Content Warning

This is Book 2 of Alexandra Vance’s story.

While the first book was closer to romantic paranormal fantasy

It contains:

Non-consensual / dubious consent situations

Graphic sexual content

Humiliation and power imbalance

Psychological pressure and trauma

If you preferred the lighter, more romantic tone of Book 1,

Chapter 1. Love is Blind

I reached the edge of the forest, where the ferns grew particularly thick and the pine trunks closed ranks to form an impenetrable wall.

And stopped.

My legs refused to carry me any further, as though they had taken root in the soft earth beneath my feet, which smelled of mushrooms and rotting leaves. My heart was hammering somewhere in my throat,my breathing had grown ragged, and the world before my eyes had begun to blur, whether from fear or from tears that were already welling up, although I hadn’t started crying yet.

Because I’d realised something: I had no idea where to go.

The forest stretched for miles, boundless, dark and alive. There were no paths, no signposts, no streetlights. Only ancient tree trunks, thorny undergrowth and that particular kind of silence that was never truly empty.It was always full of the breathing of unseen creatures, rustling leaves and eyes watching from the darkness.

Where was I supposed to look for Alex? In which thicket? Beside which stream? In which clearing? I had no map, no tracking device, not a single clue to guide me. All I had were his words, and now, in that oppressive silence, they rang through my head so clearly that it was as though he were standing beside me, shouting straight into my ear.

’Sasha, if they find out about you, they’ll probably kill me. And they’ll tear you to pieces. Possibly right in front of me. So whatever you do, don’t go to the clearing. Especially not at night. And especially not alone. Don’t you dare!’

I squeezed my eyes shut, but his voice wouldn’t go away. It pulsed in time with the blood pounding in my temples.

Don’t you dare!

And what had I done?

Exactly the opposite.

Claire had been right. Oh, how right she’d been. She was probably sitting somewhere in her immaculate flat, sipping green tea and saying aloud to an empty room, ‘The moment a girl falls in love, she loses the last of her brains. Assuming she had any to begin with.’

I smiled bitterly at my reflection in the dark window of the car. I’d had brains. I really hadTwenty years of living a more or less sensible life, with everything going reasonably well, until an enormous grey wolf with amber eyes ran out onto the road.

The tears came of their own accord. I didn’t bother wiping them away. Let them fall. Warm and salty, they trickled down my cheeks, onto my shirt collar and collarbones, and over the fingers clenched so tightly around my keys that my knuckles had turned white.

Turning away from the trees, I walked back to the car. It was only a few steps, yet they felt harder than the entire climb up the hill. Every step was a defeat, a betrayal of the desperation that had brought me this far.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. The lock clicked, the sound startlingly loud in the stillness of the night. Resting my forehead against the cold plastic of the steering wheel, I let out a long breath. A violent shudder ran through me, making my teeth chatter and my knees feel ready to give way.

‘What are you doing to me, Alex?’ I whispered into the silence of the car. ‘And where on earth are you?’

There was no answer, only the chirring of grasshoppers outside and the occasional whisper of wind through the treetops.

Lifting my head, I turned the key to switch on the interior light. I simply didn’t want to sit in complete darknes. Then I reached beneath the seat and pulled out the old blanket, the same checked one we’d shared on the hill when we first met. I wrapped myself in it like a cocoon and leaned back against the seat.

Earlier I had poured myself a mug of tea, but the flask itself was still sitting on the bonnet, and I didn’t bother retrieving it. The blanket was warm, and it carried the same familiar scent of pine, freedom and just a hint of him. Or perhaps I was imagining that last part.

The moon hung high in the sky. It wasn’t quite full, just beginning to wane, but it shone so brightly and clearly that the stars around it seemed pale by comparison. Silver light flooded the clearing, illuminating the pine tree, the bonnet of my battered old Hyundai and my bare feet, tucked beneath me on the seat.

Everything was just as it had been on that mad night when I’d first seen him on this very road.

Except he wasn’t here.

I sat there for what must have been half an hour. Or perhaps an hour. Time had lost all meaning. I simply stared into the forest, into its black, impenetrable depths, and waited, without the faintest idea what I was waiting for.

Then he emerged from the darkness.

