Dimitri whispered to the wind, a promise to himself and to her. "I’ll be whatever you need me to be."

The thought circled his mind, a mantra that had consumed him since the first moment he’d caught her scent. His inner beast, that dark, possessive thing that lived in his chest, growled in agreement. Already, she had six husbands. Six was enough. More than enough. Any more and he might lose what little control he had left.

I’ll wait. I’ll be patient. But no more, new husbands.

He flexed his fingers, feeling the familiar tingle of power beneath his skin. His magic, rare and deadly, had earned him his place as Leaf’s team leader, but lately, it had become harder to contain. Harder to keep that darkness caged.

A sound from the road pulled him from his thoughts. Voices, laughter, the crunch of paws and hoofs on gravel.

Dimitri moved to the edge of the motel’s parking lot, where the cracked pavement met the overgrown wilderness beyond. Five beastmen wolves and deer, by the look of them, strolled along the road. Scavengers, probably or worse.

They hadn’t spotted him yet, but Dimitri’s senses had already catalogued every detail. The tallest one, a scarred male with a missing ear. The two younger ones are still wet behind the ears. The one in the middle who stank of rot and decay.

And the leader was a hulking brute with a shock of red hair and a cruel twist to his mouth.

"Smell that?" The red-haired one stopped suddenly, nostrils flaring. "Something good around here, something... female."

Dimitri’s blood went cold.

The wolf took another deep breath, a lecherous grin spreading across his face. "Smells like heaven, like pure, untouched..."

He never finished the sentence.

Dimitri didn’t move. Didn’t need to. The darkness inside him uncoiled like a striking snake, and the wolf’s eyes went wide. A gurgling sound escaped his throat as blood vessels burst, one by one, beneath his skin. The wolf clutched at his chest, his face turning purple, then blue. He dropped to his knees, then toppled face-first into the dirt.

Dead. Without Dimitri ever lifting a finger, or paw.

The remaining beastmen stared at their fallen leader, then at Dimitri. Their eyes wide with terror met his for one frozen moment. Then they ran, scattering like frightened rabbits into the brush.

Dimitri watched them go, his breathing even, his heart steady. The darkness inside him settled, satisfied. Mine. She’s mine. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

A voice broke the silence. "Well... that escalated quickly."

Sarge stood at the edge of the parking lot, arms crossed over his broad chest. The older man’s expression was unreadable, but his eyes, those hard, military eyes, assessed Dimitri with new wariness.

Thane appeared beside him, his face a mask of disapproval. "I don’t agree with the approach, and the fox probably wouldn’t either." He shook his head. "But whatever works for you, I suppose."

Dimitri said nothing. What was there to say? The beast had threatened what was his; he had paid the price.

A figure moved from the shadows of the motel, Dawn, with his delicate features and inscrutable gaze. The androgynous man stared at Dimitri, his usual calm demeanour fractured by something that looked almost like alarm.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Dawn’s voice was quiet, but sharp enough to cut. "That wasn’t just a warning. That was... That was carnage dressed in restraint."

Dimitri didn’t answer immediately. His attention had already drifted past Dawn, past the peeling wallpaper and the buzzing fluorescent tube overhead, to the door at the end of the corridor. He could smell her from here, his gaze finding the window where Felicity slept.

His knuckles were split. Blood had dried in the creases of his fingers, dark and flaking. He flexed them once, twice, feeling the sting radiate up through his forearms. Good. Pain kept the rest of it from spilling over.

"He threatened her."

"She’s not yours to protect," Thane said from somewhere behind him. The man’s approach had been soundless, which meant he’d been watching for a while. His tone carried a gentleness that scraped against Dimitri’s already raw nerves, "not yet anyways."

She will be. The thought burned in Dimitri’s chest. She will be mine, and I will kill anyone who tries to take her from me.

The thought didn’t burn. It blazed. It consumed oxygen and rational thought and every other instinct he’d cultivated over nearly a year of survival until nothing remained but the singular, devastating certainty of it.

But he kept those words locked behind his teeth. They wouldn’t understand. No one would. Not until they felt what he felt, that consuming, all-encompassing need that had become his entire world.

Felicity was his. She just didn’t know it yet, she didn’t understand it yet, but she will, she will understand it, he thought. Didn’t understand the way his entire world had narrowed and sharpened and reorganised itself around the axis of her existence.

His chest ached. Not from the fight. From a distance, three meters of hallway and one cheap plywood door between them, and his blood still ran hot with the need to be closer. To plant himself between her and every conceivable harm. To press his nose against that spot behind her ear where the honeysuckle concentrated and just breathe.

"You know," Dawn said, his gaze tracking Dimitri’s fixation on that window with something between fascination and clinical concern, "most people fall in love gradually. A slow descent. Very poetic."

Dimitri said nothing.

"You apparently skipped that part and went straight to ’I will salt the earth around anyone who looks at her wrong.’" Dawn paused. "Which, for the record, is not the romantic arc most people aspire to."

"I’m not most people."

"No shit." Dawn pushed off the doorframe, uncrossing his arms. "You’re a man standing in a hallway at two in the morning, bleeding from both hands, staring at a window like it personally offended you by existing between you and her."

Thane made a sound, half laugh, half sigh. "He’s not wrong."

Dimitri finally dragged his attention from the door. Looked at both of them. His expression remained flat, controlled, but beneath it, a tremor ran through him. Not fear. Need. The kind that rewrote a man’s entire architecture until he couldn’t remember what he’d been before it.