Chapter 3: Feral in the Thicket

The full moon dragged at Beatrice's bones like a hook behind her ribs. She stood in the diner's back alley only minutes after Dominic had stormed out, the bond still screaming through her veins. Every distant howl from the woods yanked at her, instincts she thought she'd buried clawing their way back up her throat.

Her coffee sat untouched on the table inside, steam long gone. The waitress's nervous glances had pushed her out here into the night air thick with cedar and coming rain. Her fingers traced runes against her thigh without thinking, the motion useless against the lunar pull.

Go, the silenced voice still whispered at the edges of her binding. Find what he fears.

Beatrice cursed under her breath and stepped into the trees. The shift would not come—she'd bound that too, years ago—but the urge to run on all fours burned hot in her legs. Her boots crunched over moss and fallen needles as the pack's howls rose again, celebrating or hunting under this moon while she remained the outsider.

Her feet carried her deeper without permission, the bond tugging like fingers around her throat. Dominic's scent lingered on the wind, faint but unmistakable, cedar and storm cutting through the green. She did not mean to head toward the ancient forest's hidden clearing, yet her body moved anyway.

The Moon Gathering clearing opened between the massive cedars, the ground still marked from tonight's earlier rites. Beatrice's breath caught at the power humming in the air, old and sharp enough to make her teeth ache. She'd come here as a girl once, sneaking away from the library with a forbidden grimoire that had first shown her the path to blood rites.

She dropped to her knees beside the largest carved stone. Her hands dug into the damp earth, nails caking with dirt. The papers were there—brittle edges wrapped in oilcloth, tucked in a hollow she'd found years before. Her pulse hammered as she pulled them free.

Dominic's father. His signature, bold and unmistakable, on rewritten mating decrees that had quietly stripped power from certain bloodlines. Dates that lined up with the year before her rejection. Control traded in secret. The kind of forbidden tampering that could crack the pack if it ever came to light.

Her fingers tightened on the proof. This was the first real knife. She could already picture forcing Dominic to stand before the pack and explain why his family had rewritten the old laws to hide their weakness.

A branch snapped behind her.

Beatrice whirled, documents clutched to her chest. The bond flared white-hot, and there he was—Dominic, chest heaving, eyes gone wolf-gold under the moonlight. His shaved head gleamed with sweat. The scar along his jaw stood out like a fresh brand.

"You don't listen worth a damn." His voice scraped raw, more beast than man. He took a step closer, nostrils flaring as he caught her scent mixed with the clearing's old power.

She rose slowly, shoulders squared despite the way her knees locked tight. "These papers don't lie, Dominic. Your father—"

"Put them back." The command carried alpha weight, but it cracked at the end. He rubbed that spot over his left ribs, hard enough she felt the echo twist in her own chest through the bond. "You have no idea what you're holding."

The moon pressed down heavier. Beatrice's skin prickled, every nerve alive. His scent wrapped around her—cedar and storm and the sharp copper edge of barely contained shift. Her body answered whether she wanted it to or not, blood rushing hot under her skin, the urge to bare her throat warring with the need to bare her teeth.

"I know exactly what I'm holding," she said, voice low and precise even as her breath shortened. "Proof that the Delaney line rewrote the laws to hide their rot. That you rejected me for the very weakness running in your own veins."

His eyes flashed. He closed the distance in two strides, towering over her, but he did not touch. Not yet. The air between them crackled like the moments before lightning strikes. She heard his heartbeat matching hers, frantic and furious and wanting.

"This makes us even?" The words came out rough, broken. "That night—I stood there with my father's voice in my ear. He said weakness would destroy us. That a luna buried in books couldn't face what was coming."

Beatrice's throat tightened until swallowing hurt. She wanted to throw the papers in his face and watch his world crack. Instead the bond fed her flashes of his memory: cold hand on his shoulder, weight of expectation, the sick twist of watching her walk away.

He carved out both our hearts that night, she thought, the words sharp as a librarian's blade dipped in new darkness. And still the bond keeps stitching them wrong.

Dominic's hand lifted, hovering near her face. His fingers curled into a fist before they could brush her cheek. "I thought if I cut you loose, the bond would die. That you'd be safe."

Power shimmered without warning. A barrier of sickly green light snapped up around the clearing's stones, trapping them inside a circle no wider than fifteen feet. Beatrice felt it in her blood first—the magic recognizing her touch on the documents, then lashing out to contain the threat. Dominic snarled, spinning to test the barrier with his shoulder. It threw him back hard.

