Chapter: Chapter 121 – A Vow Spoken TwiceRonanI call the council at dusk because I’m done letting rumor do the talking.Eli sits to my right, unhidden, unbowed. Jace stands behind us like a shadow that could choose violence at any moment. Mara leans against a pillar, arms folded, gaze appraising. Hazel perches near the door with her bow unstrung but within reach.I could have kept Eli home. I could have let them talk about him as if he were an abstraction. A “resource,” “opportunity,” “offer.” Or the word that still makes my jaw ache, “price.”I want them to look at him and then try to say those words.“Let’s be plain,” I say, voice even. “Silvercrest sent a courier with a bag of coin and a letter dressed up as diplomacy. I refused. There was nothing to discuss. He is my mate.”I angle my head toward Eli. He doesn’t look away from the room. Good. Let them feel witnessed.Elder Invar clears his throat, a careful sound. “No one is challenging the sanctity of a bond, Alpha. We are only… advising that such decisions be carried
Last Updated: 2025-09-05
Chapter: Chapter 120 – The Breaking PointRonanEli is a wreck in front of me, and I’ve never seen anything more perfect.He’s spread wide on the table, plug stretching him open, cock slick in his fist, tears streaking his flushed face. Every muscle trembles, but his eyes stay locked on mine because I told him to. He obeys even when he’s broken. Especially then.The bond hums between us, strong enough to rattle my bones. My wolf prowls beneath my skin, demanding I finish this, demanding I take him now and claim him so hard the walls remember the sound.But I linger. Because watching him like this is worship.“You’re beautiful,” I rasp. His breath stutters. “Look at you, my beautiful Omega. Ruined and shining. My prize.”A strangled whimper claws out of his throat. His fist tightens on his cock, hips jerking despite my order to keep them quiet. He chokes on a sob when he remembers and stills.“That’s it,” I croon, voice gone feral. “That’s my good boy. My obedient one.”His chest heaves. His mouth shapes a broken, “Alpha,” lik
Last Updated: 2025-09-05
Chapter: Chapter 119 – Edge of ObedienceEliThe ropes once again holds my wrists above my head, tugging me open across the table. My shoulders ache from the stretch, but it’s a delicious ache, lined with the hum of bond and heat. Ronan hasn’t touched me in a full minute, and it feels like a year.He circles. Predatory. The sound of him walking, floor creaking, breath dragging, makes my skin prickle. My wolf doesn’t pace in panic. It purrs like a house cat, belly-up, urging me to give him more.“Spread wider,” he says. That Alpha weight is woven into the syllables and it’s impossible to disobey.My thighs burn as they pull wider. Slick is spread in a wide circle underneath me. I want him to see it, want him to smell what he does to me.He comes back into my view, broad and shadowed. A short whip dangles from one fist. He swings it slow and deliberate. Licking his lips when my breath hitches.“You like my belt,” he says, low. “You’ll like this even more.”The first whistle of the whip through the air has my body tensing in an
Last Updated: 2025-09-04
Chapter: Chapter 118 – MoreEliHe withdraws slowly, thrusts the same distance again, building fire on the edges, not the middle. I groan, helpless. The ropes creak. He sets a rhythm that is almost nothing and somehow everything. Teasing, surgical, each push angled to brush a spot that sparks behind my eyes without giving me the slam I’m hungry for.He watches me take it. Watches my face, not the join. Watches the way obedience and hunger battle under my skin and both win.“You’re perfect like this,” he mutters, too honest, too raw for mockery. “Open and waiting and mine.”“Yours,” I say, dizzy with how good the word tastes.His jaw works. He swears quietly and thrusts deeper, one slow drag that seats him almost fully, and my cry scrapes the ceiling. He holds, grinding in a tight circle that makes my toes curl hard enough my arches cramp. The edge rises like a wave.“Don’t,” he warns, reading me like a betrayal I’m about to commit. “Don’t you dare.”I choke on it, fighting for control. The ropes help. The hand
Last Updated: 2025-09-04
