Free Web NovelChapter 25: Chapter 25
(Elena)
He’s gone for three hours before I go after him.
I tell myself I’m not. I finish reviewing the patrol rotations with Brennan, forcing myself to focus on every name and every shift. I sign the supply inventory with a steady hand, even though my thoughts keep drifting. I sit through twenty minutes of Henrick droning on about the council timeline, hearing Marcus’s logic woven through every cautious word. I handle it all—Alpha duties, pack needs, the weight of leadership pressing down on my shoulders like the frozen sky above.
But the moment I’m done, I pull on my heavy coat, tell Brennan I’m walking the perimeter, and head out into the cold night anyway. My boots crunch through the snow as I move toward the eastern tree line. I don’t need to search blindly. I know exactly where he’ll be.
I hear him before I see him.
The sound carries through the bare trees like a lament—low, resonant, and aching. Not the raw, grief-filled howling that used to tear through the walls during his earliest nights here, when nightmares of ropes and trapdoors haunted his sleep. This is different. Deeper. A lonely call that speaks of displacement, of a wolf still testing the edges of where he fits in this world. It vibrates through my chest, pulling at something primal inside me.
I follow it, my breath fogging in the frigid air, until I reach the border. The eastern markers stand like silent sentinels every thirty meters, dividing pack territory from the wild unknown beyond. Rhydian is exactly at the last one, standing in human form with his head tilted back toward the thin sliver of moonlight. His chest rises and falls with the sound, the vibration rolling out of him and dissolving into the dark forest.
He stops the moment he senses me, but he doesn’t turn around.
"You should be inside," he says. His voice is flat, guarded.
"So should you."
I stop a few feet behind him. He’s wearing a jacket that’s too light for this biting cold, his shoulders rigid with tension—part stubborn pride, part the chill he’s refusing to acknowledge. His stance is deliberate, toes right at the boundary line, as if he’s daring the world to pull him one way or the other.
"I’m not wrong about the north ridge," he continues.
"I know you’re not."
A heavy beat of silence stretches between us. He turns his head slightly, just enough for me to catch the sharp line of his jaw in the moonlight.
"Then why are you here?" he asks.
"Because knowing you’re right doesn’t make this easier."
He exhales, the cloud of his breath hanging in the air. I study the line of his back, the way he’s planted himself at this edge—the same kind of edge he’s stood at his whole life. Always on the boundary of belonging, never fully stepping in.
"Four years ago, I stood at a line like this," he says quietly, gaze fixed on the darkness beyond the marker. "Only I was going the other way. They were behind me, and I couldn’t bring myself to look back."
"I know."
"I told myself it was fine. That packs were just politics and power plays, and I was better off alone. I believed it for six months. Then I stopped believing it... but I kept saying it anyway."
I take another step closer, the snow crunching softly under my boots. He doesn’t move, but I feel the awareness between us sharpen.
"You’re going to send Brennan to the north ridge," he says. "And I’ll be stuck inside the settlement, being... managed."
"Protected," I correct gently.
"Same thing to me."
"It isn’t the same."
He turns around fully now. The moonlight catches his face—open in that rare, exhausted way, stripped of armor. Tired lines around his eyes, a young man’s frustration mixed with the hard-earned strength he’s built here. Angry, but not at me. At the limits he’s still bumping up against.
"I can do this, Elena. You know I can handle it."
"Yes," I say softly. "I know you can."
"Then why—?" His voice cracks just slightly. He clears his throat, jaw tightening. "Is this always going to be how it is? I prove myself, then prove myself again, and there’s always one more thing I haven’t earned yet?"
The words hit me like a blow to the chest. I look at him—this man who arrived in chains, who learned to hold power gently, who lifted a bully off the ground with his own hand and said he loved me like it startled him.
"It’s not about proof," I tell him.
"Then what is it about?"
I swallow hard. "In three days, Shadowpine is coming. I have to be the Alpha for all of it. For the entire pack. And I can’t... I can’t do that if I’m staring at the north ridge, waiting to see if you come back. I know it’s not tactical. I know the strategic move is what you argued for in the hall. But I can’t look at that ridge on a map and see just a variable. I see *you*."
The forest around us feels impossibly still, as if the trees themselves are holding their breath.
"So that’s it," he murmurs. "You don’t trust me."
"No." I step forward, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. "I trust you completely. I don’t trust what happens to *me* if something goes wrong. If I lose you."
He breathes out slowly. The anger in his expression softens at the edges, shifting into something raw and vulnerable. He glances back at the border marker, then at me.
"I wasn’t going to cross it," he admits. "I just needed to stand here. To let that sound out. Four years on the other side of lines like this... sometimes I still feel the pull. Not because I want to go back. Just because it’s what I knew."
