Two days had passed since the coven gathering, and Kristen still couldn’t get Julian’s words out of his head.
Stop behaving like an Omega in heat.
The insult had burrowed deep, not because he hadn’t expected such words from the vampire, but because of the venom behind it.
Julian had been rattled—Kristen had seen it in the way his grip tightened on the glass, in the way his jaw worked after Kristen walked away.
The vampire prince, so carefully composed, had lashed out like a cornered animal.
And that meant Kristen had landed a blow without even trying.
It should have felt like a victory.
It didn’t.
‘You’re thinking about it again,’ his wolf said.
It’s not like I want to.
‘Overthinking is what humans do.
You’re not just human.’
Kristen was standing at the window of the master suite, his forehead pressed against the cold glass.
The morning sun was pale and thin, barely warming the courtyard below.
Somewhere beyond the iron gates, his pack was living their lives without him.
He tried not to picture them—not Dalton, not Malachi, not Theo.
He’d done that too many times already, and it only made the ache worse.
‘We need to run.’ The wolf’s voice was insistent now, a low thrum beneath Kristen’s skin.
‘You’ve kept me caged for nine days.
Nine days of marble floors and silk sheets and that cold dead thing lying beside us every night.
I’m going to lose my mind.’
You’re me.
If you lose your mind, I lose mine.
‘Exactly.
So let’s go.’
The garden gate was locked.
Kristen had known it would be—he’d tried it his first week, rattled the heavy iron handle until his palms ached, then given up and gone back inside like a good little prisoner.
This time, he didn’t bother with the handle.
He stripped off his shirt, kicked off his shoes, and stood barefoot on the cold stone pathway, staring up at the wall.
‘Finally,’ his wolf breathed.
The shift rolled through him like a wave.
It was easier than usual—his wolf was so desperate to break free that it practically tore out of him, bones cracking and reforming with a speed that left him dizzy.
Fur sprouted along his spine, his jaw lengthened, his hands curved into claws.
The world sharpened.
Colors deepened.
Scents that had been muted became a symphony—damp earth, blooming jasmine, the distant musk of a fox den somewhere beyond the wall.
And then the wolf took over.
It wasn’t a surrender.
It was a partnership, the way it always was, but in this form the wolf’s instincts had the upper hand.
Kristen’s human thoughts didn’t vanish—they simply stepped back, yielding control to something older and simpler.
The wolf didn’t brood over insults or replay arguments or count the days since it had last seen the sky.
The wolf only knew the grass beneath its paws and the wind in its fur and the sheer, uncomplicated joy of movement.
‘See?’ the wolf said, and its voice was richer now, fuller, resonating through every muscle and bone.
‘This is what we needed.
Not thinking.
Not planning.
Just running.’
Kristen let himself agree.
He climbed the wall in three powerful leaps, claws finding purchase in the gaps between stones, and dropped down on the other side with a heavy thud that shook the earth.
The garden stretched before him—manicured hedges, a burbling stone fountain, gravel paths laid out in precise, elegant curves.
It was beautiful.
It was artificial.
It didn’t matter.
They ran.
The hedges blurred past, leaves whipping against their flanks.
They leaped the fountain in a single bound, scattered gravel across a pristine lawn, tore through a flower bed and left a spray of crushed petals in their wake.
The wolf didn’t care about the damage.
The wolf had been caged too long, and the only cure for that was speed, was wind, was the pounding of their heart and the burn of their lungs and the sheer animal bliss of being alive.
‘Faster,’ the wolf urged.
Kristen pushed harder.
His legs ached.
His breath came in ragged pulls.
But it felt good—better than good.
It felt like freedom.
Not the real thing, not the forest and the pack and the life he’d left behind, but a shadow of it.
A reminder.
His wolf was still here.
His strength was still here.
Whatever else the vampires had taken, they hadn’t taken that.
The garden gave way to wilder ground.
The manicured hedges thinned out, replaced by long grass and gnarled trees that hadn’t been trimmed into submission.
The wolf slowed, panting, its golden eyes sweeping the new terrain.
The scents here were different—older, earthier, tinged with something that made the fur along their spine bristle.
What is that?
Kristen asked.
The wolf didn’t answer.
It was already moving, padding forward through the tall grass with its head low and its ears pricked.
