Chapter 2: Nosebleed
Hana blinked up at him, her vision swimming slightly at the edges. The stern, powerful lines of his face resolved into focus—the sharp jaw, the dark eyes that saw everything.Alpha Declan. Her heart, already fluttering weakly, gave a nervous, respectful thud. Ignoring the warm, insistent trickle over her lip, she summoned a tired, sweet smile. It was an automatic response, bred into her bones.
“Good morning, Alpha,” she said, her voice raspy from dust and exhaustion but laced with her natural, ingrained politeness.Declan stared down at her. His expression was a granite mask, unreadable to anyone who didn’t know the storm signs. But his dark eyes weren’t on her face; they were locked on the blood welling from her nose, tracing its path over her pale skin.Inside him, a silent, volcanic pressure was building. The instinct to shield, to cover, to eliminate the threat roared through his veins with a force that stole his breath. It was a physical ache in his chest, a tightening in his gut that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the small, bleeding woman before him.He clenched his jaw so hard the muscle twitched.
Suddenly, Hana’s vision went blurry.The world tilted, the morning light fracturing into dizzying prisms. The heavy basket felt like a mountain in her arms.The ground seemed to rise up to meet her.
Before her knees could buckle, before she could hit the hard-packed earth, Declan moved.
He was a blur of controlled violence.One hand shot out, knocking the massive basket aside with a casual, devastating force. It tumbled end over end, clean linens spilling across the dirt like fallen snow. His other arm caught her around the waist, pulling her small, limp frame flush against the solid, unyielding wall of his chest.He absorbed her entire collapse without a stagger.
As he held her, her head lolled against his shoulder. A fresh, hot burst of blood seeped from her nose, a vivid, scarlet bloom against the pristine, expensive linen of his tunic. The fabric was finely woven, dyed a deep forest green that made the stain look black.
Hana gasped, a shallow, rattling inhale. Clarity returned in a sickening wave, along with the immediate, visceral scent of him—river stone, leather, power—and the sight of the darkening stain spreading across his chest.Relief at being caught didn’t exist. Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her. Her hands, clumsy and weak, came up as if to scrub the stain away, but she caught herself, terrified to touch him.“Alpha! I’m—I’m so sorry! Your tunic, I’ve ruined it, I’m so sorry, please, I didn’t mean—” The words tumbled out, frantic and wet, mingling with the blood on her lips. Her wide eyes were pools of sheer terror, fixed on the evidence of her insult.Declan ignored her.He ignored the apologies, the stammering fear. His grip on her tightened, holding her upright as he looked down at her face—the pallor, the dark circles like smudges of ash, the frantic, innocent eyes. A low, dangerous rumble started in his chest, felt more than heard.
“Why,” he said, his voice a razor-wire whisper that cut through her panic, “are you like this? What have you been doing?”
His gaze, cold and lethal, lifted from her face. It tracked over her shoulder, past her, to the three warriors still frozen by the training ground bench.They hadn’t moved. They hadn’t breathed.Garret’s smirk had died, replaced by a sickly pallor. The woman’s defiant posture had collapsed into a defensive hunch.
Declan’s possessiveness didn’t roar.It snapped, silent and final, like a bone breaking under pressure. He didn’t raise his voice.He simply looked at them. His eyes, flat and predatory, promised nothing as abstract as punishment.They promised dismantling.They promised a reckoning written in pain. A wave of primal fear, colder than the deepest winter stream, washed over the three, rooting them to the spot.They smelled their own dread.
Still holding a trembling Hana against him, Declan tilted his head back slightly.His voice, when it came, was not a shout. It was a clear, carrying command that rolled through the clearing like thunder, a tone that brooked not a millisecond of delay.“Someone fetch Elder Mara.Bring her to my quarters. Now.”
Then, without another glance at the warriors, he bent. He slid one arm under Hana’s knees, the other firmly around her back, and scooped her up effortlessly.She weighed nothing. The sensation fueled the cold fire in his gut.
Hana gave a small, confused cry as her world upended. “Alpha, I—I can walk, I promise, I just got dizzy—the towels, I have to…” She gestured weakly toward the soiled, scattered linens, her mind a stuck loop of responsibility and fear. “I still have towels to wash.”
He didn’t answer. He simply turned and began walking with long, purposeful strides away from the common grounds, away from the infirmary, toward the private, stone-hewn section of the pack house that was his alone. Her small protests, her bewildered concerns about laundry, were lost against the solid drum of his heartbeat and the grim, set line of his jaw. The corridor ahead was a labyrinth of cold, uneven flagstones, their edges worn smooth by centuries. The air grew cooler, thicker with the scent of damp earth and old leather from the storehouses below. A single flickering lantern cast long, wavering shadows on the crumbling stone walls.
And beneath it all, just a trace, lingered the faint, wild scent of her—of untamed meadows and a heat not yet realized.It was enough. Enough to make the claws beneath his human skin twitch with the effort of restraint as he carried her deeper into his domain.