Page 10 of A Gathering Storm (Tides of Fate)
The thought cuts off as possessiveness roars through me hot enough to make my vision blur red at the edges.
Mine. The word pulses with my heartbeat, primitive and absolute.
Mine, mine, mine. The wolf doesn't care about complications or consequences.
It only knows she belongs to us with a certainty that bypasses rational thought entirely.
But intelligence wars with desire, cold logic dousing primal need like ice water over burning coals.
She's everything dangerous to what I've just built with blood and desperate alliances.
A human outsider with professional curiosity and the skills to satisfy it, armed with camera and notebook and the kind of persistent charm that makes people tell her things they shouldn't.
A journalist who makes her living uncovering secrets, and I've just sworn blood oaths with five other predators to keep ours buried deep as ocean trenches.
She could destroy us without meaning to, with nothing more than innocent curiosity and bad timing.
A string of photographs at the wrong moment—Jax from man to wolf, all fangs and fury.
One overheard conversation about territorial disputes and hunting grounds.
One glimpse of a swirling mist where man becomes wolf, and everything unravels.
The treaties written in blood and witnessed by stones older than memory, the territories carved out with tooth and claw, the fragile peace I've killed to maintain—all of it burns if she learns the truth.
And she will. My wolf won't let me stay away from her, and staying away is the only thing that might keep her safe.
Already I'm memorizing the way morning light plays across her skin like watercolors, the way she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear with delicate fingers that were never meant for violence.
I'm breathing deep, pulling her scent into my lungs like a drowning man gulps air—rain and vanilla and something uniquely her that makes my mouth water and my wolf whine with need.
The irony cuts deep enough to draw blood from my soul.
Last night I forged a brotherhood in storm and violence, six dangerous men bound together to protect what we are from those who would hunt us.
This morning, the fates hand me my mate—the one woman who could destroy it all simply by existing, by being curious, by asking the wrong questions at the right time.
She starts walking, pulling her suitcase over the uneven planks with determined efficiency that suggests she's faced worse obstacles than wet wood and morning mist. Her coat flares in the harbor breeze, revealing the curve of her waist, the feminine lines that make my wolf whine with need so acute it's nearly pain.
She doesn't look back, doesn't sense the predator watching from shadows between the pilings.
Completely unaware that her life just veered onto a collision course with teeth and claws and midnight hunts, with a world where monsters are real and some of them fall in love.
The harbor road swallows Duncan Ross’ ancient Land Rover like the mouth of a cave, winding up toward the village center where she'll find Finch's solicitor office with its dusty files and older secrets, the single inn that stays open year-round for the handful of hardy souls who visit Stormhaven when it shows its true face.
Duncan will get her up to Clifftop house and probably fill her head with local legends and lore.
The others in town who see her pass by will eye her with the suspicious looks of locals who can smell "outsider" from a hundred yards and know exactly how dangerous questions can be.
But those same locals will help her—island hospitality runs deeper than suspicion, especially for a woman alone with her aunt's tragedy fresh as morning frost. They'll tell her which roads flood in heavy rain, which shops stay open past tourist season, how to work the old house's temperamental heating system.
They'll weave a net of casual kindness around her that will make leaving harder than staying, because that's how small places claim the souls they want to keep.
Her aunt is dead, and Eliza Warren is very much alive. Alive and here and mine in ways she can't possibly understand yet, in ways that terrify me more than silver bullets or government hunters.
I remain frozen in place long after she disappears, my wolf howling protests that vibrate through my bones like struck tuning forks.
The morning mist clings to my skin, cold and damp as grave shrouds, but I'm burning from the inside out with need so intense it borders on madness.
My carefully ordered world—the one I've maintained through blood and will and ruthless control for thirty-seven years—just caught fire and I'm watching it burn.
The smart thing would be to avoid her entirely.
To let her settle the estate and leave within the month, never knowing how close she came to monsters that hunt beneath human skin.
To protect her through distance, keep her ignorant and safe and far from the violence that shadows my life like a faithful hound.
To sacrifice my own desperate need on the altar of her safety.
But even as I think it, I know it's as impossible as asking the tide to stop or the moon to change its course.
The mate-bond doesn't care about smart or safe or the careful walls I've built around my heart.
It cares about completion, about the missing piece of my soul that just walked off a ferry in designer boots and a cloud of vanilla perfume.
My wolf won't let her leave. Can't let her leave.
The very thought makes my chest constrict like something vital is being torn away with rusty claws.
A gull cries overhead, harsh laughter at my predicament that echoes off the water like mockery.
Somewhere in the village, church bells toll the hour—seven deep notes that echo across the water like a countdown to disaster, each one a step closer to the moment when careful distance becomes impossible to maintain.
Because that's what she is: beautiful, inevitable disaster wrapped in cashmere and curiosity, armed with nothing more dangerous than intelligence and the kind of stubborn persistence that turns over stones better left unturned.
I finally move, joints stiff from standing still so long in the morning cold.
Rafe's warehouse needs checking for signs of last night's violence, and I need distance from her scent before my wolf does something irreversibly stupid like tracking her to the inn and claiming her in front of witnesses.
But even as I force myself to walk away, to focus on threats I can fight with teeth and claws, I know the truth with crystalline clarity.
Eliza Warren has been in Stormhaven less than ten minutes, and she's already changed everything.
The careful balance I've maintained, the brotherhood I forged in blood and desperation, the peace that keeps the clans from open war—all of it sits on a knife's edge now, waiting for one curious journalist to ask the wrong question.
The question isn't whether I'll claim her—instinct makes that inevitable as the tide that pulls at my bones.
The question is whether we'll survive it, whether the brotherhood I just forged in blood can withstand the storm she's about to become.
Whether love and secrecy can coexist when one wrong word, one overheard conversation, one photograph in the wrong light could see us all hunted by governments and corporations that see us as weapons to be controlled or threats to be eliminated.
My wolf doesn't care about the questions or the consequences.
It only knows she's here, she's ours, and the hunt has already begun whether I admit it or not.
The careful control I've maintained for thirty-seven years, the walls I built after betrayal taught me that trust kills faster than silver bullets—all of it cracks like ice under spring sun, like glass under pressure, like everything fragile and necessary when something stronger comes along to test its limits.
I taste copper on the wind, sharp as fresh blood, and can't tell if it's leftover lightning or the scent of disaster heading straight for the life I've built on this storm-swept island at the edge of the world.
The storm has passed, but the war has only begun.
The brotherhood stands united, six predators bound by blood, secrets, and something older than loyalty.
Yet fate doesn’t rest.
When a stranger arrives on Stormhaven’s shores, Declan’s control will be tested—and his heart claimed by the one woman who could destroy them all.
Dive into Wolf of the Storm, the first full-length novel in the Tides of Fate series, where danger, desire, and destiny collide beneath the rising storm.