At first, I couldn’t quite make out the shape approaching me. I thought it was just a shadow, a trick of the light, some nocturnal illusion conjured up by an exhausted brain. But the shadow moved. It came closer, parting the fern fronds with a silent, unnerving grace that would have put any acrobat to shame.

My heart leapt.

‘Alex?’ I breathed, without even realising I’d said his name aloud.

Leaning forwards, I pressed my face close to the window and peered into the gloom. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and a second later I could make out the approaching figure: tall, broad-shouldered, but… not Alex.

This man was broader. More heavily built. Older.

The spark of joy that had flared in my chest died instantly, replaced by a cold, clammy terror.

I didn’t know who he was, but I knew one thing for certain: he wasn’t human.

Instinct acted faster than thought. I lunged for the ignition key, hesitated for a second, then changed my mind. I wouldn’t make it in time. Instead, I jabbed the central locking button and heard all four doors click shut before pressing my back against the driver’s seat.

The stranger walked straight towards me. He wasn’t hiding or creeping about. He approached calmly, openly, almost lazily, as though he were taking a stroll through his own garden.

Then he waved.

I stared at him, unable to believe my eyes. He’d waved. Seriously? At one in the morning, in the middle of a remote forest, some bloke wanders out of the undergrowth and waves at me as though we were old acquaintances?

A nervous laugh rose in my throat, but I swallowed it. This was hardly the time.

He stopped about a metre from the door, positioning himself so that the headlights shone onto his back and left his face in shadow. Clever trick. He could see me, but I couldn’t see him properly. His silhouette was impressive, though: powerful shoulders, muscular arms and a short haircut. His lightweight summer T-shirt clung to his torso, revealing the outline of every muscle.

I reached for the window switch and lowered the glass by barely a couple of centimetres, just enough to hear him without letting him in.

‘Evening,’ I said, doing my best to sound more confident than I felt. ‘What brings you out here so late? And on foot, if you don’t mind my asking?’

He smiled. His teeth were white, even and perfectly ordinary. At first glance, anyway.

‘Evening,’ he replied in a low, pleasant baritone. ‘Don’t be frightened. I don’t bite. I just wasn’t expecting to run into anyone at this hour, and it’s nice to have some company. It’s a beautiful night, don’t you think? Nights like this are always better when you’ve got someone to share them with.’

Beautiful. Yes. If you ignored the fact that I’d disobeyed a direct warning and was probably signing my own death warrant.

‘I suppose so,’ I replied cautiously.

He took a step closer, not towards the door but slightly to the side, towards the bonnet, as though he intended to walk around the car. I tensed, but he stopped.

Then his nostrils twitched.

Even in the half-light, I could see them flare as he drew in a long, deep breath, closing his eyes. His chest rose and fell. Once. Twice. Again.

My mouth went dry.

He opened his eyes.

And I saw them. Even in the shadows, even in that feeble light. They were pale, almost white, with the faintest bluish tinge. And they glowed. Dimly, faintly, but unmistakably. Like a cat’s eyes caught in the beam of a camera flash.

My heart missed a beat.

‘Sweetheart,’ he drawled, and his smile changed, becoming slow and predatory, with a hint of fangs I hadn’t noticed a second earlier. ‘I can smell Grim on you. And I know you’re his new bitch.’

The mug slipped from my hands. The last of the tea splashed over my legs and into the footwell, but I barely noticed. I was staring at his eyes, those glowing shards of ice, and realising that there was no going back.

‘Is Alex all right?’ The question escaped before I could stop it. My voice trembled, almost breaking into a squeak, but I forced myself to finish. ‘What have you done to him?’

For a second, there was silence. Then the man laughed, softly and at length, as though I’d said something unbelievably funny.

‘Oh, how sweet.’ He shook his head, still smiling. ‘I don’t believe I mentioned any human names, sweetheart. Tsk, tsk… And you gave yourself away so quickly. So stupidly.’

Giving myself away. Of course. Led by my own ridiculous love, I’d practically handed him the evidence on a plate. He hadn’t said anything about Alex. He’d only mentioned Grim. Grim was his pack name, the name he used among his own kind, not the one humans knew him by.

And I’d blurted out his human name like a complete idiot.

I pressed myself back into the seat, feeling the cold leather against my spine, though inside I was burning with shame and fear.

