Chapter 2 Wake up in the roar of the beast

Elinor POV

I didn't wake up to the silence I expected. I woke up to the roar of a beast.

Heat, blistering and suffocating, pressed against my skin like a physical weight. I coughed, my lungs spasming as they filled with thick, black smoke. My eyes snapped open, stinging instantly. The Alpha's Wing-the cage I had lived in for seven years-was an inferno.

The velvet curtains were gone, replaced by tongues of orange fire licking up the walls. The mahogany table where I had discovered the poison was now just a charred skeleton. I tried to scramble backward, instinct screaming at me to run, but a scream of agony tore from my throat instead.

My right leg was pinned. A heavy oak beam from the ceiling had collapsed, trapping me against the floorboards. I clawed at the wood, my nails breaking against the splintered surface, but I was weak. The suppressants Adrian had fed me for years had left me with the strength of a child, and without an inner wolf, I had no enhanced healing, no surge of adrenaline to aid me.

"Help!" I shrieked, though the sound was swallowed by the crashing of the roof overhead.

Through the wall of smoke, the double doors were kicked open with a violent crash.

A figure stood silhouetted against the hallway flames. Even through the haze, I knew him. Adrian.

"Adrian!" I cried out, a pathetic, instinctive spark of hope igniting in my chest. Despite everything-the poison, the lies, the photo of Ariel-he was still my Alpha. He was still the man who had promised to protect me. "I'm here! I'm trapped!"

He rushed into the room, covering his mouth with his arm. His hazel eyes scanned the chaos, wild and frantic. For a heartbeat, his gaze locked onto mine. I reached out a trembling hand, waiting for him to rush to my side, to lift the beam with his Alpha strength.

But he didn't move toward me.

His eyes shifted, darting past me to the far side of the room, near the bear-skin rug.

There, lying amidst the debris in a sheer, silk nightgown that I had never seen before, was Ariel. She was unconscious, her wild curls fanned out like a halo on the soot-stained floor.

The look on Adrian's face shattered whatever was left of my heart. It wasn't the calculated mask he wore with me. It was raw, unadulterated terror.

"Ariel!" He roared her name, a sound of pure anguish.

He didn't hesitate. Not for a second. He sprinted past me, the heat of his body brushing against my outstretched hand as he ignored it completely. He scooped Ariel up into his arms, cradling her head against his chest as if she were the most fragile, precious thing in the world.

"Adrian, please!" I sobbed, the smoke stealing my voice. "The beam... I can't move!"

He paused at the doorway, Ariel safe in his arms. He looked back at me, his expression hard, his jaw clenched. There was no love there. Only inconvenience.

The air around him shimmered with power. He opened his mouth, and his voice boomed with the supernatural weight of the Alpha's Command, freezing my blood in my veins.

"Stay put! I'll be back for you!"

The command slammed into me, forcing my muscles to lock up. I couldn't struggle. I couldn't drag myself an inch. He had commanded me to wait in the fire.

He turned and vanished into the smoke, taking his true mate with him and leaving his betrothed to burn.

Tears evaporated on my cheeks before they could fall. He wasn't coming back. I knew it with a clarity that cut through the panic. He had saved what mattered to him. I was just the wolfless liability he had finally found a way to discard.

The ceiling groaned above me. A shower of sparks rained down, singing my hair. I closed my eyes, the unnatural stillness of the Command keeping me pinned as the heat grew unbearable. So this is it, I thought. This is how the merger ends.

Then, a new scent hit me.

It cut through the acrid stench of burning timber and chemical accelerants. It was powerful-overwhelmingly so. It smelled of deep, ancient earth, crushed pine needles, and the electric charge of a storm about to break. It was a scent that made the tiny, dormant part of my soul tremble.

"Found you."

The voice was deep, vibrating through the floorboards.

I forced my eyes open. A massive figure loomed over me, far larger than Adrian. His face was obscured by a dark cloth wrapped around his nose and mouth, but his eyes-stormy gray and intense-were visible.

He didn't waste time with words. He gripped the burning beam that had pinned me. With a grunt that sounded more like a growl, he heaved. The wood that had trapped me moved as if it were made of balsa. He tossed it aside, the crash lost in the roar of the fire.

Before I could process his strength, he swept me up into his arms. He felt solid, like a mountain, and that strange, stormy scent enveloped me, shielding me from the smoke.

"Hold on," he rumbled against my ear.

We moved through the inferno. He didn't run; he moved with a predatory grace, weaving through falling debris as if the fire feared him.

We burst out into the cool night air. The sudden rush of oxygen made me dizzy. He carried me away from the burning wing, toward the edge of the forest where the pack had gathered in a chaotic swarm.

He set me down on the cool grass, hidden by the shadows of the tree line. My leg throbbed, but my eyes immediately found them.

In the center of the clearing, bathed in the flickering orange glow of the destruction, Adrian was on his knees. He was clutching Ariel, rocking her back and forth, checking her face, her hands, her hair. He buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply, his shoulders shaking with relief.

He hadn't come back. He hadn't even looked back.

The stranger beside me stood silent, a sentinel in the dark. I looked up at him, my vision blurring as the adrenaline faded and the darkness returned to claim me.

"Who..." I rasped, reaching out to grasp his shirt.

He didn't answer. He just watched the burning house, his hand resting briefly, protectively, over mine. And as the blackness took me, the only thing I felt was the lingering static of his touch, far warmer than the fire that had tried to consume me.