The forest was dark, and Ashina was running. Her lungs burned. Branches tore at her clothes, her skin, her hair. Behind her, something massive moved through the trees patient, relentless, closing the distance with every stride.
She knew this forest. Had run through it a thousand times in wolf form, free and fearless but now the familiar paths twisted wrong. Trees grew too close together. The ground beneath her feet turned soft, sucking at her shoes like quicksand.
Run faster.
She couldn't. Her legs moved through molasses, slow and heavy while her pursuer gained ground with effortless speed. A hand closed around her arm. Spun her. She tried to scream but no sound came out.
Ice-blue eyes met hers. Familiar and foreign at once. "You can't escape," Kendrick's voice said, but wrong distorted, echoing. "You were always mine."
His teeth at her throat
"No no no please"
The bite, the burning, the bond snapping into place like chains
"PLEASE"
Ashina woke screaming. Her throat was raw, her sheets tangled around her legs like restraints. Tears streamed down her face and she couldn't catch her breath, couldn't separate dream from memory.
The door burst open.
Kendrick stood in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes wild. He wore only hastily-pulled-on sweatpants, his hair disheveled, his expression raw with terror that had nothing to do with being woken from sleep.
"What happened?" His voice cracked. "Are you hurt? Is someone...." He scanned the room like he expected to find an intruder. A threat. Anything that would explain the distress he'd felt slam into him through the bond like a physical blow.
Ashina couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. The nightmare still had its claws in her the forest, the chase, his teeth at her throat
Understanding dawned on Kendrick's face. The terror in his eyes transformed into something worse. Something that looked like his heart breaking in real time.
"Oh god." His voice came out wrecked. "You were dreaming about..." He couldn't finish. His face crumpled, all the Alpha composure stripped away to reveal anguish so profound it hurt to witness. "I'm sorry. God, Ashina, I'm so sorry."
She wanted to tell him to leave. Wanted to scream at him for standing there looking devastated when he was the reason she had nightmares in the first place. But all that came out was a sob.
Kendrick took a step forward, then stopped himself. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, the war between comforting his mate and respecting her space playing out across his features.
"Do you..." He swallowed hard. "Do you want me to get Zara? Or your mom? I can call"
"Don't go." The words burst out before Ashina could stop them.
Kendrick froze. "What?"
"I don't want..." Another sob choked off her words. She wrapped her arms around herself, hating how small her voice sounded. "I don't want to be alone."
The admission cost her. Admitting she needed anything from him felt like surrender. But the darkness pressed in, and the nightmare lurked at the edges of her consciousness, and the thought of being alone with it made her chest squeeze tight.
Kendrick looked like she'd punched him. Relief and guilt and desperate hope warred across his face.
"Okay." He moved carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. "Okay. I'll stay. But I'm not..., I won't..." He gestured helplessly at the bed, at the space between them. "I'll sit over here in the chair, is that okay?"
Ashina nodded, not trusting her voice.
Kendrick dragged the armchair from the corner the stiff, decorative one that looked beautiful but felt like sitting on a board and positioned it on the far side of the room. Maximum distance while still being present. He sat, and the chair creaked ominously under his weight. His frame was too large for the delicate furniture, his shoulders too broad, his legs too long. He looked ridiculous and uncomfortable and like he'd sit there all night anyway if she asked.
"I'll stay right here," he said quietly. "You're safe. I promise. Nothing's going to hurt you."
You already did, Ashina thought but didn't say. The words felt too cruel with his face still showing the aftermath of his guilt. She lay back down, pulling the covers up to her chin. Her heart was still racing, her hands still shaking, but the panic was starting to reduce. The nightmare's grip loosening degree by degree.
Silence settled over the room. Not comfortable, but not terrible either. Just the sound of two people breathing in the dark.
"I have nightmares too," Kendrick said eventually, his voice barely above a whisper. "About that night. About the look on your face. About how you fought me." A pause. "I dream that I let you go. That I made a different choice. And when I wake up, I don't know which version is the nightmare, the one where I marked you or the one where I didn't and lost you forever."
Ashina turned to look at him. In the moonlight filtering through the windows, she could see his profile the strong line of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the way his hands gripped the chair's arms like he was holding himself in place through sheer force of will.
"Does that make me a monster?" he asked. "That I still don't regret having you? Even knowing what it cost?"
"Yes," Ashina whispered.
"Yeah." His laugh was hollow. "I thought so."
More silence. The kind that felt heavy with all the things neither of them knew how to say.
"The nightmares will stop," Kendrick said after a while. "Eventually. At least, that's what Mira tells me. The bond will settle, and your subconscious will accept what happened, and the dreams will fade."
"And if they don't?"
