Everyone said a Wolfless woman should be grateful for any Alpha willing to touch her.

Six doctors tested me and stamped the same verdict across my life: defective.

Then Ethan Blackwood chose me.

For three years, I shared his apartment, memorized his coffee order, and convinced myself his staying meant I was finally enough.

That morning, I carried two warm lattes into Pack Corporation while Chloe streamed to thousands of wolves.

She swung the camera toward my stained cardigan and called me “the Wolfless.”

Then Ethan walked through the crowd in the charcoal suit I had picked for him.

He put one hand on Chloe’s waist and kissed her while the comments laughed at me.

The cups slipped from my fingers and burst across the marble.

I waited for him to call it a stunt.

He only looked at me like I was a failed investment.

“I can’t gamble my bloodline, Elara.”

“You can’t shift, and you can’t bear strong pups.”

“Chloe is my Fated Mate.”

“Our contract is over.”

***

The coffee was still warm.

Two cups. One for me, one for Ethan. I’d picked up his usual—oat milk latte, extra shot, two pumps of vanilla

—from the café across the street. Three years of memorizing someone’s coffee order. Three years of thinking that meant something.

The Pack Corporation lobby buzzed with its usual morning chaos. Suits. Heels. The low hum of wolf-energy that I’d never been able to feel but had learned to recognize by the way others reacted—the slight head tilts, the unconscious deference, the way space opened around certain bodies and closed around others.

I adjusted my glasses and kept walking.

That’s when I saw the crowd.

Forty, maybe fifty people circled around the central fountain. Phones raised. Someone was laughing—that high, performative laugh that curls at the edges because you know you’re being watched. I recognized the sound before I recognized the person.

Chloe.

The Pack’s PR Director. Top-tier influencer on PackNet. A golden wolf with a golden smile and a following that could start or end careers with a single livestream.

She was holding her phone at arm’s length, the front camera catching her perfect angles. The screen behind her showed the live feed, comments scrolling faster than anyone could read them.

I should have turned around.

But I was holding Ethan’s coffee, and Ethan was supposed to be in a meeting on the fourth floor, and I was a good girlfriend—or at least I thought I was—so I kept walking toward the elevator bank that would take me past the fountain.

Chloe’s head snapped toward me like she’d smelled blood.

“Oh my god, guys,” she said into her phone, her voice pitched for maximum audience engagement. “Look who it is. The Wolfless herself.”

The lens swung toward my face. I blinked, my reflection caught in the dark glass of her camera like a deer in headlights. My hair was frizzing from the humidity. My cardigan had a coffee stain from this morning. I was wearing my backup glasses because my good ones had broken last week and I couldn’t afford new ones.

The comments exploded.

SHE STILL WORKS HERE???

how is she even allowed in the building wolfless freak probably mops floors no wolf no worth lol ethan wake up challenge

@EthanBlackwoodAlpha dump the dead weight already

I watched them scroll. Hundreds of them. Thousands. My chest went tight, but I couldn’t look away from the screen. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, except I was the car, and the crash was happening inside my body, and everyone was filming.

“Chloe,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

She tilted her head, a perfect imitation of sympathy. “Aw, sweetie. Did you bring coffee? Is that for Ethan?”

The crowd parted.

Ethan strode through like he’d been waiting for his cue. Tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of jawline that made girls on PackNet leave thirsty comments. He was wearing the charcoal suit I’d helped him pick out last month, the one I’d told him made him look like an Alpha who mattered.

He didn’t look at me.

He looked at Chloe.

His hand found her waist. His fingers splayed across her hip like they’d done it a thousand times before—and maybe they had, maybe I was the last person in this building who didn’t know, the idiot girlfriend who brought coffee and believed in loyalty.

Then he kissed her.

Deep. Slow. The kind of kiss that wasn’t just a kiss—it was a performance. His tongue slipped past her lips, and the crowd cheered, and Chloe’s phone caught every angle, and the comments went nuclear.

KING

THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT

Wolfless girl is still standing there omg the secondhand embarrassment is LETHAL can someone check if she’s still breathing

When Ethan pulled back, Chloe’s lip gloss was smeared, and she was glowing, and he was smiling, and then— finally—he turned to me.

His eyes were cold.

“I can’t gamble my bloodline, Elara.” He said it like he was delivering a quarterly report. Flat. Professional.

