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?”

The storm had been screaming for hours.

I’d lost count somewhere around two in the morning, curled into a velvet armchair that was probably worth more than every piece of furniture I’d ever owned combined, watching lightning split the sky through floor- to-ceiling windows. The fireplace had dwindled to orange embers. The bed—that massive expanse of black silk and silver pillows—sat untouched behind me like an accusation.

Get in the bed, Elara.

Kira’s voice was a needle in my skull, sharp and insistent. She’d been at this for an hour.

That bed is soaked in his scent. It’s the closest thing to rolling around in our Alpha’s arms that we’re going to get tonight, and you’re wasting it on a CHAIR.

“I’m not sleeping in a stranger’s bed,” I muttered aloud.

He’s not a stranger. He’s our Mate. His hand was on our thigh four hours ago and you’re acting like—

“That was an accident. I fell.”

You didn’t fall. Your body knew exactly what it was doing. And so did his.

My thighs pressed together at the memory. I hated that she could feel that. I hated that she purred every time it happened.

Before I could argue, the door lock clicked.

I bolted upright. My bare feet hit the cold floor as the heavy doors swung open and Kael walked through—no, limped through—his silhouette backlit by the hallway’s dim sconces. Rain plastered his dark hair to his forehead. His suit jacket was gone. His black shirt hung open at the collar, torn from shoulder to ribcage in a jagged gash that revealed a stripe of blood-slicked skin beneath.

The scent hit me next. Cold pine. Dark chocolate. And underneath it all, the hot-copper tang of fresh blood.

A black medical kit thudded onto the carpet at my feet. The royal insignia gleamed in the firelight.

“Sit,” Kael commanded. Not to me—to himself. He dropped onto the leather ottoman near the armchair, his massive frame folding with a weariness that looked entirely wrong on him. His golden eyes found mine in the dark, and they were tired, yes, but still sharp enough to cut.

“Come here. Treat the wound.”

My mouth opened. Closed. “Your Majesty—I should call your doctor. I’m not a medic. I don’t know how to—”

“There are traitors in this estate.” His voice was a low rumble, roughened by blood loss and exhaustion. “I trust no one. Except you.” A pause. His lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You’re too pathetic to kill a man. That makes you the safest pair of hands in this building. Unless you’d prefer I bleed out in front of you?”

He TRUSTS us, Kira whispered, and the word vibrated through my chest like a plucked string. He said he trusts us. Elara. ELA—

I grabbed the medical kit and knelt between his legs before Kira’s keening could short-circuit what was left of my rational brain.

The carpet was thick enough to cushion my knees. The fire popped. Rain lashed the windows. I unlatched the kit with trembling fingers and found antiseptic, gauze, surgical tape, a curved needle and thread I prayed I wouldn’t need. My hands were shaking so badly the iodine bottle rattled against the tray.

“Steady,” Kael murmured.

Not a command. Something softer. Something that made my stomach clench.

I reached for his shirt. The buttons were cold and wet, and my knuckles brushed the inferno of his skin with every one I freed. His chest emerged inch by inch—ridged muscle, silver scars tracing old battles, a trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath his belt. The wound was on his left side, just above the hip. A knife slash.

Shallow but long, still oozing.

Look at him, Kira breathed. Look at what we’re touching. That’s not a Beta’s gym body. That’s centuries of violence carved into perfection. Put your palm on his stomach. Right now. DO IT.

I poured iodine onto a gauze pad instead, my face burning. “This might sting.”

“It already stings.”

But when I pressed the gauze to his wound, his abdominal muscles went rigid. Not from pain. His breath caught—a hitch so slight I would have missed it if I weren’t kneeling close enough to count his eyelashes. His throat moved. A swallow.

He’s not breathing right, Kira observed, delight thick in her mental voice. He’s not breathing right because your fingers are on his skin. Do it again. Press harder. Or better yet, lean down and use your tongue.

Wolves clean wounds with their tongues, Elara. It would be perfectly natural.

I nearly dropped the iodine.

“Stop squirming,” I hissed—whether at Kira or at my own shaking hands, I wasn’t sure.

Kael’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t move.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He knew. He knew I was arguing with my inner wolf, and the knowledge seemed to amuse him in some dark, private way.