‘What’s happened to him?’ I asked again, quietly this time, almost in a whisper.

The man stepped back and leaned against the bonnet of my car with infuriating ease, as though the vehicle belonged to him. He had a distinctly proprietorial air, as though everything around him belonged to him and he could do with it as he pleased.

‘Your Alex is perfectly fine,’ he said, putting a particularly mocking emphasis on the name. ‘He’s been punished a little for his behaviour in the pack, that’s all. If you like, I can take you straight to him.’

Punished.

The word hit me harder than any punch. I imagined scars, beatings, a cage – or whatever passed for a prison in their savage, primitive world. Something inside me twisted and tightened into a painful knot.

‘I do,’ I blurted out. I wasn’t even surprised by how quickly the words came. ‘But…’

The word hung between us, heavy as a rain-soaked blanket.

Alex had warned me. He’d been blunt, direct and utterly serious: If they find out about you, they’ll kill me, and they’ll tear you to pieces. And now they knew. This man was standing right in front of my car, and he already knew my scent. What did I have left to lose?

But could I trust him?

I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know why he was here, or whether he was telling the truth about Alex.

‘But?’ he prompted, raising an eyebrow impatiently. ‘Go on, sweetheart. Finish what you were saying.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound firm. My fingers trembled against the steering wheel, but I held his gaze.

‘Hm.’ He smirked, apparently not offended in the slightest. Well, if it helps, I can give you my word on behalf of the pack. I promise I’ll take you to Grim safe and sound, and I won’t lay a finger on you. Deal?’

The pack’s word. Alex had told me it meant something, that their oaths weren’t just empty sounds. I had no idea how much I could trust this particular man, but it seemed I had little choice.

‘Deal,’ I breathed.

The werewolf rolled his eyes, those horrible glowing eyes, and repeated the promise slowly, pronouncing each word separately,as though taking a solemn oath.

‘Another thing, sweetheart. You might as well introduce yourself,’ he added, casually crossing one leg over the other. ‘Although, if you’d rather not tell me your name, I can keep calling you Grim’s bitch. Has quite a nice ring to it, actually.’

Something inside me clicked. The fear remained, buried deep in my spine, locking my muscles in place, but now something else had joined it: anger.

‘I’m his girlfriend, not his bitch,’ I said, looking him straight in those cold eyes. ‘And my name is Alexandra. Now you introduce yourself. I’m listening.’

He gave a short, condescending snort, the sort an adult might make at a child’s babbling.

‘We can do without names,’ he said curtly. ‘Turn your phone off and leave it in the car. Take whatever you need and come on. Move.’

Silence fell between us. I watched him, and he watched me. Everything hung in the balance.

The sensible voice in my head – the cowardly one, the one that had always advised me to stay out of drunken brawls, never get into a stranger’s car and never believe pretty stories about werewolves – was screaming at me to run. It told me this was a one-way ticket, that people didn’t come back from places like this, that he was lying, that Alex was dead and this was a trap.

But I looked towards the forest, dark and boundless, full of mysteries and dangers, and knew that if I drove away now, I would never find out what had happened to him. I would never forgive myself for not even trying.

Almost as though I were moving in a dream, I picked up my phone, locked the screen and tossed it onto the passenger seat. My handbag went beside it. The flask remained on the bonnet. Let it.

Taking a deep breath, I summoned a kind of courage that had very little to do with bravery and everything to do with desperation and love. Then I reached for the door handle.

The door opened.

The night air struck my face, fresh and cold, carrying the scent of the forest and freedom. And, perhaps, death.

‘I’m ready,’ I said.

The werewolf nodded, pushed himself away from the bonnet and gestured towards the thicket.

‘Then let’s go. And keep up.’

I stepped into the darkness. Behind me lay the car, the headlights, the warm blanket and my former life: safe, dull and human. Ahead lay the forest. And perhaps Alex. And perhaps the end.

The door shut behind me of its own accord. I didn’t look back.

I wasn’t going because I was brave, or because I trusted the pale-eyed werewolf with his predatory smile. Somewhere during that week of silence, the cautious, sensible Sasha who had spent twenty years avoiding trouble had died. In her place was someone else: the girl who would climb out of a car at three in the morning to help an injured wolf, invite a wild animal into her home and now look into a stranger’s glowing eyes and insist, ‘I’m his girlfriend.’

