Caspian’s POV
“No woman has ever dared to hit me before.” My own voice sounded foreign, dragged low by the anger in my chest.
“Have you any idea what that could cost you?”
My wolf wanted punishment.
She had refused him, then struck him, and the affront crowded out everything else.
Until I saw the tears.
They were running down Danae’s face, and fear wasn’t the only thing in her expression.
She was hurting.
That recognition cut through the rage and left me staring at my hand around her wrist.
I was gripping her hard enough to leave red marks.
The realization came with a sickening clarity the wolf’s fury had denied me.
I let her go immediately and drew back.
“Put your clothes on.” Keeping my voice level took effort.
“I’ll drive you back.”
She moved away from me and gathered the clothes scattered across the floor.
Her fingers shook.
I watched her struggle with them, caught between impulses I couldn’t reconcile.
My wolf still wanted to claim her, to have her yield.
The man in me could see the vulnerability in each hurried movement, the shame bright in her cheeks.
Silence weighed on the car while she dressed.
When her hand went to the door handle, my body tensed.
“I told you, I’ll take you.”
Whatever had happened between us, I wasn’t leaving her to walk the streets alone at this hour.
“No.” Her voice trembled; the decision in it did not.
“I’ll catch a bus.”
The door slammed.
I watched her walk away, back straight, refusing to fold beneath what had just happened.
The courage in that small, stubborn figure angered me almost as much as I admired it.
Women didn’t walk away from me.
Danae did.
I followed in the Maybach, moving slowly along the curb while she made her way to the stop.
When she boarded the late-night bus, I stayed behind it through the city, leaving enough distance that she wouldn’t see me following.
It brought her to Eirwen Barrowin’s building.
I parked across the street, where the shadows hid the car, and watched the second-floor windows.
At 2:17 AM, I looked at the dashboard clock.
Twenty minutes had passed with me sitting there, watching her outline move behind the curtains.
She was inside.
Safe.
I had needed to know that, needed to see it after what had happened in the back seat.
My wolf could still sense her.
He paced under my skin, restless with a certainty I could no longer dismiss.
The first meeting in the bar, that sharp awareness when our eyes connected.
The need that had taken us to my hotel.
The territorial rage when I found her hurt in the parking lot.
Every encounter had pointed to the same thing, and tonight had stripped away the last of my excuses.
Danae was my mate.
Mine.
I tightened my hands around the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched.
Knowing frightened me more than uncertainty ever had.
Wynne’s betrayal had nearly broken me.
I had promised myself I would never offer another woman that kind of power, and now fate had given me a human—one entangled with the man who would become my Delta.
What was I supposed to do with that?
How could I even speak to her after the way we had parted?
The bond seemed to demand an answer, a recognition I had no idea how to give.
“I’ve seen her a handful of times,” I muttered into the empty car.
“I can’t simply decide she’s my mate.”
Her shadow slipped out of sight, and I started the engine.
Women betrayed you in the end.
Experience had taught me that lesson, and I wasn’t about to forget it because biology pulled at me.
Instinct.
That was all this was.
I had spent my life learning to control instinct.
I drove away.
Her scent went with me—in the car, on my skin, in every thought I tried to push aside.
Danae’s POV
“Where have you been?”
I closed Eirwen’s apartment door as quietly as I could.
She was curled on the couch in a fluffy robe, holding a glass of red wine.
A reality show played silently on the television, its flickering pictures doing nothing to soften the question in her eyes.
“Nowhere, really.”
I looked down as I slipped off my shoes.
My body still carried the memory of Caspian’s touch, and I couldn’t separate the lingering exhilaration from the shame.
Meeting Eirwen’s gaze felt impossible.
“Your face is all flushed.” One eyebrow rose.
“Something’s different.
What happened, Dana?”
I dropped into the armchair opposite her.
Exhaustion settled over me so suddenly that sitting upright felt like work.
“Please.
I don’t want to talk about it.”
I was on the verge of saying something more when my phone rang.
Mom’s number lit the screen.
This late?
Dread pulled tight in my stomach as I answered.