Chapter: Chapter 117 – Breaking PointEli“Until I get bored,” he says, and the buckle’s clack hits like a spark to dry tinder.I forget how to swallow for a second. Then I do it too fast, breath catching, hips trying to lift, my body saying please in every language it knows. The belt whispers through loops, leather sighing, and Ronan’s mouth crooks in that sharp, ruinous way that makes my heat throb like a drum.“Count,” he reminds me, stepping between my thighs, hand settling warm at the base of my throat, the other fisted loose around his belt.“One,” I whisper.“Louder.”“One.” My voice shakes. I can smell myself, rich and shameless, like a confession rubbed into wood. I can smell him too. Storm and pine and that dark, iron thread of Alpha that makes my entire body strain towards him.The belt taps the inside of my thigh. Not a strike. Yet. A threat laid gently against my skin. He drags the leather up the seam where my leg meets pelvis, slow, maddening, and my lungs forget why they need air.“Two.”“Good boy,” he murm
Last Updated: 2025-09-04
Chapter: Chapter 116 – The Scent of WarEliRonan’s fury is still walking the walls.It’s in the scuff marks pacing a groove in the floorboards. It’s in the way the latch thunks a little too loud when he shuts the door behind Mara, Jace, and Hazel. It’s in the set of his jaw. Stone chiseled by a storm he’s refusing to let loose.The council hall is five minutes in our past and I can still hear the way the dissenters said price like it was a word that applies to me. The way they wanted a discussion about selling me, as if you could appraise a heartbeat and tally it in a ledger. Ronan’s growl rolled through the hall like thunder and it hasn’t finished reverberating in my bones.Power still clings to him, the leftover flare from the ritual we did days ago. That boost doesn’t fade when the candles gutter. It lives in him, in us, a current I can feel humming in the back of my teeth. I’m not sure how long it lasts. Possibly until its been spent.I’m a disappointed by that. I’d love an excuse to perform the ritual again.Right no
Last Updated: 2025-09-03
Chapter: Chapter 118 – The First StrikeMarcusThe fundraiser is exactly the kind of glossy, champagne-slick event I used to glide through without a second thought. Platinum branded banners draped just-so across whitewashed walls, a string quartet in the corner trying their best to be heard over the clink of crystal. The kind of room where people pretend money isn’t the real conversation.I hate it tonight.Not because I’ve forgotten how to play the part. I never forget. But because every second I’m here feels like dragging Sophia closer to the fire. She’s at my side, radiant in a black dress that looks like it was tailored to make the rest of the room irrelevant. I can feel eyes flick to her, then to me, then away.Elena floats somewhere near the bar, laughing with two investment clients. She catches my eye across the room and raises her glass in a half-toast. I force a polite nod back.When a waiter glides by, I ask for a coffee. My head’s been buzzing with too many angles. Marrin’s testimony, Gillespie’s next move, Sop
Last Updated: 2025-09-05
Chapter: Chapter 117 – The DealGillespieI spread the files across the table of the conference room in neat, controlled lines. Bank statements, transcripts, surveillance shots, and wait for Marcus to take a seat.He doesn’t. He stands by the door, arms folded, jaw tight, radiating stubbornness like body heat.“You’re late,” I say.“You’re lucky I’m here at all,” he fires back.There it is. The old Marcus Blackwood I remember from training ops. Brilliant, relentless, impossible. I’ve never seen him this frayed, though. Not in the field, not undercover, not even that time in Miami when the entire operation was one step away from collapse. This is different.This is Sophia Chen different.I tap the file nearest to him. “Marrin’s confession is strong. Strong enough to move on. But if we bring him in wrong, we lose everything. We need it to be airtight.”He pushes off the door and comes closer. “Airtight means dead if you’re not careful. He’s already twitching at shadows.”“That’s not my problem.”“It’s mine,” he says,
Last Updated: 2025-09-05
