Claws of the Guardian

I never asked for a bodyguard. When my father's enemies threatened my life, he hired the best—a man named Damien Cross, whose silver eyes followed my every move with an intensity that made my blood run hot and cold simultaneously. He was six feet of coiled muscle and dangerous silence, and something about him felt ancient, primal, wrong in ways I couldn't name. I should have listened to my instincts. Instead, I fell.

The first night he stood outside my bedroom door, I couldn't sleep. His presence was a weight I felt through the walls—heavy, watchful, alive. I told myself it was fear. I was lying.

"You don't sleep," I said to him the next morning, finding him in the exact same position I'd left him in twelve hours before.

"I don't need much." His voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder before a storm.

"Everyone needs sleep, Mr. Cross."

His lips curved—not quite a smile, something hungrier. "I'm not everyone, Miss Ashworth."

The weeks that followed were an exercise in exquisite torture. He was everywhere—a shadow at the edge of my vision, a heat at my back when danger lurked. Twice, he threw himself between me and death without hesitation. Once, a knife meant for my throat found his shoulder instead. He didn't even flinch.

"You should see a doctor," I whispered, pressing gauze to his wound in the back of the town car. The blood was dark, almost black.

"It'll heal." He caught my wrist, his grip gentle but immovable. "Don't worry about me, Elena."

It was the first time he'd used my name. The sound of it in his mouth made something dangerous unfurl in my chest.

I started looking for excuses to be near him. A walk in the garden at midnight—I needed air. A drive through the city—I needed to think. He never questioned, never refused. He simply followed, those silver eyes reflecting the moonlight like mirrors.

It was during one of those midnight walks that I first noticed the scars. His shirt had ridden up as he reached for something, revealing a lattice of old wounds across his abdomen—claw marks, I realized with a jolt. Four parallel lines, repeated over and over.

"What happened to you?" The words escaped before I could stop them.

He went still. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.

"A war," he finally said. "A very long time ago."

"What kind of war leaves scars like that?"

His smile was bitter. "The kind you don't walk away from human."

I should have pressed. Should have demanded answers. But there was something in his eyes—a pain so deep it stole my breath—and I found I couldn't bear to cause him more.

The full moon rose three days later. I woke to sounds of destruction—furniture crashing, glass shattering, an inhuman howl that turned my blood to ice. I grabbed my phone and ran toward the noise, not away from it.

I found him in the east wing, doubled over, his body contorting in ways that shouldn't have been possible. His eyes when they met mine were no longer silver but gold, burning with an inner fire.

"Run," he snarled, and his voice was wrong, too deep, too rough. "Elena, for God's sake, run!"

I didn't run. I walked toward him, my heart pounding so hard I could taste it.

"Damien."

"You don't understand." His bones cracked, reshaping themselves beneath his skin. Fur—dark as midnight—erupted along his arms. "I can't control it. Not tonight. Not with you so close."

"Why not with me?"

He laughed, and it was half-growl, half-sob. "Because you're my mate. Because your scent has been driving me insane since the moment I met you. Because the wolf wants to claim you, and I've been fighting it every single night, and I can't anymore—"

His transformation completed in a burst of shadow and moonlight. Where my bodyguard had stood, a massive wolf now crouched—bigger than any natural creature, with fur like black silk and eyes of molten gold. Those eyes held intelligence, recognition, and something that looked terrifyingly like devotion.

I should have been afraid. Every survival instinct I possessed was screaming at me to flee. Instead, I reached out my hand.

"Damien."

The wolf whined, pressing his massive head against my palm. His fur was impossibly soft, warm with an inner heat that seeped into my bones. I sank to my knees beside him, and he curled around me like a living blanket, protective and possessive and gentle all at once.

We stayed that way until dawn.

When he transformed back, he was naked and shaking, his face buried in the curve of my neck.

"I'm sorry," he breathed against my skin. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

"Shh." I ran my fingers through his hair. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"I'm a monster."

"You're my monster." I tipped his chin up, forcing him to meet my eyes. "And I'm not afraid of you."

His kiss was desperate, hungry—the kiss of a man who'd been starving for centuries. I tasted moonlight and shadows and something ancient on his tongue, and I wanted more. I wanted everything.

He pulled back before we could go further, his forehead pressed to mine.

"You don't know what this means," he said roughly. "Being with me. Being my mate."

"Then tell me."

"It's forever." His hands framed my face like I was something precious, something fragile. "Wolves mate for life, Elena. If you choose this—if you choose me—there's no going back. I'll never let you go."

Forever. The word should have frightened me. Instead, it settled into my chest like a promise.

"Good," I whispered. "Because I wasn't planning on leaving."

The smile that broke across his face was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen—wild and free and full of wonder, as if he couldn't believe his luck.

"You're insane," he said.

"Probably." I pulled him closer. "But I've never felt saner than when I'm with you."

Outside, dawn painted the sky in shades of crimson and gold. Somewhere in the house, his brothers—the pack he'd never told me about—were stirring. There would be questions to answer, secrets to unravel, a world of darkness I was only beginning to understand.

But that was tomorrow. Tonight, in the arms of my wolf, I was exactly where I belonged.

The story of Elena Ashworth and her werewolf bodyguard was just beginning. And something told me the most dangerous chapters were yet to come.