Page 32 of Guardian Falling
Or nothing between Rogue and me willeverbe the same.
Chapter Seven
ROGUE
The decision settles in my chest before dawn, as I’m loading the truck.
The cabin.
Pack territory.
Because training her here is a death sentence—hers or someone else’s,maybe both.
The cabin sits two hours north of the compound, deep in territory my ancestors claimed generations before motorcycles replaced horses, before the Eternal Sins MC existed as anything more than Crave’s wild idea about building something permanent. Pack lands, lycan lands, the kind of wilderness where humans don’t venture because something old and territorial warns them away at a gut level they can’t articulate but know better than to ignore.
No neighbors for miles, no towns, no gas stations, hiking trails, or accidental encounters with lost tourists. Nothing but forest, mountains, and the kind of silence that reminds you civilization is optional, temporary, barely a footnote in the longer story the earth tells about itself.
It’s perfect.
Loading the truck takes less time than it should. Supplies pile onto the bed with military efficiency, each item chosen for function rather than comfort. Cases of water bottles, non-perishable food I won’t need, but she might crave before the bloodlust settles into something manageable. Medical supplies because new vampires heal fast but not instantly, and Charlie’s transition was violent enough to leave damage. Chains—heavy ones—the kind designed to hold creatures with strength thatexceeds human limits. I hate looking at them, and I hate knowing I might need to use them, but pragmatism wins over sentiment when the alternative is her killing someone and Crave making good on his threat.
Blankets, a change of clothes, basic toiletries, and the mundane items feel obscene next to the chains, as if I’m packing for both a camping trip and a kidnapping simultaneously, which isn’t far from the truth when I strip away the justifications and look at what I’m actually doing.
Taking a terrified woman against her will to an isolated location where no one will hear her scream.
My wolf snarls at the implication, and I don’t argue with him. We both know what this is.
There’s a difference, even if the surface actions look identical. She asked for help, begged for it, her voice breaking on the plea in a way that carved itself into my memory with edges sharp enough to draw blood.
‘Help me. Please, I don’t want to be this.’
I am answering that plea.
The fact that she won’t understand that her fear will interpret protection as imprisonment until the hunger settles enough for rational thought to reassert itself doesn’t change what this is.
What ithasto be.
The walk down to the basement drags, every step heavier than the last, my boots carrying a weight they weren’t built for. Below, reinforced concrete and layered wards turn the lower level into a supernatural prison, built for threats too dangerous to kill outright, too volatile to leave unbound. The air changes down here. It is colder, and laced with the metallic tang of blood magic worked into the walls by Hex’s careful hand, and containment spells stacked deep enough to hold creatures that make humans look like insects. Charlie’s locked behind the furthest door.
The brothers insisted, their instincts unanimous about the threat she represents, even if none of them wanted to say out loud what enforcing that call would actually cost.
Only Sloane spoke in Charlie’s defense, her blood magic reading something in the scioned vampire that the others missed. Something worth saving. Crave listened to his Old Lady, factored her input into his calculations, and still ordered maximum security.
Because he is right to be cautious.
Because Charlieisdangerous.
Because scion vampires are walking disasters wrapped in skin too thin to contain the monster underneath, and the fact that she’s my fated mate doesn’t make her any less capable of killing everyone in this building if the bloodlust wins.
I pause outside her door, my hand resting against reinforced steel that’s probably overkill but feels appropriate given what waits on the other side. My enhanced hearing picks up movement.Pacing. The restless, agitated energy of a predator caged against its will, wearing grooves into the floor through repetition because stillness is impossible when every cell screams for release, for blood, for the satisfaction of needs she doesn’t know how to satisfy without killing.
Her scent reaches me through the door’s seal. Familiar now in ways it shouldn’t be, distinctive enough that I’d recognize her in a crowd of a thousand vampires, my wolf listing every note with possessive thoroughness that has nothing to do with duty and everything to do with instincts older than language. Fear, hunger, confusion, rage, all of it tangled together into a signature that pulls at something deep in my chest, something that wants to tear this door off its hinges and get between her and whatever’s causing that quality of distress.
The bond doesn’t ask permission before it acts.
It just pulls.
And I’m tired of fighting it.