"What the hell did you do?" he demanded, rounding on her. His chest heaved, muscles straining against his shirt. The moon made everything worse, amplifying every instinct, every unsaid thing between them.

Beatrice pressed her palm to the barrier. It burned cold against her skin. "Not me. The site. It doesn't like its secrets being taken."

They were alone now. Truly alone. The distant howls of the shifting pack felt miles away. Only the two of them and the bond that roared louder than any full moon ever could. Her magic stirred beneath her skin, jealous and hungry, but the binding held. Barely.

Dominic paced the small space, three steps one way, three the other. His fists clenched and unclenched. She watched the play of moonlight over the scars on his arms, remembering how those same arms had once held her like she was something precious.

"Five years," he said suddenly, stopping to stare at her. "Five years I told myself I did right." His voice dropped lower. "Then you walk back in smelling like death and power. And everything I still want."

Her muscles clenched hard at the admission. The bond slammed his desire into her own, messy and raw. Her skin flushed hot from throat to belly, thighs tightening against the sudden ache that had nothing to do with the moon and everything to do with him.

"Don't," she warned, but the word came out rough. She backed up until the stone pressed against her spine. "This changes nothing. I'm still going to ruin you."

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. Just exhaustion and the same hollow ache she carried. "You already have." He rubbed his ribs again. "Every night since you left, I wake reaching for nothing. Now you're here. But not her anymore. This force that makes me want to kneel and bare my throat. Even while I want to pin you against that tree."

Beatrice's pulse thundered in her ears. The documents slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the moss. She hated how her body leaned toward him, how the bond made her skin feel too tight, too alive. Every brush of night air dragged across her like his breath.

"I hate you," she said, but the words lacked bite. They both heard it.

"Good." Dominic stepped closer. Close enough that his heat bled into her space. "Hate me. But tell me you don't feel this." His hand rose, closing the final inch. His palm settled on her waist, tentative at first, then firmer when she did not pull away.

The contact jolted through them both. Beatrice's head tipped back against the stone as fire raced across her nerves. She felt his guilt and need crash through the bond like phantom claws raking down her back, the wolf in her rising to meet it with teeth and hunger.

Her own hand lifted without permission, fingers curling into his shirt right over that rib scar. The fabric was damp with sweat. His heart slammed against her knuckles, perfectly synced with hers, the rhythm pulling a low sound from her throat.

"This is the moon," she whispered, even as her thumb stroked the ridge of scar tissue through cotton. "It will pass."

"Bullshit." His other hand came up to cup her jaw, thumb tracing her lower lip with a gentleness that cracked something deep inside her. His eyes were pure gold now, wolf and man fighting for dominance. "This is us. Always was. I was too fucking scared."

Beatrice's lips parted. His scent filled her lungs until she drowned in cedar and storm and raw want. Her magic whispered warnings she could barely hear over the bond's roar. His mouth hovered inches from hers, breath mingling hot and desperate.

His grip tightened on her waist, pulling her flush against him. Hard muscle met soft curves. Another sound escaped her, half growl, half plea. The bond sang approval, flooding her with sensations that were not entirely hers: the way her hair would feel between his fingers, the ache low in his body that matched the slick heat building between her thighs.

She wanted to kiss him. Wanted to bite him. Wanted to carve her name into his skin so he would never forget what he had thrown away.

Dominic's forehead dropped to hers. Their noses brushed. So close. Too close.

"Bee," he breathed, using the old nickname that still made her chest ache. "Tell me to stop."

She could not. The words stuck in her throat, choked by five years of grief and the terrifying truth that destroying him might destroy her too.

A new scent cut through the trees—male sweat, steel, and betrayal.

Beatrice jerked back as the barrier flickered. Dominic spun, shoving her behind him on pure instinct, even as his body remained half-turned toward her like he could not fully let go.

Marcus burst through the undergrowth with three enforcers at his heels. Silver blades gleamed in the moonlight, but they were not pointed at her. Every weapon, every hostile gaze, locked on their alpha.

"Told you the bitch would lead us right to him," Marcus snarled around the toothpick clenched in his teeth. His eyes flicked to the documents scattered on the ground, then back to Dominic. "Time to end this, old friend. The pack's done following tainted blood."

Dominic's shoulders went rigid. Beatrice felt the fresh fracture through their bond—shock, betrayal, a wave of guilt that tasted like his father's sins coming home to roost.

She stepped out from behind him despite the danger, her hand still tingling where it had gripped his shirt. The mate bond howled in protest at the sudden distance, but something darker stirred in her blood.

The real war had just begun.