"Then I'll sit in this godawful chair every night until they do." The matter-of-fact delivery no drama, no grand gestures, just simple statement hit differently than any apology could have.
Ashina felt her eyes growing heavy again. The adrenaline crash combined with the strange comfort of not being alone was pulling her back toward sleep.
"Kendrick?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For staying."
She didn't see his face, but she felt his sharp intake of breath through the bond. Felt something warm bloom in his chest that he quickly tried to dampen, to not burden her with.
"Always," he said simply.
Ashina's eyes drifted closed. The last thing she registered was the sound of Kendrick's steady breathing, the sense of his presence keeping the nightmares at bay, the strange security of having someone even him standing guard against her demons.
She slept.
Dawn light was painting her room in shades of gold when Ashina woke. For a moment, she forgot where she was. Forgot everything except the unusual feeling of having slept through the night without waking then she saw him.
Kendrick was still in the chair, exactly where he'd been hours ago. His head had tilted back at an angle that would definitely leave his neck sore. His arms were crossed over his bare chest, and his breathing was slow and deep. Asleep. He'd stayed all night.
Ashina sat up carefully, studying him in the morning light. He looked different in sleep younger somehow, despite the stubble darkening his jaw. The harsh lines of his face had softened. His mouth, usually pressed in a firm line, was slightly parted. His hair stuck up at odd angles. He looked human not the Alpha who commanded hundreds or the monster who'd chased her through the forest. Just a man who'd sat in an uncomfortable chair all night because his mate had asked him to stay.
The bond hummed between them, quieter in sleep but still present and for the first time since the marking, Ashina felt it differently. Not as chains binding her to him, but as a bridge connecting them. Carrying his emotions to her, yes, but also carrying hers to him.
He felt her nightmares as vividly as she did. Experienced her terror, her pain, her trauma. And he had to live with knowing he was the cause. That was its own kind of torture.
Ashina's gaze drifted to the mark on his neck faint but visible, the mate bond showing itself in both directions. Her teeth marks on his skin, placed during a moment she barely remembered. The bond had demanded reciprocation at some point, her wolf acting on instinct even as her human mind rejected everything. They were bound to each other. Equally. Inescapably.
She hated it but looking at him now looking so exhausted, uncomfortable and staying anyway because she'd asked, she couldn't maintain the clean simple hatred she'd been clinging to.
Kendrick stirred, his face scrunching slightly before his eyes opened. For just a second, he looked disoriented then awareness returned and his gaze found hers immediately.
"Sorry." His voice was rough with sleep. "I didn't mean to... I should go. Let you..."
"You stayed all night."
He went still. "You asked me to."
"In that chair." Ashina gestured at the furniture that looked like it might collapse under another minute of his weight. "That couldn't have been comfortable."
"It wasn't." A hint of his rare smile. "But you slept. That was more important."
Something in Ashina's chest shifted. Cracked wider. Let in more of that uncomfortable light that made everything more complicated.
"Did you sleep at all?"
"Some." Kendrick stood slowly, rolling his shoulders with a wince. "Enough."
"Liar."
The word came out softer than she intended. Almost teasing. Almost like they were two people having a normal conversation instead of mate and unwilling mate.
Kendrick's expression did something complicated. "I should let you get ready for the day. Unless..., do you need anything? Water? Food? Should I get Zara?"
"I'm fine." And she was, surprisingly. Better than she'd been in weeks. "But Kendrick?"
He paused at the door, his hand on the frame. Waiting.
"The next time I have a nightmare... if there is a next time... you can stay again. If you want."
The hope that flashed across his face was so bright, so unguarded, that it hurt to witness. He quickly controlled it, but not before she'd seen.
"I'll always stay if you need me," he said quietly. "Always." He left before she could respond, closing the door with careful gentleness.
Ashina sat in her bed, surrounded by morning light, and touched her chest where the bond hummed with something new. Not forgiveness. Not acceptance. Not anything as clear or simple as that but maybe the beginning of understanding. The first fragile thread of something that might, eventually, grow into coexistence or maybe even something more. She wasn't ready to name it yet but sitting there, still feeling the echo of his presence keeping her nightmares at bay, Ashina realized something had fundamentally shifted.
She'd spent weeks seeing Kendrick as purely the Alpha who'd violated her. The monster who'd taken her choice. The man she needed to hate to survive but he was also the man who'd sat in an uncomfortable chair all night because she'd asked. Who felt her nightmares as vividly as she did. Who carried guilt that was slowly destroying him. Who loved her in all the wrong ways but loved her nonetheless. He was both a monster and man, villain and victim. The one who'd hurt her and the one who'd stay up all night to keep her demons away. Understanding that didn't erase what he'd done. Didn't make the marking okay. Didn't mean she forgave him but it meant she could no longer see him as simply evil and that changed everything.