For Me,There Is Only You |18+|

ANSEL II

I was still trying to shake the weight of that voice when Ashley's phone rang again.

She groaned, barely glancing at the screen before muttering, "Shit..."

A throat clear. A forced shift in tone. Then she picked up.

"Hey, Dad."

My grip on the steering wheel tightened again—

Steven.

That name alone was enough to pull a thread of heat through my veins. Old, simmering anger. The kind I never really got to aim at anyone properly.

"I told you to send me the address. Why haven't I received it yet?" Steven's voice crackled through the speaker. Cold. Sharp. But always softer when it came to her.

Ashley rolled her eyes. "Because I know you, and the second I do, you'll be banging on the front door like some obsessed FBI agent."

"I need to see where my daughter is going to live," he said flatly.

"You'll scare Neev off," she snapped.

"I just want to make sure it's safe. That this human isn't a threat—"

"Oh my God, Dad, seriously?" Ashley cut in, exasperated. "Neev? A threat? If anything, I'm the threat. You do realize she has no idea she's about to live with a werewolf, right?"

There was a pause on the line. Probably him clenching his jaw on the other end. I could picture it clearly—same disgusted look he used to throw at me when I walked into a room.

Ashley sighed, tone flat. "I'm not sending you the address."

"Ashley—"

Click.

She hung up.

Threw the phone face-down onto the seat beside her.

"Overprotective psycho," she muttered, staring out the window again.

I blinked, surprised, not at the sentiment, but at the fact that she had said it.

Steven had always been overbearing. Controlling. But to hear Ashley call him a psycho, her own father? That was new. And somehow... accurate.

The miles slipped away in silence, the long stretch of road blurring past. Hours turned into minutes, and with each turn that brought us closer to the pinned location, the knot in my chest grew tighter.

I wasn't used to this. To feeling.

And neither was Zev.

He stirred restlessly beneath the surface, his presence like a dark current shifting beneath cracked ice. He was always restrained—calculated—but something had breached that mental barrier between us.

Something primal enough to reach even him.

"What is it?" I asked.

No reply.

Just silence... and tension.

The road narrowed, curving away from the busier neighborhoods and into a quieter patch surrounded by trees. A two-story house came into view, modest, set apart from the noise of the world. The kind of place that breathed solitude.

I honked once, sharp and short, letting whoever was inside know we had arrived.

Then, something caught me.

A scent.

Soft, unfamiliar... but strangely grounding. Like wildflowers in early bloom mixed with damp earth after a long-awaited rain.