I don’t remember how I got into the car.
One second, I was burning alive in Vladimir’s arms, lungs full of fire, blood roaring in my ears.
The next, I was in the passenger seat, wrapped in his coat, warm, suffocating, smelling like him. Steel and winter. The scent of someone who could kill a man without blinking. The scent of safety.
But I didn’t feel safe.
Outside, Kustav was still laughing.
The kind of laugh that stuck to your skin like grease.
His voice was muffled by the car door, but the words still slid through the sealed glass, oily and cruel.
"Fenrir must be on the side of this immoral man," he mused, all teeth and venom. "Imagine that. I don’t even need to give you anything in return, Vladimir. You just handed her over to me like a gift. Your little prize... is my fucking daughter."
I gripped the armrest until my knuckles went white.
"She’s blood now," he continued. "And blood speaks at the Onyx Concord."
He stepped closer to the window.
"You’d best buckle down for the next meeting, High Alpha," he said, drawing out the title like a slur. "Because I have a legitimate claim now. The Marked Hybrid belongs to me."
Every syllable felt like a parasite, burrowing under my flesh.
I wanted to scream. To rip the door open and tear his throat out with my teeth.
But Vladimir didn’t move.
He didn’t look at him.
Not even when Kustav tapped a mocking knuckle against the window, was a fucking joke to him.
Not even when he said, "See you soon, High Alpha. Take care of my darling, daughter. I want her in one piece when I have her."
Vladimir’s jaw was locked tight, sculpted and silent. His one good eye stared straight ahead, a void so deep it made the dark look shallow.
He didn’t speak. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ NoveI★Fire.net
He just reached over and gently pulled the seatbelt across me, like I hadn’t just been shattered open by the worst truth of my life.
His hand brushed my collarbone.
I flinched, strangely not from fear but from shame from how small I felt with him towering over me.
From the scream building in my throat that wouldn’t come out.
Kustav’s laugh faded behind us as the engine purred to life, smooth and cold as Vladimir himself.
The car pulled away from the curb like nothing had happened.
Like my whole world hadn’t just cracked open.
But Vladimir didn’t say a word and still somehow, that silence said everything.
The silence inside the car felt like a second skin, one stretched too tightly over my bones. It coated everything, from the windows to the warm interior, souring the scent of Vladimir’s coat that draped around my shoulders like a promise I didn’t know how to believe in anymore.
Vladimir said nothing.
The weight of his silence pressed against my chest like gravity, so absolute that even Kustav’s venom couldn’t pierce it. But it didn’t stop the burn. It didn’t stop the echo of that bastard’s voice as he’d sneered through the glass like a man who had already won.
"She’s blood now. And blood speaks at the Onyx Concord."
The knowledge tasted like bile at the back of my throat.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until Vladimir reached out again, wordless, and adjusted the coat around me, like keeping my bones warm would stop them from splintering. His touch was maddeningly gentle, calculated, precise, frustratingly non-invasive and I hated him for it. Hated how calm he looked, how tightly coiled his energy had become. Not rage. Not yet. Just stillness. Ice. A stillness I could neither decipher nor lean into. And so I sat there, skin crawling, throat closing around a scream that had no name.
Soon the mansion loomed ahead. The guards at the gates didn’t move until Vladimir’s headlights cut through the dark. Then, with mechanical precision, the iron doors parted.
The car rolled to a stop at the edge of a long stone path veiled by mist, the kind that hugged the ground like old secrets.
And waiting there, framed by the high-arched entrance like a statue carved from frost, was the woman who had let me ’escape’.
Expression unreadable.
Her beauty was otherworldly, sharp in a way that felt architectural—like her cheekbones had been drawn.
Just stared, cold as the wind that whipped around the courtyard.
Then she opened the car door on my side without waiting for the engine to die.
"You," she said, tone clipped and glacial, "out."
I blinked, trying to move. But without the adrenaline... my legs had gone numb from the cold. They wouldn’t listen.
My body trembled in protest, the world a blur of muscle fatigue and humiliation.
She frowned, face etched with harsh disapproval.
"Pathetic," she muttered. "If you are truly the one marked by the Moon, you should not be this—"
The voice was velvet-wrapped steel.
It cut through the tension like a blade through silence.