“You’re a Wolfless. You can’t shift. You can’t access your wolf. You can’t even bear strong pups. What kind of future would we have?”

My hands were shaking.

“Chloe is my Fated Mate.” He said it like it was obvious. Like I should have known. “Our contract is over.”

The coffee cups slipped.

I felt the cardboard leave my fingers before I registered that I’d let go. They hit the marble floor at the same time, both lids popping off, brown liquid splashing across my canvas sneakers. The stain spread fast. Dark.

Permanent. The same color as the comments still scrolling across Chloe’s screen.

SHE ACTUALLY DROPPED THEM this is the best livestream of the year packnet is eating GOOD today imagine being that pathetic

Wolfless tears are my favorite flavor three years wasted lmaoooo

Someone in the crowd snorted. Then someone else laughed. Then the lobby was full of laughter, and it was sharp, and it was everywhere, and I couldn’t breathe.

My brain was making a sound like static. White noise. Everything else—the laughter, the comments, the way

Ethan’s arm was still wrapped around Chloe’s waist—felt distant. Muffled. Like I was underwater.

I ran.

The front doors burst open under my palms. Rain hit my face like a slap. I was running before I knew I was running, my sneakers squelching with coffee and rainwater, my glasses fogging up so badly I could barely see.

The streets in the Alpha district were empty. Who would be outside in this weather? Only an idiot. Only a

Wolfless who didn’t know her place.

I ran until my lungs burned. Until my legs gave out. Until I collapsed in an alley somewhere between the financial district and the private estates, my knees hitting wet gravel, my hands sinking into mud.

The rain kept falling.

I couldn’t stop crying. Ugly, gasping sobs that tore their way out of my throat. Three years. Three years of being patient. Three years of telling myself that being Wolfless didn’t matter, that I was enough, that Ethan loved me for who I was—and it was all a lie. He’d been embarrassed of me. He’d been waiting for someone better. I was just a placeholder until his Fated Mate showed up.

I pressed my forehead to the wet ground.

I’m nothing. I’m a Wolfless. I’m a waste of space. I should just die right here.

And then—

Oh, for the love of the Moon, SHUT UP.

I froze.

The voice was inside my head. Not a thought. A voice. Distinct. Sharp. Female. And absolutely furious.

Three years of listening to that Beta loser’s cheap cologne and his mediocre opinions, and now you’re going to cry over him? I’m going to be sick.

“What—” I whispered.

Finally. FINALLY. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to crack? I was starting to think you’d spend your whole life simping for that spray-tanned disaster.

My heart was pounding. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. I was Wolfless. I’d been tested. I’d been tested six times, by six different physicians, and every single one of them had said the same thing. No inner wolf. No shifting potential. Defective.

Defective my tail, the voice snapped. I’m Kira. And I’ve been here the whole time, waiting for you to stop being such a doormat so I could finally—

She stopped.

Just stopped. Mid-sentence. The silence in my head was louder than the voice had been.

“Kira?” I whispered.

She didn’t answer. But I felt something shift. A tension. An alertness. Like a dog pricking its ears toward a sound it couldn’t quite hear.

Then she made a noise.

A low whine. Yearning. Desperate. Nothing like the sarcastic, dismissive tone she’d been using two seconds ago.

Do you smell that?

I didn’t smell anything except rain and garbage and my own pathetic misery.

Smell what? I thought back.

That scent. That incredible scent. Cold and dark and… oh, Moon above. It’s like… like snow and dark chocolate and something burning. Something ancient.

I sat up slowly, my knees aching, my glasses somewhere on the ground behind me. The alley was empty. The rain was starting to thin.

Get up, Kira said. Get up right now.

“I’m not—”

GET UP. Follow that scent. NOW.

My body moved.

Not because I told it to. Because she told it to. My legs straightened. My feet turned. I started walking, and it was like being a passenger in my own body, my hands brushing wet brick walls, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

The scent grew stronger. I still couldn’t place it, but my body was reacting to it—my pulse racing, my skin flushing hot despite the cold rain. Kira was keening in the back of my mind, a sound of pure, shameless want.

He’s close, she whispered. He’s so close, Elara. Can you feel him? Can you feel the weight of him?

I could. A pressure in the air. A gravity that hadn’t been there before. The alley opened up into a quiet street lined with iron gates and climbing black roses, and I was walking toward the largest gate, the one with the thorns woven through the bars like a warning.

