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CHAPTER 14

Lexa

I woke drowning in heat—slick with sweat, lungs burning, my heart pounding against my ribs like it was trying to claw its way out. Every breath scraped raw through my throat, and my limbs felt too heavy to move, like I was sinking into a bed of fire. My skin prickled with fever, but I knew—this wasn’t sickness.

It was her.

The wolf.

She was there, just beneath the surface, no longer silent, no longer buried in the safe dark where I had locked her away for years. She stirred now, alert, pulsing under my skin like a second heartbeat. I could feel her presence—hot, wild, suffocating. A part of me that had always been other, something I had carved out with blood and magic, something I had rejected with everything I was.

And nowshewas awake.

A whisper of awareness crept in slowly—details that made my stomach tighten. The bed beneath me was not my own. The sheets were far too soft, the scent in the room too clean, too sharp with smoke and leather and something deeper, darker—him.

I tried to sit up, and every muscle screamed. My body was stiff, wrung dry like I’d fought an entire war inside my own bones. When I managed to push myself onto my elbows, I finally saw it—this room. Spacious, dimly lit, warm from the fire still flickering in the hearth. Thick drapes drawn. Silver pitcher on a carved table beside the bed. My breath caught.

This wasn’t the guest chamber. This was his. Andros’s. My heart spiked hard in my chest, a sick twist rising in my throat as panic surged up in waves. I gripped the covers, fingers trembling, trying to piece together the edges of my shattered memory. I remembered the pain, the heat, the second rune tearing itself from my spine. The screaming. The desperation.

But nothing else. I looked around the room, frantic, and that’s when I saw him.

He was seated near the fire, body draped in shadow, one arm resting on the chair’s arm, the other cradling a goblet that he hadn’t touched. He hadn’t removed his armour fully—just his coat, now folded across the nearby bench—and his boots were still damp with snow.

His blue eyes were already on me. Watching. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He just stared, dark and still, like a predator waiting to see if the prey would flee or fight.

I sat up further, clutching the blanket to my chest as if it could shield me from the weight of his gaze, from the growing horror clawing through my ribs.

“What…” I swallowed, my voice raw. “What happened? What did I—what did we—?”

He rose from the chair in a single fluid movement, all powerand command wrapped in silence, and walked toward the bed with that same relentless calm that made him more dangerous than any roar ever could.

“You didn’t sleep with me,” he said, his voice flat, clipped, like the effort it took to keep it controlled was work. “Not that you didn’t try.”

I flinched as the words hit, sharp and heavy, dragging guilt through the fog of my exhaustion. My mouth opened, then shut again, nothing coherent forming. I didn’t remember trying. I didn’t remember anything past the second rune cracking.

“I don’t—” I started, but he cut me off with a slight shake of his head.

“You were burning up. Ranting. Delirious. Trying to seduce me one second, cursing me the next. You fought like hell until your body couldn’t take it anymore. Then you screamed like the world was ending, and collapsed.” His jaw clenched. “You nearly died.”

The weight of those words stole the breath from my lungs. I turned my face away, shame scraping deep, but he wasn’t finished.

“I should let you rot for what you said. For what you did to yourself. For hiding behind that filth carved into your back and thinking you could walk into my home, insult my pack, insult me, and still expect to be spared.” His voice was rough now, rougher than before. “But instead, I’m feeding you. I’m keeping you warm. I’m making sure you live.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling a cloth from the basin on the table. The moment the coolness touched my forehead, I nearly wept—not because it was kind, but because I didn’t understand how he could still offer that after everything. His fingers brushed damp hair from my face with a gentleness that didn’t belong to a man like him. Not someone who had seen the things he had done. Not someone who had earned every whisperof fear that followed him down the halls of this citadel.

“You can stop cursing her,” he murmured quietly, like the fury in him had burned too hot to sustain and now left only ash. “Your wolf. She didn’t betray you last night. You didn’t fuck me. You didn’t lose yourself.”

I stared up at him, too weak to reply, throat too dry to form any defence, even if I had one.

He looked down at me—still angry, still dangerous—but something in his gaze had shifted. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t power. It was something quieter. He was furious, yes, but he hadn’t turned away. He hadn’t left.

The warmth of his bed was suffocating. Too soft. Too safe. The blankets trapped me like chains, like velvet bindings I couldn’t rip through no matter how hard I tried. My body ached. My skin still burned, though the fever had begun to ease. The wolf inside me was curled and quiet—for now—but I could feel her there, breathing beneath the surface, not broken, not banished.

I was weaker than I’d ever felt before.

But desperation… that was still mine. I turned to him, to the man who sat at my bedside like a silent storm, eyes sharp with judgment, arms crossed, his anger simmering beneath the quiet, calculated control.

“Andros,” I whispered, and gods, I hated the way my voice cracked on his name. “Please… just one rune. One more. I’ll get the coin. I’ll work—I’ll kill if I have to. Just enough for her to carve another one. I’ve survived with three before, I can do it again.”