The woman stiffened at the title. Just slightly. But it was there.
Vladimir had exited the driver’s side, rounding the car with a smooth, deliberate stride, his suit catching the silver light like armor.
Behind him, a man stepped forward, a worker.
"High Alpha, I can assist—"
Vladimir didn’t even look at him.
He just bent down, and with careful, maddening grace, slipped one arm behind my knees, the other beneath my back, lifting me like I weighed nothing.
I was too raw, too humiliated, too busy pretending the warmth of his chest against my cheek didn’t unravel something inside me.
He turned to the woman, his Beta, and said nothing else. He didn’t need to.
Her jaw clenched, and she stepped aside, wordlessly holding the door open.
Inside, the warmth hit me like a betrayal.
It smelled like rosemary and snow. The floors gleamed. Chandeliers shimmered. A palace pretending to be a home.
"Is the room prepared?" the Beta asked, voice crisp, efficient like she didn’t waste time on words she didn’t need.
Two workers appeared from the hall, both dressed in tailored black. The woman held a tablet, the man a folded throw blanket.
"Yes, Beta," the man said quickly. "Room’s been serviced, temperature adjusted, wardrobe delivered as per protocol."
"Good." Her gaze flicked to me, unimpressed. "I’ll take her." His Russian accent wasn’t thick, it was cold. Every word slid like black ice, slow, deliberate, and just sharp enough to make you bleed if he wanted you too. Yet poised enough to make you lean in if you dared.
Vladimir didn’t stop walking, didn’t even slow.
"I’ll help her get settled in."
The statement was quiet.
The Beta stopped short, one brow arching with clean, elegant defiance. Her steps grew hurried, heels clicking rhythmically on the tiles as she reached for me. I could already tell that her grip would hurt. "That’s not necessary. You have a council call in twenty minutes, and she’ll need time to..."
"I said I’ll help her." Vladimir’s voice was stalactite, ice sharp enough to pierce. A shiver raced through my bones and I found it was not unpleasant. I felt my checks flush.
Her eyes flared, just briefly. The kind of reaction people trained for years not to have. "Understood," she said tightly. "But protocol—"
"I’ll handle it," he said, with that same icy precision. "She’s been through enough today."
He just shifted me slightly in his arms, adjusting like I was weightless, and continued toward the hall.
The Beta’s jaw ticked. But she stepped aside, heels clicking softly on the polished floor.
"Have the doctor on standby," she said to the assistant behind her. "And inform the kitchen to have her food ready."
Though I was sure, by the way she was glaring at me, she would have preferred I ate glass.
The hallway we entered next was wide and minimal, glass walls on one side overlooking a manicured courtyard, the other lined with abstract art and recessed lighting that gave off a clean, calming hue. No chandeliers. No velvet drapes. Just modern edges, curated silence, and the subtle hum of a house that ran like a machine.
The fairy tales about Lycans had been far from accurate because... damn.
No one ever told you about the cold.
About how pristine it all was.
How clean, how sterile, how silently monstrous.
Everything was white and marble and polished to perfection—so perfect it felt fake. Like it could be wiped away the second I bled on it.
But I didn’t care about any of that.
Not the warmth. Not the chandeliers or the luxury.
Not the Beta’s sharp looks or Vladimir’s silent efficiency.
Not even the fact that I was being carried like something fragile when everything inside me was cracking.
Because nothing mattered anymore.
Not after what Kustav said.
Not after I heard it with my own ears.
Not just marked but made.
By the same man I came here to find. The one I had traced, hunted, researched. The one whose face haunted my nightmares and whose name was etched into the margins of every plan I’d made since my mother died.
My biological father.
The man I had vowed to destroy... was here.
Everything had indeed changed, at the same time, nothing at all in my plans had been altered.
I had found him, or more like he had found me; and I would only spread my mother’s ashes when he was nothing but dust.
That had been promise.
I would make his unwilling off spring his demise.
I straightened my spine, looking into his eyes, ones that wouldn’t meet mine.
"Seems we have a common enemy?" I said.
He halted in his steps, a muscle in his jaw jumped and those frostbitten eyes, eyes that had been fixed ahead like a soldier marching toward routine slowly drifted down to meet mine.