What are you doing? I thought, suddenly terrified. That’s private property. That’s—

The gate swung open under my hand.

I stumbled through. Into a garden. Into darkness. Into the densest concentration of that scent I’d felt yet, so thick it coated my throat, so potent my knees went weak.

And then I hit something solid.

A chest.

Hard. Warm. Immovable. My hands came up instinctively, palms pressing against muscle that felt like carved stone. The rain had stopped, or maybe it hadn’t, but I couldn’t hear it anymore. I couldn’t hear anything except the thunder of my own heartbeat.

A hand closed around the back of my neck.

Not gentle. Not cruel. Possessive. The grip of something that had never learned to hold softly and didn’t intend to start now. Thumb pressed against my pulse point. Fingers curled into the wet hair at my nape.

I looked up.

He was tall. He was terrifying. His eyes were liquid gold, burning in the dark like twin flames, and his face was all sharp angles and hard planes, and his expression was the expression of a man who had killed before and would kill again and would not lose sleep over either.

His voice, when it came, was low and cold and absolute.

“Trespassing in forbidden territory. Are you tired of living?”

I should have been terrified. I was terrified. My human mind was screaming at me to run, to apologize, to throw myself at his feet and beg for mercy.

But Kira—

Kira was thrilled.

Mate! she howled, and the sound of it vibrated through every cell in my body. He’s our Mate! Elara, do you understand? THIS is what an Alpha is supposed to feel like. Not that cheap imitation. THIS. Feel him. Feel his hand on your neck. Feel the way he’s holding you. Submit. Submit to him. Do it. DO IT.

My body went liquid.

I didn’t choose it. I didn’t want it. But my spine curved, my head tilting back, baring my throat to him in a gesture of surrender so primal it bypassed every rational thought.

A sound escaped my lips. A gasp. No—not a gasp. A moan. Soft and breathy and utterly mortifying.

The Alpha’s eyes flared brighter.

“Kill me,” I whispered, because I couldn’t look at him and I couldn’t look away. “Just kill me. No one cares about a Wolfless anyway.”

His grip tightened.

---

Kael was not a patient man.

He was not a merciful man. He was not the kind of man who tolerated weakness, or trespassing, or the touch of someone he hadn’t invited. He’d killed for less. He’d killed for nothing at all.

But the moment his hand closed around the girl’s neck, something inside him snapped.

The scent hit him first. Rain-damp hair and rose petals and something underneath that was just her—fragile and fierce and utterly, devastatingly unique. It flooded his senses. It drowned everything else.

Then Bane woke up.

Bane, his Lycan. Ancient. Brutal. The beast that had lived in his chest for centuries and had never once shown interest in anything that wasn’t violence or territory. Bane surged forward with a force that nearly knocked Kael off his feet, and his voice—Kael’s own voice, twisted and deepened by the beast—roared through his skull.

MATE!!

She’s bleeding. You’re hurting her. YOUR HAND IS ON HER NECK AND SHE’S BLEEDING AND YOU’RE

HURTING HER. LET HER GO. LET HER GO RIGHT NOW—

Kael’s fingers opened.

He didn’t mean to do it. He meant to hold on. He meant to drag her closer, to press his nose to her throat, to breathe her in until he couldn’t breathe anything else. But Bane’s rage was a physical force, and Kael’s hand released her like she’d burned him.

She’s crying, Bane snarled. She’s crying and she’s hurt and she’s ours. WHO DID THIS? WHO MADE HER

CRY? I’LL TEAR THEIR THROATS OUT. I’LL BATHE IN THEIR BLOOD. I’LL—

Kael’s jaw locked.

He forced his face into stillness. Forced his eyes to go cold. Forced his voice to come out flat and indifferent, because if he didn’t, he was going to pull her into his arms and never let her go, and she was small and shaking and clearly terrified, and he was not going to be the monster who broke his own Mate.

“Get out,” he said.

The words tasted like ash.

She stumbled backward. Her eyes were wide and wet and unreadable, and her mouth opened like she might say something, but nothing came out. Then she turned and ran, her footsteps splashing through puddles, her silhouette disappearing into the rain.

Kael stood motionless.

A shadow detached itself from the garden wall. Marcus, his Captain of the Guard. Old. Loyal. Discreet.

