. You’re fucking perfect, and I’m going to ruin you for anyone else."
"Do it," I pant, my fingers finally freeing his cock—thick and heavy and burning hot in my grip. "Ruin me. Make me yours."
He lifts me—effortless, supernatural strength—and lays me across the bench seat, following me down until his body covers mine completely. The night presses against the windows, but inside the cab is a furnace, steam clouding the glass. He strips me bare in seconds, his mouth following every revealed inch of skin with fevered reverence—my collarbone, my breasts, dragging his tongue down my stomach until I’m writhing.
When he spreads my thighs and settles between them, the width of his shoulders forcing me open, I’m already drenched, aching, empty without him. He enters me with one brutal, perfect thrust that fills me entirely, stretching me around him until I’m sobbing with the relief of it, the rightness of it.
"Look at me," he commands, his voice gone entirely wolf, his eyes glowing in the dark like molten gold. "Watch me while I fuck you. Watch me while I claim you."
I do. I watch him above me, beautiful and terrifying, his golden hair falling across his forehead as he moves—deep, claiming, relentless—each stroke driving the darkness out, replacing emptiness with fire. The truck rocks on its suspension, the rhythm primitive and urgent, matching the pulse of the bond that’s roaring between us now, building toward detonation.
He shifts his angle, hitting that spot inside me that makes stars explode behind my eyelids, and I scream his name, my nails raking down his back hard enough to draw blood. He snarls, responding to the pain with more pleasure, driving into me harder, faster, his hips snapping against mine with a violence that’s exactly what I need.
"Theron," I gasp, climbing fast, the pressure coiling tight in my belly. "Please—I need—"
"I know," he pants against my lips, his hand sliding between us to find my clit, pinching and circling with devilish precision. "I’ve got you. Let go for me. Give it to me."
I shatter around him, my climax hitting like a freight train, my inner muscles clamping down on his cock until he chokes out a curse. But he doesn’t stop—he keeps fucking me through it, extending the waves of pleasure until I’m mindless, begging, my voice raw.
When the pressure builds again, impossibly soon, he strikes. His fangs pierce my shoulder—exactly opposite Rhett’s mark—and the pain detonates into pleasure so intense my vision whites out. I come again, harder than before, screaming his name into the dark cab as he spills inside me, hot and endless, growling against my skin as the bond snaps into place.
Third star burning bright in my constellation—golden and fierce, completing a circuit that arcs between us like lightning.
Theron collapses against me, his tongue lapping at the fresh mark, sealing the claim with trembling reverence. He’s still inside me, pulsing, and I can feel every beat of his heart through the new bond—a frantic, grateful rhythm that matches my own.
"I’ve got you," he whispers, his voice wrecked, his arms banding around me so tight I can barely breathe. "I’ve got you, and I swear—I’ll choose every day not to be the monster. I’ll choose you instead."
Outside, snow begins to fall, dusting the windshield, covering our tracks. We don’t make it back to the settlement that night. We don’t even try.
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