I worked in silence after that. Cleaned the wound. Taped the edges closed. My fingertips traced the ridges of his ribs, the hard plane of his stomach, the way his skin burned under my touch like he was running a fever or a fire. Every time I breathed in, I got pine and chocolate and blood. Every time I breathed out, Kira made a sound in my head that was frankly indecent.

We could climb into his lap right now. He’s injured. He wouldn’t stop us. He’d probably—

My phone buzzed.

The sound was so sudden, so jarring in the fire-lit quiet, that I flinched. My old phone—the one I’d been doom-scrolling on yesterday, the one I’d left on the side table—vibrated against the wood like an angry insect. The screen glowed.

A text notification.

From Ethan.

The air in the room changed.

I didn’t see Kael move. I only felt the displacement—the shift of weight, the sudden cold where his body heat had been—and then my phone was in his hand. His black-gloved hand. His golden eyes scanning the screen with an expression that started as contempt and curdled rapidly into something murderous.

“No,” I gasped, lunging forward. “Give it back, that’s my only—”

Crunch.

The phone shattered in his grip. Not cracked. Shattered. Glass and plastic crumbled between his leather-clad fingers like dried leaves. Tiny fragments tinkled onto the carpet. The screen flickered once and died.

Kael’s eyes lifted to mine. They were no longer gold. They were molten copper, bleeding toward crimson at the edges, and the weight of his Alpha Aura slammed into me so hard the fireplace behind him roared to life, flames licking up the chimney like terrified animals.

His hand found my jaw. Leather on skin. Grip like iron.

“Has that Beta’s cheap cologne rotted your brain?” His voice was barely above a whisper, but every syllable vibrated with rage. “He told you to be his scapegoat. He ordered you to take the fall for him. And you kept his number?”

“I didn’t—I forgot to delete—”

“You forgot.” He said the word like it was a personal betrayal. “You forgot to erase a man who publicly discarded you on a livestream. A man who left you crying in the rain. A man who touched you for three years while I—” He stopped himself. His jaw locked so hard I heard his teeth grind.

---

In Kael’s skull, Bane was roaring.

She tried to take the phone back. She reached for it. That dead wolf’s name was on her screen, and she reached for it. TEAR HIS HEAD OFF. Mount it on a spike. Put it in her room so she never forgets who her

Alpha is.

Kael’s free hand—the one not gripping his Mate’s delicate jaw—curled into a fist at his side. His knuckles ached. His veins burned. The beast was clawing at the inside of his ribs, demanding blood, demanding destruction, demanding he hunt down this Ethan creature and rip the spine from his body while the whole

PackNet watched.

She wore his shirt tonight, Bane snarled. OUR shirt. And she was thinking about HIM. End him. End him

NOW.

But Kael looked down at the woman trembling in his grip—her eyes wide, her lips parted, her pulse fluttering wild against his thumb—and something else cut through the bloodlust. Something older. Colder. More strategic.

If he killed Ethan tonight, she’d never stop fearing him. She’d never stop seeing the monster. And Kael needed her to see him. The king. The protector. The man who would burn the world down for her, yes, but who would also kneel at her feet and let her stitch his wounds with shaking hands.

He released her jaw. Slowly. Deliberately. His fingers left faint pink marks on her skin, and Bane howled with possessive satisfaction.

Kael leaned down. His palm slid around the back of her neck—bare skin, no glove—and he pulled her toward him with a gentleness that cost him more than any battle wound ever had.

His lips brushed her cheek. Her temple. The shell of her ear. He felt her shiver. He felt her breath catch and hold.

“I’ll buy you a new phone,” he murmured, voice rough as gravel. “But from this day forward, your world holds no voice except mine. Do you understand?”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t, maybe. Her hands were gripping the front of his ruined shirt like she didn’t know whether to push him away or pull him closer.

“Tomorrow morning,” Kael continued, his thumb stroking the delicate bones of her nape, “you’ll dress in something appropriate. You’ll walk into the Senate chamber at my side. As my personal assistant. As my—”

He caught himself before the word mate escaped. “As my charge. And everyone who ever laughed at you will kneel.”

He pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes.

“That’s an order.”