“Your Majesty,” Marcus said quietly. “She entered your private territory without authorization. Should I have her dealt with?”

Kael didn’t look at him.

He looked down at his hand. The hand that had held her neck. The hand that still carried the warmth of her skin, the ghost of her pulse, the faint trace of rose petals and rain.

His fingers curled into a fist.

“Check the PackNet livestream archives,” he said. His voice was low and rough and full of something that would have terrified anyone who knew him. “Find out who made her cry tonight.”

Marcus hesitated. “Your Majesty?”

Kael’s eyes lifted. Molten gold. Burning. Murderous.

“I want that man’s life.”

I didn't sleep.

The rain stopped sometime before dawn, but I stayed curled on the floor of the apartment—our apartment,

Ethan's apartment, the apartment that had never really been mine—wearing yesterday's clothes, yesterday's coffee stains, yesterday's humiliation. My backup glasses were gone. Lost in the alley. Lost in the garden. Lost somewhere between Kira's first words and the moment a golden-eyed monster put his hand on my throat and unmade me.

The PackNet notifications wouldn't stop.

Five hundred thousand views. Eight hundred thousand. One million. Chloe's livestream clip had gone viral overnight, and every wolf with a phone seemed to have something to say about the Wolfless girl who dropped her coffee and ran.

she really thought an Alpha like Ethan would stay with THAT crying in the rain like a movie lmaooooo wolfless tears are so satisfying can we talk about how she didn't even fight back?? no spine at all

I scrolled until my thumb went numb. Until the words blurred together. Until Kira made a sound in the back of my mind like someone gagging.

You're reading that garbage? She sounded genuinely offended. Those comments are from Beta-level pack rats who couldn't scent a real Alpha if he bit them on the throat. Put the phone down.

"I'm not—" I started out loud, then caught myself. Talking to a voice in my head. That was new.

You are. You're doom-scrolling. You know what you should be doing instead?

"Don't say it."

Going back to that gate. That scent. That man.

I dropped my phone onto the carpet. "He nearly killed us."

He didn't, Kira said, and her voice went dreamy and soft in a way that made my stomach flip. He could have.

He should have. We trespassed on Lycan territory, and he let us go. Do you know what that means?

"It means he was distracted."

It means he FELT something. I felt him feel it. His hand on our neck—

"That's enough."

—and the way his thumb pressed right here—

"I said that's enough!"

But my body was already responding. Heat flooding my cheeks. My pulse kicking up at the memory of cold rain and hot fingers and a scent like dark chocolate and evergreen forests. Kira let out a low, satisfied purr.

See? You're not as immune as you pretend to be, little human.

I shoved myself off the floor and started packing.

The apartment was full of Ethan. His suits in the closet. His protein powders on the kitchen counter. His framed photo on the bedside table—the one of him shaking hands with the Pack Council chairman, his smile sharp and ambitious. Three years of my life, and I'd never owned anything here. My clothes fit in a single suitcase. My books fit in a cardboard box. The rest was just... him.

That jacket he left on the chair, Kira said. The brown one. Do you remember how much cologne he used to spray on that thing? I thought I was going to suffocate.

A laugh caught in my throat. It wasn't a happy laugh. But it was a laugh.

Chemical warfare, Kira continued. I'm serious. Meanwhile, that Alpha last night smelled like—

"Like dark chocolate and trees and something burning," I muttered. "I know. You've mentioned it. Several times."

Because it's important. Because his scent is still on the white dress you were wearing, and if you would just

PICK IT UP and SMELL IT—

I wasn't going to do that.

I did that.

The white dress was crumpled near the bathroom door where I'd peeled it off last night, still damp, still stained with mud and grass from the garden. I brought it to my face before I could stop myself, and then—

There, Kira breathed. There it is. Do you feel that?

His scent hit me like a fist. Stronger than I expected. Dark and cold and impossibly deep, layered with something that made my knees remember exactly how weak they'd gone when he touched me. I grabbed the edge of the dresser to steady myself.

We need to go back, Kira said. We need to find him. We need to—

The apartment door slammed open.

I spun around, the white dress still clutched to my chest. Ethan stood in the doorway. Chloe was draped over his arm like an accessory she'd been designed to match.

"You're still here," Ethan said. Not a question. An accusation.