Chapter: Chapter 116 – The FalloutMarcusEvery floorboard groans when Marrin shifts his weight on the couch, every pipe in the wall ticks as if time itself is louder here. He sits hunched forward, chewing the inside of his cheek until it’s raw, one knee bouncing. He looks like he’s waiting for the bullet that’ll end him.I don’t blame him. Considering who the players are in this game, he probably is.Sophia sets her pen down, the filled notebook heavy on the table between us. Her fingers hover over the cover like she can hold all those words inside by sheer willpower. She doesn’t look at me. Not yet.I can still hear Marrin’s voice, jagged and frantic. Elena. Bainbridge. Numbers. Names. Each piece a shard that fit too neatly into the suspicions I’ve been ignoring.Sophia clears her throat. “We should move him.”Marrin snaps his head up, eyes bloodshot. “Move me where? Jesus, you don’t get it. There’s nowhere that’s safe.”“You can’t stay here,” she says evenly. “There’s a reason this is an abandoned safe house. It’s f
Last Updated: 2025-09-04
Chapter: Chapter 115 – The ConfessionMarcusThe safehouse is barely more than a forgotten apartment over a boarded-up hardware store. No heat, no furniture except a sagging couch and a table with one broken leg propped on a brick. But it’s quiet and secluded. No prying eyes, no neighbors awake at this hour.Marrin paces like a caged animal, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill that seeps through the cracked windows. Sophia sits forward on the dilapidated couch, notebook open, pen in hand, every inch the journalist even when the air smells like mildew and dust.I lean against the wall, arms crossed, watching him wear a trench into the scuffed floorboards. He looks smaller than he did at the laundromat. Hunched, hollowed, stripped of whatever shine Bainbridge once put on him.“You said you wanted to talk,” Sophia says, calm but sharp. “So talk.”Marrin stops pacing, rubbing his face with shaking hands. “You don’t get it. Talking is what gets you killed.”Sophia doesn’t flinch. “Not talking already has you half-d
Last Updated: 2025-09-04
Chapter: Chapter 114 — Sudden CollisionSophiaPatience has never been my strong suit. Not when there’s a lead burning a hole in my notebook and the FBI’s idea of “timely action” involves committee meetings and five layers of clearance.So when whispers circle back to me about Marrin, sighted at a dingy laundromat three blocks off the subway in a neighborhood no one pays attention to, I don’t wait for Marcus. I don’t wait for anyone. Which could be construed as irresponsible, but we all need hobbies.Preparation is half theater, half shield. I pull my blond wig out of its case, adjust it until the part falls just right. Glasses with plain lenses. The old press badge I’ve altered with a different last name. A burner phone in my pocket, and the tiny recorder tucked into my jacket lining. Tools, not weapons. The kind of armor I know how to wield.The laundromat hums with the white noise of machines, coin slots clinking, fluorescent lights buzzing like lazy hornets. It smells faintly of detergent and damp cotton. People keep th
Last Updated: 2025-09-03
Chapter: Chapter 113 — The Net TightensMarcusThe thing about slipping back into old habits is how easy it feels, like shrugging on a jacket you swore you’d outgrown but still fits just fine.Sophia and I lost Marrin on our last outing. He ducked around a corner and disappeared from sight. But I have a tiny divot in the wall now and if I keep working at it, it may turn into a genuine foothold.I shouldn’t be doing this. Not officially. Rodriguez made it clear I’m benched, and Gillespie would love nothing more than to report back that Marcus Blackwood has finally let emotion scramble his operational sense. But old contacts don’t vanish, and instincts don’t switch off because the Bureau says so.So when I hear about a courier running envelopes for Marrin, I lean on a favor. Just enough pressure to get a name. The trick is to act like you’re still an invaluable part of the machine even when you’re not. Authority is half illusion, half memory. People hear my voice and still assume I have a right to demand answers. That works u
Last Updated: 2025-09-03
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