The decision hadn’t come from careful reasoning. It had struck me like a blow to the stomach, a spasm in my throat, the moment he said Alex had been punished. Images had flashed through my mind: Alex in the darkness, Alex covered in blood, Alex alone among those who had never understood him. Something deep inside me had snapped. Not my heart, but something more primitive, something that had awakened in me that first night and never gone back to sleep.

The fear hadn’t vanished. It gripped my ribs with cold fingers, made my teeth chatter and my palms stick to the steering wheel. I was frightened of this stranger and his wolfish mannerisms. I was frightened of the forest, which seemed to watch me with a thousand dark eyes. I was frightened that I was walking into nowhere, towards something I couldn’t possibly understand.

But there was another fear, stronger than all the rest: the fear of never discovering what had happened to Alex. The fear of returning to an empty flat and waiting another week, another month, another year. The fear of getting used to the silence.

I had chosen the lesser evil, not for my own sake, but for his.

Two women seemed to be fighting inside me. One was clever and cynical, with Claire’s voice, screaming: ‘You’ve gone mad. He’s a werewolf. You don’t know him. You’re going to get yourself killed.’ The other was quiet and desperate, the woman who had spent her whole life keeping silent and had suddenly found her voice. She whispered: ‘If you walk away now, you’ll never forgive yourself.’

So I took that step, not out of courage, but out of a love that didn’t know how to think.

And out of exhaustion. A week of waiting had drained me dry. Sleepless nights, staring at my phone, every sound outside the door bringing a fresh, false flicker of hope. I was at the end of my tether, and the stranger’s promise – I’ll take you to him – had stopped being a threat. It had become the only lead I had, a straw to clutch at when I was already drowning.

As I walked away from the car, the damp night air closed around me, cold and alive. My pulse thudded in my ears, but my legs kept moving. I wasn’t entirely in control of them any more. My body was obeying something older than reason.

There was one more thought, the most shameful of all, that I would never have admitted aloud, even under torture: part of me wanted to be found. I wanted the pack to notice me. I wanted everything to be over at last, one way or another. The uncertainty was more frightening than any pale-eyed wolf.

That was why I kept walking. Not for the truth, and not to prove anything. Staying where I was had become impossible. Alex was out there, somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees, and my body seemed to know the way better than my mind ever could. I walked as though following the sound of a loved one’s voice through a crowd, without thinking, without choosing a route, simply following the call.

Only there was no voice. There was just a promise from a stranger, dangerous and yet unbearably tempting: ‘I’ll take you to him.’

And I believed. Not him, but my hope.

Interlude. Dan

She was packing.

He stood three paces away, arms folded across his chest, watching. He was in no hurry. He wasn’t going to rush her. There was plenty of time: the whole night, and if need be tomorrow, and the day after that. She wasn’t going anywhere.

The girl was frightened. He could sense it from a mile off without even trying. Her fear smelled sharp and cloying, like overripe berries about to burst. But she was putting on a brave face. Her fingers shook as she fastened her rucksack, yet her voice, when she spoke to him, was almost steady. Almost.

Funny. Small. Angry.

He had seen her kind before. They thought courage meant not being afraid. Real courage was being afraid and doing it anyway. She didn’t understand the difference yet. But he would explain it to her. He would explain it so that she remembered it for the rest of her life, however short that life turned out to be. He took no pleasure in the thought. Lessons like that were never pleasant for the one who taught them.

She had a scent.

That was what mattered.

The smell of her fear was the strongest, but not the only one. Beneath it lay something else. Something warm and slow. Without turning his head, he drew in a breath and caught the scent of desire: pure, unformed, not yet recognised even by her. It was buried deep, pressed down by terror and the unknown, but it was there.

She didn’t know it yet. Or she knew and wouldn’t admit it to herself.

He didn’t care.

Desire was a tool. So was fear. She would become both, in his hands, at his will. He did not pretend to himself that this was a clean thing to do. He had stopped pretending a long time ago. But the pack could no longer afford clean hands.

He turned his head slightly to catch her scent better and felt something ancient and impatient stir inside him. Not yet. Everything in its time.