Chloe wrinkled her perfect nose. "She smells like wet dog and coffee. Ethan, make her leave. I wanted to redecorate today, and I can't do that with that contaminating the space."

Behind them, two of Ethan's pack enforcers loomed. I recognized one of them—Marcus's nephew, or cousin, or something. He'd always been polite to me before. Now he stared at a spot on the wall like I didn't exist.

"I'm packing," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I'll be gone in twenty minutes."

"You'll be gone now." Ethan stepped forward, his lip curling. "You've already stained Chloe's carpet. Look at it. Coffee and mud. Do you have any idea what that rug costs?"

I looked down. The carpet was beige. Generic. I'd picked it out myself at a discount home goods store six months ago because Ethan said we needed something "neutral" for when he brought colleagues over.

"That's my rug," I said. "I bought it."

Ethan's jaw tightened. Chloe's smile flickered at the edges.

"Pack your things," Ethan said coldly. "Take whatever garbage belongs to you, and get out. But don't think you're coming back to the Pack Corporation. Your employment is terminated, effective immediately. We don't need a Wolfless dragging down our productivity metrics."

Tell him, Kira snarled. Tell him what we are. Tell him I exist.

But I couldn't. Because whatever Kira was, whatever had woken up in that alley, I still hadn't shifted. I still couldn't prove I was anything more than defective.

I turned back to my suitcase. My hands were shaking. I zipped it closed with quick, jerky movements, then reached for my cardboard box of books—

Chloe's heel crunched down on the corner of the box.

"Oops," she said, and she was smiling again, that bright, performative smile that had launched a thousand sponsored posts. "Did you want that?"

The box was cheap. The cardboard buckled under her weight. I heard something tear.

"Move your foot," I said.

"I don't think I will." She tilted her head, studying me the way a cat studies a mouse it hasn't decided to kill yet. "You know, Elara, I almost feel sorry for you. Almost. You spent three years thinking an Alpha like Ethan would actually settle for a Wolfless? That's not optimism. That's delusion."

She lifted her hand. I watched it rise, watched her manicured fingers curl, watched the slap coming a full second before it would have landed—

And then Kira took over.

It wasn't a shift. I didn't sprout fur or claws or fangs. But something inside me moved, some deep and primal thing that had been sleeping for twenty-three years, and it moved fast. My spine straightened. My lips pulled back from my teeth. A sound rose in my throat, low and guttural, completely involuntary.

Chloe's hand stopped mid-air.

Her face went pale.

"What—" she started.

The front door exploded.

That's not a metaphor. The door—solid oak, steel hinges, Ethan's pride and joy—flew off its frame like it had been kicked by a god. Wood splinters scattered across the carpet. Chloe screamed. Ethan stumbled backward, his arm detaching from Chloe's waist like she'd suddenly become radioactive.

Four Royal Lycan Guards filled the doorway. Full tactical gear. Expressionless faces. The kind of soldiers who didn't knock because knocking implied they needed permission.

They parted like a curtain.

And Kael walked through.

He was taller than I remembered. Broader. The black suit he wore was tailored to perfection, but it couldn't soften the violence coiled in his shoulders, the predatory grace of his stride. His eyes—liquid gold, burning gold, the gold of a furnace about to melt through its casing—swept the room once and dismissed it.

Dismissed Ethan.

Dismissed Chloe.

Landed on me.

MATE, Kira wailed, and the sound inside my skull was pure, shameless joy. He came for us. HE CAME FOR

US.

The Alpha Aura hit me next. Not a scent, not quite—it was pressure, pure and crushing, the weight of an ancient predator pressing down on everything in the room. My lungs struggled. My knees buckled. I grabbed the edge of the dresser again and held on.

Ethan and Chloe didn't hold on.

They hit the floor. Both of them. Their knees cracked against the hardwood in perfect unison, like puppets whose strings had been severed. Chloe was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. Ethan's face had gone the color of old milk, his mouth opening and closing, his carefully cultivated Alpha confidence dissolving into pure animal terror.

"Your... Your Majesty..." Ethan's voice cracked. "This is... this is a civilian residence... I don't understand...

why would you..."

Kael didn't look at him.

He walked past Ethan like Ethan was furniture. Like Ethan was less than furniture—a stain on the floor that someone should have cleaned up. His long legs carried him through the wreckage of the door, glass crunching under his shoes, until he stopped directly in front of me.

I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. He was that tall. That close. That overwhelming.