I close the final distance. Moving around him, I wrap my arms around his waist from behind, pressing my chest flush to his back. My face buries into the warm curve of his neck, inhaling his scent—pine, snow, and that unmistakable wildness that is purely Rhydian.
"Don’t go where I can’t follow," I whisper against his skin. The words come out raw, trembling with fear and love and everything I’ve been holding back.
He goes completely still for a heartbeat. Then his large hands cover mine where they rest over his heart, fingers threading tightly together.
"Elena..." His voice is hoarse, wrecked. freewebnøvel.coɱ
He turns in my arms—first halfway, then fully—until we’re face to face in the cold moonlight. Our eyes lock, and the air between us ignites. The kiss starts desperate and deep, mouths crashing together with weeks of tension and love and terror. His tongue slides against mine, hot and claiming, while his hands grip my waist, pulling me impossibly closer.
I push him backward until his shoulders hit the rough trunk of an ancient pine. He groans into my mouth as I press my body against his, feeling the hard, insistent ridge of his cock straining against his pants. Heat pools low in my belly, slick and urgent.
"Need you," I breathe against his lips. "Right now."
His hands move with frantic hunger—shoving my coat open, yanking my shirt up so he can cup my breasts. His thumbs drag roughly over my stiff nipples, sending sparks straight to my core. I arch into him with a gasp, my own hands sliding under his jacket to feel the heated skin of his chest.
He growls, low and wolfish, then spins us so my back is against the tree. The rough bark bites through my layers, a sharp contrast to the heat of his body. He drops to his knees in the snow without hesitation, his breath hot against my skin as he tears open my pants and yanks them down to my thighs.
Cold air kisses my soaked folds for only a second before his mouth is on me—hot, starving, relentless. His tongue licks a broad stripe up my slit, then circles my clit with firm, demanding pressure. Two thick fingers push inside me without warning, curling deep to stroke that perfect spot.
"Fuck— Rhydian!" I cry out, gripping his hair as my hips rock against his face.
He devours me like a man possessed, sucking my clit between his lips while his fingers pump in and out, stretching me, fucking me open. The wet, obscene sounds mix with my ragged moans. Pleasure builds fast and vicious, coiling tight in my core until I shatter against his tongue—thighs trembling, vision sparking as I come hard with his name on my lips.
He rises swiftly, spinning me again to face the tree. I brace my hands on the bark as he shoves my pants lower. The sound of his belt and zipper is frantic. Then the thick, scorching head of his cock presses against my entrance.
He thrusts in with one powerful stroke, burying himself to the hilt.
I moan loudly at the delicious stretch, the way he fills me so completely. He’s big, hard, and pulsing inside me. Rhydian sets a punishing rhythm immediately—hips snapping forward, driving into me again and again. The sharp slap of skin on skin echoes through the quiet trees. One hand grips my hip hard enough to leave marks; the other reaches around to rub tight, rough circles over my swollen clit.
"Mine," he growls against my ear, teeth grazing my neck. "Say it, Elena."
"Yours," I gasp, pushing back to meet every thrust. "All yours— harder, please—"
He gives it to me. Deep, desperate strokes that hit the end of me every time, the bark scraping my palms as my breasts bounce with the force. Pleasure spirals higher, sharper. When my second orgasm crashes over me, it’s devastating—my pussy clenching rhythmically around his cock, milking him as I moan brokenly into the night.
Rhydian snarls, his thrusts turning erratic. He buries himself deep and comes with a guttural roar, flooding me with hot, thick pulses of his release.
But we’re not done. He stays buried inside me, breathing hard against my neck, pressing soft, reverent kisses to my shoulder. After a moment, he pulls out gently, turns me to face him, and lifts me. My back presses to the tree again as I wrap my legs around his waist. He slides back into me in one smooth glide, slower this time but no less intense.
We move together like this—face to face, eyes locked, breaths mingling. His thrusts are deep and rolling, grinding against my clit with every motion. My arms wrap around his neck, fingers tangling in his hair as I kiss him fiercely.
"I love you," I whisper between gasps. "Don’t you dare leave me behind."
"Never," he promises, voice rough with emotion and lust. "I’m yours, Elena. Always."
The pace builds again, more urgent now. He fucks me against the tree with powerful strokes, our bodies slick with sweat despite the cold. I come a third time, crying out as waves of pleasure wash through me. He follows moments later, groaning my name as he spills inside me once more.
We stay locked together afterward, panting, his forehead pressed to mine. He holds me close, still buried deep, as the thin moonlight filters through the branches above.
"Don’t go where I can’t follow," I whisper again, voice wrecked but certain.
"I won’t," he vows, arms tightening around me. "I’m right here. With you. On the same side."
The border marker stands silent behind us. Three days until the new moon and whatever Shadowpine brings. But in this moment, nothing else matters. Just us—raw, claimed, and finally whole against the tree at the edge of everything.
