The forest was silent when Ray followed him.
Moonlight filtered through the trees, silver against dark leaves.
Auren stopped in the clearing without turning immediately.
He could already hear the change in Ray’s breathing.
It was uneven, strained, no longer fully human.
When Auren faced him, Ray’s eyes were already shifting.
“You think you won?” Ray asked through clenched teeth.
Auren did not answer.
The tightness in his chest burned deeper.
Ray’s body twisted.
The shift came fast and violent.
Bones cracked and reshaped, clothes tearing as fur burst through skin.
In seconds the man was gone and the wolf stood before him.
He was massive.
Light brown fur thick beneath the moonlight, muscles powerful and trained.
His blue eyes remained sharp and furious, glowing with wounded pride.
In wolf lands, strength showed most in this form, and Ray was no weak creature.
He lunged without warning.
Auren stepped aside at the last second, catching the wolf’s shoulder and redirecting him into the earth.
The impact shook the clearing.
Dirt scattered beneath claws.
Ray recovered instantly and struck again, jaws snapping toward Auren’s throat.
Auren blocked with his forearm.
Teeth pierced skin briefly before his body healed, but the pressure of the bite was real.
Ray lunged again, powerful and reckless.
Auren met him head on this time, catching the attack with both hands.
The force of the impact shook the clearing, but it did not move him back more than a single step.
Ray was strong for a wolf, massive and trained, his muscles built through years of discipline.
In another fight, against another opponent, he would have been terrifying.
But Auren was not another opponent, and what made this fight dangerous was not Ray’s strength.
It was Auren’s.
As the wolf snapped and clawed, Auren felt his own anger rising higher.
The pain in his chest refused to quiet, fed by Evryn’s heartbreak.
It sharpened his instincts and pushed him forward, tempting him to end the fight quickly, permanently.
He had to think.
He could kill him in seconds.
One clean movement.
One broken neck.
One crushed throat.
But Ray was still her fiancé.
If he killed him, the blood would stain her life as well.
So, Auren forced himself to measure every motion.
He blocked without tearing.
He struck without aiming for fatal points.
He restrained the strength that had won wars and crushed enemies far greater than this wolf.
It required more control to spare him than to destroy him.
When Ray leaped again, blinded by fury, Auren stepped inside the attack and seized the front leg mid-air.
He calculated the pressure carefully before twisting.
Bone cracked under his grip, sharp and deliberate, enough to break but not shatter beyond repair.
Ray crashed down with a howl.
Auren stood over him, breathing controlled, rage burning but contained.
Even now, with Ray injured beneath him, the pain in his chest lingered, reminding him that this fight was not only about dominance.
It was about her.
And he would not allow the source of her pain to walk away untouched.
Auren grabbed that same arm and twisted it further until another crack echoed through the trees.
Ray gasped through pain.
“I am setting rules,” Auren said quietly, his voice steady despite the storm inside him.
“You will not touch her in anger.
You will not corner her.
You will not threaten her.”
Ray glared up at him from the dirt, his breathing ragged, sweat and soil matting his hair.
“Whatever her choice will be,” Auren continued evenly, his voice like the strike of a clock, “understand this clearly.
If you become a danger to her, I become yours.”
There was no scream, no wild threat.
Only the terrifying certainty of a predator.
He released Ray and stepped back.
Auren turned away first, leaving Ray broken on the forest floor, his pride shattered deeper than his bones.
As Auren walked back toward the farm, the truth finally settled in his chest.
He hadn’t fought tonight because a spell commanded him to.
He fought because her tears had a price, and he was the only one willing to pay it.
Evryn had fled.
She didn’t want Brinna’s pity or the maids whispered gossip.
She walked until the lantern light died and the ancient trees swallowed her whole.
Behind a wide trunk, hidden in the velvet black of the woods, her shoulders finally dropped.
She pressed her hand against her mouth, but the tears came anyway…ugly, hot, and unbidden.
She had waited for proof, believing that seeing it would make her strong.
She hadn’t known it would feel like her chest was being hollowed out with a rusted knife.
They were so close to marriage.
Even here, away from the palace’s temptations, he still chose to play.
It wasn’t just betrayal; it was the realization that she was never enough to make him want to be better.
The sound of soft footsteps reached her.
Auren had felt the bond in his chest shift from a sharp alarm to a heavy, suffocating sadness.
He found her behind the tree, her silhouette trembling.
“Stop,” he said quietly.
Evryn stiffened, frantically wiping her cheeks and turning her head away.
“Go away.”
“You are not the only one who hurts,” he added, his voice low.
She frowned, not understanding his riddle, but she refused to let him see her break. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
She straightened her spine, forcing a mask of ice onto her face.
“I am not hurt,” she snapped, though the crack in her voice gave her away.
Then, she saw it.
The moonlight caught the dark, wet stain on his sleeve.
She stepped forward, her instincts as a healer overriding her pride.
She caught his arm.
“What happened?” she demanded, her voice sharp with worry.
She began to tear at the fabric, her fingers searching for the gash, the puncture…anything.
But when she pulled the cloth back, there was only smooth, pale skin.
The wound was gone, erased by the unnatural speed of his blood.
There was nothing left but the scarlet evidence of a violence she hadn’t witnessed.
“There is nothing,” he said calmly.
“Go to sleep, Evryn.
I am tired.”
She looked from his sleeve to his eyes, frustrated.
“What does your tiredness have to do with me?
If you are tired, sleep.
I am not stopping you.”
Auren didn’t answer immediately.
He couldn’t tell her that his rest was tied to the rhythm of her breathing.
That he couldn’t close his eyes while she was wandering through the dark, breaking herself into pieces.
He studied her face, the faint redness around her eyes, the raw vulnerability she was trying so hard to hide.
Something in him finally softened…the King stepped aside, leaving only the man.
“It is easier for me to rest,” he said quietly, “if you are not wandering alone in the dark.”
Evryn stilled.
The sharpness in her posture didn’t disappear, but a flicker of something new…startled and warm…crossed her eyes.
“I do not require supervision,” she said, her voice losing its edge.
“And I certainly do not sleep on command.”
“You are difficult,” he said.
“And you are secretive,” she replied.
Auren looked at her, and then, the corner of his mouth lifted.
It wasn’t a smirk.
It wasn’t a challenge.
It was a real smile…soft, unguarded, and unexpectedly warm.
It transformed his face, stripping away the cold servant and the arrogant stranger.
Evryn froze.
She had never seen him look at her like that.
For a moment, the weight of Ray’s betrayal felt lighter, eclipsed by the sudden, quiet glow of the man standing in front of her.
How could a servant…or a vampire…have a smile that felt so much like home?
“Goodnight, Evryn,” he murmured.
“Goodnight…
Auren,” she whispered back, watching him walk away, her heart beating a rhythm that had nothing to do with sorrow.
What a strange night it had turned out to be.
She had lost a fiancé, but she had found something much more dangerous: a reason to stay awake.