The cold-forest-dark-chocolate scent of him wrapped around me like a blanket. Like a brand. My head swam.

My thighs pressed together involuntarily.

Purrrrrrr, Kira went, and the vibration of it ran all the way down my spine.

Kael's gaze dropped to the white dress still clutched against my chest. Something flickered in his expression.

Something dark and satisfied. Then his eyes lifted to my face, and whatever I saw there made my breath stop entirely.

He shrugged off his jacket.

Black. Expensive. Warmed by his body heat. He held it for a moment, and I watched his knuckles go white around the fabric, like the act of offering it was costing him something. Like he was wrestling with something far more dangerous than a jacket.

Then he draped it over my shoulders.

The weight of it made me gasp. Not just the physical weight—though it was heavy, lined with something impossibly soft—but the scent weight. I was drowning in him. Every inhale was dark chocolate and evergreen and that burning note underneath, the one that made Kira howl and my human mind go very, very quiet.

My legs gave out.

I didn't fall. Kael's hand caught me first. Black leather glove. Hot palm. Fingers that wrapped around my waist and held me upright with infuriating, devastating ease.

His hand, Kira moaned. His hand on our waist. Elara. ELARA. We're going to die. We're going to actually die, and I don't even care.

"

The SUV door closed with a sound like a bonesaw biting through iron.

I pressed myself into the corner of the backseat, my shoulder blades digging into the leather, Kael’s jacket still draped around my shoulders like a weight I couldn’t decide was a comfort or a threat. The cabin was vast for a vehicle—stretched black leather, tinted windows so dark the morning sun looked like dusk, a partition between us and the driver that hummed with the quiet electricity of absolute privacy.

Kael sat less than half a meter away.

He hadn’t spoken since he’d caught me in the apartment. Hadn’t explained the door. Hadn’t acknowledged

Ethan and Chloe still crumpled on the floor. He’d simply walked me out, one hand at the small of my back, and the crowd of Royal Guards had closed around us like a wall of black armor.

Now he reclined against the leather, long legs crossed at the ankle, eyes closed. His breathing was even. Slow.

The picture of bored indifference.

I was not breathing evenly.

My heart was trying to claw its way out of my ribcage. Every instinct I’d developed over twenty-three years of being the weakest person in every room was screaming at me to make myself smaller. Quieter. Invisible. I was in a car with the Lycan King. The King who’d killed the previous Alpha Council. The King who’d ended a bloodline in a single night. The King whose golden eyes I’d seen burning in the rain like twin funeral pyres.

And I was wearing his jacket.

Smell it, Kira moaned. Just put your nose in the collar and breathe. He won’t notice. He’s got his eyes closed.

I am not sniffing his jacket, I thought back, my jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached.

You’re literally shaking. Not from fear. From proximity. I can feel what your body is doing, Elara. Your thighs have been pressed together since he caught you.

That’s fear.

That’s arousal, and you know it. Kira’s presence unfurled in my chest like a cat stretching in sunlight. We’re in his car. HIS car. He threw a door off its hinges and carried us out of that apartment like we were something precious. Do you understand what that means?

It means I’m a trespasser and he’s taking me somewhere to execute me privately.

It means he couldn’t stand the smell of another Alpha on us, Kira purred. It means he’s territorial. It means

—

The SUV hit a speed bump.

My body pitched sideways. I’d been so focused on staying still, on being invisible, that I hadn’t braced myself at all. The jacket slipped. My bare knee knocked against something hard and warm—his thigh—and I gasped, flailing, my hands reaching for anything to steady myself—

A black leather glove closed around my leg.

Just above the knee. Thumb pressing into the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh. Fingers curling around the outside with a grip that was absolute.

I stopped breathing entirely.

Kael hadn’t opened his eyes. His expression hadn’t changed. But his hand was wrapped around my thigh like it belonged there, and the heat of his palm burned through the thin cotton of my skirt with an intensity that made my vision blur.

“If you wanted to throw yourself at me, little suspect,” he said, his voice a low, lazy rumble that vibrated through the leather and into my bones, “you’ve picked the wrong location.”

I made a sound. I don’t know what it was—a squeak, a gasp, something embarrassingly breathy that I would remember at three in the morning for the rest of my life.

His hand, Kira wailed. His hand on our thigh. Elara. ELARA. Do you feel his thumb? Do you feel where his thumb IS?

