POV: Silas

My mate asked for my teeth while my mother's letters waited downstairs.

Grief should have weakened the hunger.

Instead it sharpened everything.

Evelyn lay beneath me wearing nothing but the sheet gathered at her waist. Her hair spread across my pillow. My shirt was open around my body, one sleeve still caught at the wrist because I had lost the ability to finish undressing like a civilized man.

Her hand covered mine above her heart.

“I choose both of you,” she said.

My wolf struck the bond.

Mine.

The word hit hard enough to blur the room. My teeth lengthened. Her pulse beat beneath my palm, fast but steady, and every breath filled me with her warmth, her arousal, and the faint trace of fear she refused to disguise.

Fear mattered.

Anyone could accept me while feeling none. Courage was knowing exactly what my mouth could do and drawing it closer anyway.

I pulled back until cold air entered the space between us.

“I need to tell you what happens.”

“You did.”

“Not all of it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Silas.”

“The first opening can be violent. Not my body. The bond. You may feel memories I am not choosing to show you.”

“Will you feel mine?”

“Yes.”

“Even Grant?”

The name brought a growl into my throat.

Evelyn did not retreat. “That is why I asked.”

I forced my claws back. “If I see him hurting you, my wolf may react.”

“Then stay here with me.”

“If you say stop after my teeth break skin, I stop. The bond will remain partly open, but I stop. If you cannot speak, push me through it. Anger works. Pain works.”

“What about love?”

I stared at her.

She lifted one shoulder. “You listed everything else.”

There were men who could say the word while lying. I had watched my father do it at my mother's grave.

He had stood with one hand on my shoulder and told the pack that love sometimes demanded an unbearable sacrifice. I believed him because I was nine, because grief made adults sound like prophets, and because no one had shown me the letters hidden in his office.

Now those letters waited one floor below while Evelyn asked me for a promise deeper than marriage. The mark would give her access to every place where I still resembled him. She might feel the satisfaction I took in obedience, the violence beneath my restraint, the part of me that understood too easily why an Alpha could mistake protection for authority.

I wanted her more than I wanted to remain admired.

I could bleed for Evelyn without hesitation. Kill for her. Wait outside a locked door until age took my strength. Saying love felt more dangerous because it asked her to believe something my actions could not prove in that exact second.

Her fingers tightened around mine.

“That,” she whispered. “Whatever you just hid. I want the truth of that.”

I lowered my forehead to hers.

“Last chance.”

“No.”

My head lifted.

“Stop offering me exits because you are afraid I will use one.” Her other hand slid behind my neck. “I know the door exists. I closed it.”

The command in her voice reached the Alpha and quieted him.

I kissed her first.

Not her throat. Her mouth.

I needed the man to arrive before the wolf. Evelyn opened beneath me, her legs tightening around my hips as desire returned through the unsealed bond. I felt the moment her body remembered our joining. Heat traveled from her into me, intimate and incomplete.

Her nails traced the scars on my back.

“Silas.”

“Still yes?”

She bit my lower lip.

“Does that answer you?”

“Poorly.”

“Yes.”

I moved inside her again, slowly, watching her face. This time her body welcomed me without the first hesitation. The knowledge nearly ended my control before I reached her neck.

Her scent deepened. Her pleasure crossed the bond in warm flashes, each one followed by my wolf's savage satisfaction. Mine, it said again.

Chosen, I corrected.

Evelyn felt the correction. Surprise opened in her eyes.

“I heard that.”

“The bond is already widening.”

“Good.” She turned her head, offering the curve between neck and shoulder. “Stop hiding.”

I kissed the place once.

Her pulse jumped against my lips.

Twice.

She shivered, but her hands pulled me closer.

My canines touched her skin without piercing. I held there while every instinct screamed to finish what fate had begun on the mountain.

“Mine?” I asked.

The old word tasted wrong until she answered.

“Yours because I choose to be. You are mine for the same reason.”

Balance.

Not ownership. Not surrender.