He supposed he would have to explain himself – to everyone, the pups most of all. The reasons for the rules. For now it was only Grim, but what came next? And all the others? Idiots who thought with their balls. He had never liked ruling by fear alone. Fear was cheap, and it wore out. He would far rather have been understood than obeyed, but there was no time left to be understood, and so he had settled for obeyed.

The pack was dying. Not all at once, no. Not tomorrow. Not this year, and perhaps not even this decade. But each year the decline accelerated, like a snowball rolling down a mountainside: slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, then faster and faster, until it became unstoppable, sweeping everything away in its path.

Magic was leaving the world.It slipped through their fingers like water through sand, drop by drop, until there was almost nothing left, unnoticed by those who couldn’t feel it. And with it, they were leaving too. Two or three more generations and werewolves would be just people with good hearing, strong bodies and difficult tempers. And after that, not even that would remain.

He remembered how it used to be.

Three hundred years ago, magic had hung in the air. You could drink it like water from a mountain stream, cold, clean, life-giving. Werewolves shifted in seconds, without pain, without effort, simply flowing from one form into the other as water flows from vessel to vessel.

Cubs were born strong and healthy, feeling the wolf inside them from their first cry. Miscarriages were rare, happening only after severe wounds or illness. Stillbirths came once a century.

He remembered his first hundred years. The forests had been deeper, the nights darker, the moon heavier, fuller, nearer. Every full moon had filled him with strength to the brim. He had wanted to run, to tear, to smash, and he had run and torn and smashed, and it had been good.

Now it was different.

The trouble with births had begun about a hundred years ago, with the fall of the empires and the start of so-called industrialisation. At first there were only occasional miscarriages. The older she-wolves shrugged and said, ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ ‘Next time.’ But next time never came. Nor the time after. And then came the war, the Great War, as the human world called it. Military service had been held in honour among werewolves, and for once they hadn’t had to hide. Almost. But the war was the turning point. Before it there had been about half a million werewolves in the world. Some might say that wasn’t many, but for a closed community it was enough. By the 1920s a hundred thousand remained. Now there were fewer than ten thousand. Ten thousand in whom the ancient blood still ran: the blood of Fenrir, Velura, Amaretu, Bjorn, Typhon, Cerberus. Of those, a little more than a thousand could take a second form. Fewer than a hundred had three.

Then the miscarriages grew more frequent. Far more frequent. Now almost every pregnancy ended in blood. Those who were born were weaker than they should have been. Smaller. They broke more easily. Ran more slowly. They began to speak later, in human form and in wolf form alike.

He remembered one cub who had been born blind. Not because nature intended it, but because there hadn’t been enough magic for the eyes to form properly. The cub lived three days. The mother had howled so that the windows rattled in the nearest houses.

The shift had become harder too.

Pups used to shift at twelve or thirteen, playing, several times a day, to run, to romp, to scrap with their brothers. Now it came at sixteen or seventeen, with difficulty, with pain, with the risk of getting stuck halfway.

And when you got stuck between skins, it wasn’t merely frightening. It hurt. It hurt terribly.

He remembered two. Young ones. Neither had managed it.

The first was a lad of nineteen, sturdy, healthy, of good lineage. He had decided to shift at night, in the forest, alone. They found him only in the morning. He lay on his back, eyes open, mouth open, his body frozen in an unnatural pose, neither man nor wolf but something in between, ugly, wrong. The bones hadn’t settled into place. His spine was broken in three places. His organs had shifted.

The second was a girl of seventeen, the daughter of an old friend. She had managed to scream. She screamed for a long time. Her mother ran circles around her, not knowing how to help, licking her muzzle, whimpering, calling for help. But there was nothing to be done. Wolf magic doesn’t heal magic. It simply is, or it isn’t.

She fell silent towards dawn.

The bodies had to be burned. He had stood at that pyre. He had held the girl’s father by the shoulders while the man tried to climb into the fire after her. He had never told anyone that he hadn’t slept properly since. The parents of both left the pack a month later, unable to bear the empty room, the toys, the belongings no one wore. And how many more were there that he didn’t even know about?

Since then he had tightened the rules. Tightened them a great deal.

The city only with permission. Humans only on business, and never for longer than necessary. No ties. No attachments. No names that could be remembered.

Because