I felt it. The pressure of it. The heat. The way my skin seemed to pulse toward his touch like a flower turning toward sunlight. If he moved his hand two inches higher, he’d be—

I wrenched myself backward, slamming into the door with enough force to rattle the window. My chest heaved. My face was on fire. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anything except my own lap, where the hem of my skirt was twisted and my knee was still tingling from the ghost of his grip.

Kael’s hand returned to his own lap. Casual. Unbothered. But I caught the way his leather-clad fingers curled into a fist before he relaxed them.

He’s fighting it, Kira said, almost reverent. He wants to touch us more. He’s holding back. The most powerful Alpha alive is HOLDING BACK for us.

The rest of the drive passed in silence, but Kira purred the entire way.

The Royal Alpha Estate rose out of the morning mist like a monument to power.

I’d seen pictures of it on PackNet—distant shots taken by influencers who’d been invited to garden parties, carefully curated content that showed manicured hedges and marble fountains. But the photos hadn’t captured the weight of the place. The way the black stone absorbed light. The way the towers seemed to lean inward, watching. The way the iron gates opened without a sound, as if even metal knew better than to creak in the King’s presence.

The courtyard was lined with servants. Dozens of them. Heads bowed. Hands clasped. Uniforms pressed into razor-sharp creases. When Kael’s door opened and he stepped out, they bent lower—a wave of deference that rippled through the crowd like wind through wheat.

Then they saw me.

A guard opened my door. I stumbled out, still wrapped in Kael’s jacket, my coffee-stained sneakers hitting pristine cobblestones. The servants’ expressions flickered—just for a moment—but I caught it. The shock.

The confusion. The quiet, frantic recalibration of everything they thought they knew about their King.

They’re looking at the jacket, Kira said smugly. They know it’s his. They know we’re wearing the King’s scent.

They’re looking at the coffee stains, I thought back.

Same thing.

Guards flanked me as we moved through the estate. Marble hallways. Vaulted ceilings painted with scenes of ancient hunts. Chandeliers that dripped crystal like frozen rain. Every surface gleamed with the cold, untouchable wealth of a dynasty that had ruled for centuries.

I was not taken to a dungeon.

The guards stopped at a set of double doors on the top floor. Dark wood. Iron handles. No locks that I could see, but somehow the absence of locks felt more threatening than bars would have. They opened the doors and stepped aside.

It was a bedroom.

No—it was the bedroom. A master suite the size of my entire former apartment. Windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. A bed that could have fit six people, draped in black silk and piled with pillows in shades of charcoal and silver. A fireplace. A sitting area. A door that led to what looked like a private bathroom clad in dark marble.

I stood in the doorway, my feet rooted to the carpet. “Your Majesty,” I said, and my voice came out thin and wavering. “Isn’t the dungeon… underground?”

Kael stepped past me into the room. He pulled off his gloves, one finger at a time, the leather peeling away from skin with a soft, intimate sound. Then he reached for his tie—black silk, loosened it with two fingers— and I watched the column of his throat emerge like a secret being revealed.

He turned. His golden eyes found mine. The corner of his mouth lifted—not a smile, but something sharper.

Something that knew exactly how terrified I was and was amused by it.

“The dungeon is filthy,” he said. “When it comes to high-value prisoners, I prefer to conduct interrogations personally. Under my own supervision.”

He nodded toward the bathroom. “Shower. Wash the stench of that gutter you were living in off your skin.

We’ll talk when you don’t smell like a Beta’s cheap apartment.”

The bathroom was larger than any room I’d ever slept in.

Hot water sluiced over my shoulders, my back, my legs. Steam filled the air until I couldn’t see the walls. I scrubbed until my skin was pink and raw—coffee stains, mud, the phantom residue of Ethan’s cologne that

Kira kept complaining about. By the time I turned off the water, I felt like I’d shed a layer of myself.

The clothes I’d been wearing were gone. Taken. A silent maid had appeared and disappeared without a word, leaving only a single item folded on the heated marble counter.

A black silk shirt.

I picked it up. The fabric slipped through my fingers like water. It was huge. Massive. A man’s shirt—his shirt, I realized, as I brought it to my face without thinking and inhaled.

Cold forests. Dark chocolate. That elusive burning note underneath, like embers buried in ash.

