The evening air is thick with humidity and impending violence when Hrollok finds us.
I’m practicing defensive stances with Grogan, his hands correcting my hip placement with patient precision, when the bond in my chest—Hrollok’s frayed, neglected thread—suddenly screams to life. It’s not anger I feel through the connection. It’s hunger, sharp and ragged, tearing at the walls he’s built between us.
He emerges from the tree line like a wolf scenting blood, auburn hair wild around his shoulders, green eyes blazing with supernatural fire. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, his chest heaving, and every line of his body broadcasts predatory intent.
"Three bonds sealed," he purrs, but the sound is all jagged edges, dangerous and sexual. His gaze rakes over me, lingers on the sweat dampening my collarbone, on Grogan’s hands still resting possessively on my waist. "Three of my brothers buried inside you, feeding your little Alpha fantasy. Collecting them like trophies, are we, sweetheart?"
Grogan steps fully in front of me, silver threading his hair as his own wolf rises. "Hrollok, stand down."
"Oh, I’m just getting started." Hrollok stalks forward, eating the distance between us with strides that roll with lethal hip movement. He circles us like a shark, his eyes never leaving me, stripping me bare without touching. "Meanwhile, our precious Alpha can’t even sprout a single fang. Tell me, Grogan—when you’re fucking her, does she bite back? Or does she just lie there, taking it, empty as she is?"
My temper ignites, hot and reckless. "Fuck you, Hrollok. You don’t know anything about what happens between us."
"I know you’re hollow." He stops inches away, close enough that the heat of his body radiates against my skin, close enough that I can see the pulse hammering in his throat. "I know you’ve got five wolves pouring our power, our lives, our beating fucking hearts into you—and you still can’t produce one claw. One howl. One goddamn thing that makes you worth dying for."
He crowds me back against a tree, his massive frame boxing me in, caging me with his arms. His breath is hot against my face, smelling of smoke and pine and something darker, masculine and furious and aroused. I can feel it now—his cock hard against my hip through his jeans, his rage and desire indistinguishable, twin serpents choking him.
"Prove it," he growls, his voice dropping to a guttural register that vibrates through my sternum and straight to my core. "Right now. Call your wolf. Show me you’re not just a pretty hole for us to pour ourselves into."
"I’ve tried—"
"Try harder." He shoves me—not away, but into the tree, his body following, slamming against me with bruising force. His hips pin mine, his hands fisting in my hair to wrench my head back, forcing me to meet his blazing eyes. "Reach for it. Reach for the beast and pull."
"I can’t—"
"You will." He grinds against me, a brutal roll of hips that tears a gasp from my throat despite myself. "Or I’ll tear it out of you myself, Abby. I’ll rip you open until we find what’s hiding in all that empty space."
Grogan snarls behind him, but Hrollok ignores him, his entire focus narrowed to the pulse hammering in my throat, the heat flushing my skin, the way my body betrays me by arching into his violence.
"Shift," he commands, his lips brushing my ear, his teeth catching the lobe hard enough to sting. "Shift for me, little liar. Show me you’re worth the way my cock gets hard every time you walk into a room. Show me you’re worth the shame of wanting a human who can’t even grow for us."
"I didn’t ask for your bond!" I scream, shoving at his chest, but he just presses harder, pinning my wrists above my head against the bark, his body a wall of muscle and fury and devastating heat.
"Neither did I!" His roar shakes leaves from the branches, but his voice breaks on the confession, cracking open something raw and bleeding. "I had a mate! I had Sera—a real wolf, a real choice—and she looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was air. And I thought that was the worst hell, being invisible to the woman I loved."
His grip tightens on my wrists, his forehead dropping to mine, his breath ragged and desperate against my lips. "Then you come along. You, with your heartbeat counting down my death. You bond me without asking, tie my life to yours, make me feel you every fucking second—waking, sleeping, screwing my brothers—and you can’t even do the one thing that would make this bearable. You can’t be what I need."
Tears burn in his eyes, turning the supernatural green into something wounded and wild. Through the bond, I feel it—the devastation of Sera’s rejection, the terror of his own heart reaching for me despite his will, the shame of standing here hard and helpless and desperate for a woman he’s convinced himself will destroy him.
"Shift," he begs now, the anger collapsing into something worse—hope. "Please, Abby. Please, just... show me I’m not dying for a ghost."
God help me, I try.
I reach inward with desperate, furious claws, tearing through the barriers between us, clawing for the animal that should answer his plea. I claw until I bleed internally, until the psychic effort rips through my psyche like barbed wire through silk, until I’m gasping, sobbing, begging whatever lives inside me to rise and meet him.
Nothing.
Emptiness.
The void echoes back his agony and multiplies it.
I collapse, my legs giving out, and Hrollok catches me—instinct overriding anger, his arms banding around my waist to lower us both to the dirt with a gentleness that contradicts everything he just screamed. We kneel there, tangled together, his face buried in my neck, his body shaking against mine.
"Pathetic," he whispers, but the word is broken, cracked, aimed at himself.
He doesn’t release me. His hands shift from bruising to caressing, frantic and hungry, tracing the lines of my back as if memorizing my architecture. I feel his tears—hot, wet, secret—against my collarbone. I feel his arousal, still hard and aching, pressed against my hip. I feel his terror—bone-deep, soul-shattering terror of needing me.
He’s not angry at me.
He’s terrified of how desperately he loves me.
"Hrollok," I breathe, reaching for his face, turning him to meet my eyes.
He flinches, but doesn’t pull away. His green eyes are wide, exposed, stripped of all armor. For a moment—the space between one heartbeat and the next—I see the truth: he wants to devour me, destroy me, worship me, and he’s crumbling under the weight of wanting.
"Don’t," he chokes out, but his hands are already fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer, his lips hovering a whisper from mine.
Grogan stands above us, frozen, sensing the shift from violence to something more dangerous.
Winter solstice is four weeks away. And the wolf who hates me most is the one whose bond I need most desperately—the one kneeling in the dirt with me, bleeding his heart into my hands, too terrified to kiss me and too broken to let go.
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