Page 3 of Ethan
“Used to be?” Griffin asked.
I didn’t answer.
He tilted his head, clearly entertained. “You looking to join our enforcer team?”
“Why? You scared I might take your spot?”
The moment the words left my mouth, the air between us shifted. A crackle of challenge. I wanted a fight. Needed one. Something to bleed off the fury burning in my gut.
Griffin saw it too. His grin faded. His posture shifted, less casual now. Ready.
“You sure you want to do this here?” he asked, voice quieter now. Deadlier.
“You sure you can keep up?” I shot back.
For a second, neither of us moved. Just breathing, sizing each other up. I could see it in his eyes: not fear, but calculation.
He was strong, disciplined. Controlled. Probably everything Carter ever wanted me to be. I hated how much that stung. Griffin didn’t move when I stepped into his space. Neither did I.
The tension between us stretched taut like a tripwire. The air in the hallway went thick, buzzing with challenge. I didn’t care that I’d just arrived.
Didn’t care that Carter had told me to behave, or that Cooper’s office was barely five feet behind me.
All I saw was another wolf who looked at me like I was some half-trained pup. Like he was already measuring my worth, and finding me lacking.
Griffin’s smirk said he thought he had me pegged, and maybe he did.
But I was tired of being the younger brother, the second choice, the one too wild to trust and too damaged to keep around. So I did what I always did when the walls felt too tight. I struck first.
My fist flew. It connected with the edge of Griffin’s jaw, and the crack of it echoed down the corridor like a starting gun.He didn’t even stumble.
He just blinked, exhaled through his nose like I was more of an annoyance than a threat, and then came at me like a freight train.
We collided hard. Shoulders. Elbows. Grunts. Every hit he landed felt deliberate and controlled. Mine were rage-driven, instinctive.
I swung wide, missed more than I hit, but when I did connect, I made it count. The hall was too narrow for real maneuvering.
Our boots scraped across the wooden floor as we shoved and slammed into walls, portraits tilting, a table skidding out of place. I heard someone shout faintly from another room, but I didn’t care.
I couldn’t stop. Not when my chest was full of heat and shame and the aching need to prove I wasn’t just Thornebane’s leftover trash.
Griffin grabbed my shirt and shoved me backwards into the wall, hard. Pain lit up my spine, and I lashed out with my elbow, catching him in the ribs.
He grunted, but didn’t release me. Instead, he spun us, my back now slamming into the opposite side of the hallway. The picture frame beside my head fell and shattered on the floor.
He pressed his forearm to my collarbone, just under my throat.
“You done yet?” he growled, breath hot against my face.
“Bite me,” I said.
I drove my knee up, aiming for his gut, but he twisted just enough that I only grazed him. He slammed his shoulder into me in retaliation, knocking the wind from my lungs.
Something inside me snapped. My wolf surged forward, rage-hot and ready to tear loose. I didn’t fight it.
My nails sharpened into claws, and I felt the shift coming fast, bones tightening, senses sharpening. My vision tunneled.
Griffin’s aura flared in answer, his own wolf pushing forward, teeth bared just enough to glint under the hall lights.