Oh, Kira breathed. Oh, Moon above.

She went limp inside me. Not faint—satisfied. A full-body purr vibrated through my chest, my spine, my thighs. My knees buckled. I had to grab the edge of the counter to stay upright.

Put it on, Kira commanded. PUT IT ON RIGHT NOW.

I pulled the shirt over my head. It fell past my hips. Past my thighs. The hem stopped just above my knees, leaving my legs bare from mid-thigh down to my bare feet. The sleeves covered my hands completely. I had to roll them back twice just to free my fingers.

I looked at myself in the fogged mirror—a pale ghost in a black sea of silk, damp hair dripping down my shoulders, cheeks flushed from the heat.

We’re wearing his clothes, Kira whispered. We’re covered in his scent. We’re in his bedroom. We’re—

Don’t, I thought, but it was too late. My body was already responding. My nipples tightened against the silk.

My thighs pressed together. The place between them throbbed with a slow, insistent ache that had nothing to do with fear.

He’s going to smell it on us, Kira said, and she sounded absolutely delighted.

The bedroom was warmer than I’d left it.

Kael was on the sofa, a crystal decanter in front of him, amber liquid swirling in two glasses. He’d changed out of his suit jacket. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, exposing forearms corded with muscle and traced with faint silver scars. His hair was slightly disheveled, a dark lock falling across his forehead.

He looked up when I walked in.

And stopped.

The decanter hovered in mid-air. His eyes—liquid gold, burning gold—locked onto my bare legs with an intensity that made my skin prickle. They traveled up. Over the hem of the shirt. Over the way the silk clung to my hips, my waist, the shape of my breasts. Up to my throat. My mouth. My eyes.

He set the decanter down with a click that was too deliberate to be casual.

“Better,” he said. The word came out rougher than before. Thicker. “Much better than the gutter.”

He rose from the sofa and closed the distance between us. I had to crane my neck to hold his gaze. He towered over me—at least a foot taller, his shoulders blocking out the firelight, his presence pressing against me like a physical weight.

His hand lifted. His bare fingers—no gloves, just skin, warm and rough and electric—gathered a lock of my wet hair and lifted it. He rubbed the strands between his thumb and forefinger, and I watched his pupils dilate.

“Now,” he murmured, and his voice vibrated against my ear like a plucked string. “Tell me, little suspect.

What exactly did you see in my garden last night?”

It sounded like an interrogation. It felt like a seduction.

---

Kael was losing his mind.

She’s wearing our shirt, Bane roared. OUR shirt. OUR scent. Look at her legs. LOOK AT THEM. She’s barefoot on our carpet. She’s wet-haired and pink-skinned and she smells like our soap and her thighs are pressing together and she’s AROUSED, Kael, can you smell it? CAN YOU?

He could smell it. Moon take him, he could smell it. The faint, sweet, devastating scent of her arousal cutting through the soap and the steam and the silk. It was all he could smell. It was all he could think about.

Push her onto the sofa, Bane demanded. Bury your face in her throat. Lick the water from her hair. Mark her. BITE her. She’s OURS, she’s right there, she’s—

Kael released her hair before his hand did something he couldn’t control.

He turned away. Fast. Too fast. His shoulder nearly clipped her as he moved, and he heard her sharp intake of breath, but he couldn’t stop. He made it to the table. Grabbed the crystal glass. His grip tightened.

She’s in danger, he snarled at Bane silently. The traitors who murdered my uncle are still out there. If they discover she’s my Mate, they’ll slit her throat before I can—

THEN KILL THEM FIRST. KILL THEM ALL. I DON’T CARE. PROTECT HER. CLAIM HER. NOW.

The crystal cracked.

A spiderweb of fractures spread through the glass under his fingers. Amber liquid dripped over his knuckles.

He stared at it without seeing it, his chest heaving, his gold eyes bleeding toward red at the edges.

He forced the beast down. Forced his voice into cold, imperious control. Forced himself not to turn around and devour her.

“Until your innocence is proven,” he said, and his voice came out like winter—flat, hard, absolute, “you will remain here. This suite is your cage. You will not leave it without my permission.”

He turned his head just enough to catch her reflection in the window. She was trembling. Her eyes were huge and dark and full of something that wasn’t quite fear.

“If you set one foot outside this door without my authorization,” he said, “I will break both of those pretty legs. Understood?”