Chapter Eight: Simon's POV

When Leon walked into my study, his gaze immediately fell on my shoulder—the one Clara had spent three hours yesterday digging silver fragments out of.

He looked away and said directly, "I watched her go into the Life Sciences building. No incidents on the way, no suspicious people nearby."

I nodded once, the movement short and crisp.

But this motion sent a new burning sensation spreading from the wound site, through my collarbone, into my chest cavity.

The pain was bearable—I'd experienced worse during my years in the Council's special operations forces.

But the wound was healing too slowly. It meant I was vulnerable, and at a potentially lethal moment, this vulnerability was disturbing.

"You should let Clara check again," Leon said.

"The silver poisoning is spreading. I can smell it on you. If I can smell it, every wolf within fifty feet of you in the territory can smell it."

I didn't answer him.

I knew he understood what my silence represented—not dismissal, but acknowledgment of a fact we both saw clearly.

Also unwilling to discuss what this fact would do to the fragile balance we'd been maintaining since the Andreas attack.

That attack had torn apart our eastern territory, and I'd been working hard to maintain this balance.

Finally, Leon quietly closed the door and left.

Alone, I sank into the leather chair behind my desk.

What troubled me wasn't the physical pain.

It was Knox—my wolf—prowling restlessly under my skin, snarling and biting at the edge of my consciousness, with an agitation that made it almost impossible for me to concentrate.

It was Carol.

The way she looked that night—drenched by rain, hair plastered to her face, clothes clinging to her skin—was deeply imprinted in my mind.

The impression was so deep that Knox paid more attention to her than I did. He recorded details I'd deliberately ignored for years.

Her trembling, which had nothing to do with cold. And beneath it all—beneath the rain, fear, and adrenaline—was that scent.

That scent that had been slowly driving Knox mad since the night I brought her from Var's clutches.

Wild berries and post-rain forest. Sweet, dark, addictive.

But that night the scent was more intense, more concentrated, more powerful than ever before.

Knox surged forward violently, and I almost lost control in the foyer.

Almost let him take over, let him do what every instinct in our shared body was screaming at us to do—mark her, claim her, make any other male not even dare to think about touching what belonged to us.

Is mine. I told myself. Even in my own thoughts, this distinction was becoming increasingly blurred.

"She's your mate," Knox rumbled in agreement. "She probably knows it too, even if she's too stubborn or too human to understand what that means. Stop pretending this is about Osmon's memory. Stop pretending you don't want her as much as I do."

"She's Osmon's daughter," I said aloud to the empty room.

My voice rougher than I intended, strained from suppressing Knox—Knox who kept pushing me to admit something I didn't want to admit.

"Osmon saved my life, took a bullet that should have hit my spine. He lay in that hospital bed, tubes in every vein, dying. He made me promise to protect her. Not seduce her. Not claim her. Protect her."

Knox's response was a low, contemptuous growl.

My hand clenched into a fist on the desktop, struggling to maintain the separation between his desires and my responsibility.

"Osmon is dead!" Knox said, his tone as cruel and direct as a wolf's—human emotion meaningless in the face of biological instinct.

"Dead for four years. You've fulfilled your promise. You protected her, trained her, gave her every advantage she needs to survive in our world, even though she's still just a human girl now. You've done enough. It's time. Take what belongs to us before someone else does."

The silver wound on my shoulder burned violently.

It seemed to respond to the implications in Knox's words—had someone else already touched her?

No. I'd already had Marcus investigate Carol's disappearance that night.

I'd given him clear instructions: find out where she was, who she was with, what happened during those missing hours between when she left campus and stumbled through my door.

When she looked like she'd just been through hell and was desperately fleeing demons.

A knock at the door pulled me from chaotic thoughts.

I sat up straight in my chair, not letting anyone see my internal struggle—the struggle between man and wolf, between reason and instinct, between promise and desire.

"Come in," I said.

Clara pushed the door open, my personal doctor for the past decade.

She had a medical bag slung over her shoulder, a data tablet in her other hand.

I guessed it contained my latest blood test results.

Her mouth was already pressed into a thin line—none of those results would be good news.

She didn't wait for me to say anything, just walked straight to where I sat and began expertly opening her equipment.

She arranged syringes, vials, and monitoring equipment on the desktop. Her posture indicated—she already knew I wouldn't like what she had to say.

"Your heart rate is elevated. Given the silver still in your system, that's concerning. Are you arguing with Knox again?"

I didn't answer—that in itself was an answer.

She sighed, reaching to touch my shoulder, gently but insistently unwrapping the bandage.

I forced myself to remain still, let her expose the wound to air and light.

The edges were still red and inflamed, though healing had closed the worst of it.

"Simon," she said. "You need to resolve whatever's causing this internal conflict. Otherwise it will damage your ability to lead. When an Alpha is at war with himself, the pack can feel it. And now, with Andreas and the Carters prowling around, and vampire activity increasing on our territory, we can't afford any distraction from you."

She was right. I knew she was right.

But acknowledging this truth meant acknowledging what Knox had been insisting on for years.

Meant acknowledging that the careful distance I'd maintained between myself and Carol was not only becoming difficult but possibly impossible.

Meant accepting that the girl I'd promised to protect had somehow—without my permission, without my conscious awareness—become my wolf's chosen mate.

"Get out," I said. The two words harsher than I intended, almost an Alpha command.

"I'll rest. I'll drink your terrible herbal teas. I'll do whatever you think will help the silver leave my system faster. But right now, I need to be alone."

Clara stared at me for a long time, then she packed up her equipment and left without further argument. But her shoulder posture clearly conveyed her dissatisfaction, as clearly as if she'd spoken the words.

The door closed softly behind her.

I was alone with Knox again. I stood up, walked to the mirror on the far wall, staring at myself. My face was too pale. Dark circles under my eyes.

"She's my ward," I said to the mirror. To Knox. To myself.

"Osmon's daughter, whom I swore to protect. This is not negotiable. There's no room for discussion, no room for compromise. She deserves better than to be claimed as a mate just because my wolf chose her."

Knox was silent for a long time.

So long I thought he'd relented, accepted the boundaries I was trying to maintain.

But then his voice filled my mind again. This time quieter, but just as insistent.

"You're lying to yourself," he said. "You've wanted her for years. I've felt it every time she challenges you instead of submitting like every other wolf in this territory. You want her. You need her. The only thing stopping you is your pride, and your promise to a dead man. And he would understand. The mate bond supersedes everything else."

I opened my mouth to argue, but before I could speak, another knock sounded.

This time more forceful, more urgent.

I turned from the mirror and called out: "Come in."

Marcus walked in. He said: "Carol was at a hotel that night, the Emerald Hotel, downtown. She checked in around eleven PM, left early the next morning. She wasn't alone."

For a moment, Knox's possessive roar exploded in my mind, and my vision blurred.

The silver wound on my shoulder was nothing compared to the fury in my chest right now.

"We're still confirming identity," Marcus continued. "Hotel surveillance caught him, but only partial angles. He's tall, dark-haired, wearing expensive clothes. He booked the room under a fake name, paid cash."

"Find him," I said. "Find him. Give me everything you can find, and why he was around Carol."

Marcus nodded, then he left, continuing his investigation.

The door closed. In that moment, I stopped fighting Knox.

Carol was mine. My mate. My responsibility.

Anyone who touched her would learn a lesson: what happens when someone violates an Alpha's mate.