DARIEN
The drive home was supposed to be a victory lap.
I was supposed to feel the calm, profound sense of vindication that comes from knowing you risked everything for a mythical dream and found it to be violently, intoxicatingly real.
Aria Winters—my mate, my destiny, the living miracle I had rejected my birthright for—was safe, sleeping off a day that had nearly killed her.
But the scent of almonds and lavender on my collar was fading, replaced by the sour tang of guilt and the harsh, metallic fear of my reality.
I didn't slow the car until I hit the narrow, unpaved road that branched off the main highway, ending abruptly at the secluded, heavily-warded house I'd bought years ago.
It was a sterile cage of glass and steel, built to keep the wolf out, and to keep the professor safe.
As soon as I cut the engine, a foul, familiar scent hit me—old leather, pine smoke, and arrogance. Creed.
I was out of the car and halfway across the driveway before the man emerged from the shadows beneath the front porch, arms crossed over a chest too wide for the cheap cotton shirt he wore.
"Took you long enough, cousin," Creed sneered, his voice a low, gravelly sound that was already shifting into a wolf's snarl.
"I had a scheduling conflict," I said, dropping my professorial tone for the cold, guttural voice of an Alpha Heir. My hands balled into fists, resisting the urge to shift.
The Thornsvale Pack's rules were simple: no wolf fights on human ground. But Creed had already broken one boundary simply by being here.
"You're pathetic, Darien," Creed spat, taking a heavy step forward. "This house. This life. You left a throne for a lecture hall. The Elders are growing impatient. They want their Alpha, and they're tired of the smell of chalk dust on your reports."
"Tell them to send a formal petition. I'm a busy man."
The shift was instantaneous. Creed's eyes flashed gold and he lunged, not with a wolf's elegant ferocity, but with a brute's mindless rage.
I didn't even have time to brace. The fight was savage, silent, and entirely in human forms. I met his punch, returned it with a cracking blow to the ribs, and we went down hard, wrestling across the packed earth.
I was stronger, faster, fueled by the primal energy of the mate I'd just kissed, but Creed was younger, angrier, and utterly without finesse.
He pinned my right arm and drove his knee into my kidney.
"You've gone soft," Creed growled, breathing heavily. "You smell like cheap coffee and humanity. Come home. We'll forget this ridiculous farce."
"Not yet." I twisted violently, throwing him off, and then I let the shift take hold.
The transformation was painful and necessary. Bones groaned, muscles tore, and then I stood on all fours, massive, grey, and infinitely more capable.
Creed was already a dark shape of muscle and teeth. We didn't hesitate. The fight resumed with bone-jarring, earth-shaking snarls, until a final, dominant roar from my chest forced him back.
He stood panting, two paces away, his wolf's tail tucked in slight deference to the bloodline he knew he couldn't quite overcome.
He's still my little cousin.
Creed shifted back, naked and furious, his human eyes pinning me with disdain. "Forget your position, then. We have bigger problems than your mid-life crisis. The Elders want to know what this smell is."
"It's nothing," I lied.
"It's a lie," he countered, stepping closer, eyes narrowing. "It's the smell of puppy lore. That sickeningly sweet scent you have on your shirt. It's a fated mate, isn't it?"
I didn't answer. Creed saw the confirmation in the lack of denial. His face twisted with disbelief.
"It's a myth, Darien! We tell those stories to keep the runts from trying to couple with humans. You're the Alpha Heir—you cannot claim a goddamn legend! Is she at least a pure breed?"
I held his gaze, unwilling to reveal Aria's full truth yet. "I don't know."
That was the trigger. Creed roared, a human sound of pure frustration, and slammed his fist into the hood of my truck, denting the metal.
"You will return to Thornsvale in two months, Darien. Mark her. Bring her back as your Luna, or don't come back at all. But if you fail, and she's not pack-worthy, you'll be an outcast, and we'll have to clean up the mess you left behind."
He turned and dissolved into the treeline without another word, leaving the silence of the woods ringing with his ultimatum.
° ° ° °
I collapsed onto the damp earth, the shift back slow and agonizing. My kidney throbbed. My hands were scraped and bloody.
Two months.
I had planned on two semesters. I had planned on easing Aria into the supernatural world, on wooing the woman before terrifying the half-wolf. I wanted her to feel the love I left the pack for, not the fear of a deadline.
She had told me tonight that she felt "too much." She felt the intense energy of her awakening wolf and mistook it for emotional instability. She looked to me, her handsome professor, for calm, for boundaries, for a controlled environment. She said "Yes sir," and meant it as a human crush.
I ran a bloody hand over my face. I would have to use that obedience. I would use the authority of Professor Hedgegrove to enforce the will of the Alpha.
The soft, little-minded pup would need to be broken of her human delusions and forged into a mate who could survive the Thornsvale Pack.
I looked at the house—my safe place—now corrupted by Creed's presence and a two-month countdown.
I didn't leave the Thornsvale Pack for a two-month failure. I left for her.
I rose, my body heavy with the promise of violence to come. I had two months to make Aria Winters believe in monsters.
And the first lesson would be tomorrow, in my office.
No matter what it cost us both.