The trees parted, and they stepped into a clearing.
Headstones.
Rows of them, weathered and crooked, their inscriptions worn to ghost letters.
Marble angels with chipped wings.
Granite obelisks leaning at drunken angles.
Moss and ivy and the faint, mineral scent of old stone.
A graveyard.
Kristen felt his human mind surge forward, curiosity and unease prickling at the edges of the wolf’s calm.
The wolf resisted for a moment—it didn’t care about graves, didn’t understand why the dead should trouble the living—then yielded, letting Kristen take back just enough control to process what he was seeing.
Vance.
The name was everywhere, carved into stone after stone.
Some of the dates were centuries old.
Some of the markers were so weathered they might as well have been blank.
The air was heavier here, cooler, carrying a stillness that felt almost sacred.
The wolf’s ears flattened.
‘We shouldn’t be here.’
I know.
‘No.
You don’t.’ The wolf’s voice was tense now, the wild joy of the run completely gone.
‘Something is wrong with this place.
Can’t you feel it?’
Kristen could.
A pressure in the air, like the moment before a thunderstorm.
A cold that had nothing to do with the shade of the trees.
His golden eyes swept the clearing, tracking the shadows between the headstones, and then—
A figure, standing at the far edge of the graveyard.
Julian.
He was motionless, his back to Kristen, his dark suit blending into the shadows of a gnarled oak.
He was facing a grave—newer than the others, its marble surface still smooth.
Fresh flowers lay at its base.
White lilies, their petals beginning to brown.
Kristen’s wolf went very still. Get faster updates on g.com.
‘How long has he been there?’
I don’t know.
‘He knew we were coming.
He must have.’
Kristen didn’t answer.
He was too aware of his own body now—the massive wolf form, the golden eyes, the fur that still bristled with the electric charge of the run.
Julian hadn’t turned around.
He hadn’t acknowledged Kristen’s presence at all.
But Kristen knew, with the bone-deep certainty of a prey animal, that the vampire was aware of him.
Had been aware of him since the moment he’d climbed the wall.
The shift back to human form was slower than usual.
Kristen’s wolf resisted, reluctant to surrender the body, and Kristen had to coax it with quiet reassurances.
We’re not going back inside yet.
I just need to stand on two legs for this.
I need to face him as myself.
The wolf grumbled but yielded.
Bones cracked.
Fur receded.
Kristen’s body reshaped itself into something smaller, softer, infinitely more vulnerable.
When it was done, he stood naked in the dappled sunlight, the cool air prickling against his bare skin.
He crossed his arms over his chest—not out of shame, but because the graveyard felt like the kind of place where modesty was expected.
Where bare skin was an intrusion, a disrespect to the dead.
Julian still didn’t turn around.
“I know you know I’m here.” Kristen said.
His voice came out rougher than he’d intended, still carrying the gravel of the shift.
Julian didn’t answer.
He simply stood there, a dark figure against the pale stone, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
The silence stretched, heavy and expectant, broken only by the rustle of leaves in the cold morning breeze.
Kristen took a step forward.
Then another.
He stopped a few paces behind Julian, close enough to see the name on the grave.
The inscription was faint, the letters worn by time or weather or both, but he could just make it out:
Beloved.
Taken too soon.
The name was lost entirely.
Whatever the stone had once said, it said no longer.
Kristen opened his mouth to ask—who was she, what happened, why are you standing here alone—but something stopped him.
The rigid line of Julian’s shoulders.
The absolute stillness of his posture.
The lilies at the base of the grave, their petals browning at the edges, as if they’d been laid there hours ago and left to wilt.
This was a wound.
Julian’s wound.
Kristen closed his mouth.
He stood in the cold morning air, naked and dirt-streaked and still trembling from the run, and waited.
Julian didn’t turn around.
Didn’t speak.
The silence between them wasn’t a ceasefire, wasn’t an understanding.
It was simply a pause—two predators occupying the same space, neither willing to make the first move.
The wind shifted.
The lilies rustled.
And Kristen, who had spent days nursing his anger, his pride, his hurt, found himself rooted to the spot in a graveyard, staring at the back of the monster he was married to, wondering why it felt less like a cage and more like a mirror.
Right in my kokoro(｡•́︿•̀｡).
Julian is just a hurt bean…until he opens his mouth =_=