The moon hung heavy in the Blackfang sky, swollen and silver, casting everything in that haunting shade of bone-pale blue. It dripped across the stone halls like water, pooling on the flagstones, bleeding into shadows that moved a little too deliberately.Jasmine sat at the edge of her chamber’s windowsill, one bare foot curled beneath her, the other swinging lazily into the night. The wind teased the hem of her slip, playing with it like a lover, brushing it along the line of her thigh. Her body hummed with a restlessness she couldn't shake. Not even after the bath. Not even after the wine. Not even after the endless silence of the room that had once felt like a cage and now just felt like a warning.Below, the courtyard stood empty. No training tonight. No posturing. Just stillness and that thick, quiet hunger that always came before something changed.She felt him before she heard him.The scent struck first.Pine. Musk. Leather. And something sharper beneath it... something that a
The mist clung to the stones like a second skin, curling low around Jasmine’s ankles, soaking into the hem of her tunic. It was dawn, though the sun had yet to rise over the sharp black pines encircling the Blackfang training yard. The stones beneath her feet were slick with dew, ancient and grooved by centuries of combat... blood, claws, teeth, sweat.This was no place for softness. But that morning, Jasmine was all silk and tension.She stood alone, barefoot, spine straight, every inch of her honed and alert. Her breath misted into the cold air, slow and even. Her tunic clung to her, the light fabric wet against her thighs from the damp. Beneath it, her body remembered the dream from the night before—the ache of it, the phantom of heat still pulsing low in her belly.Roger was late.Deliberately.She knew it the way a woman knows a man's intention from the sound of his silence.When he came, it wasn’t a footstep she heard but the shift in the air. A presence thickening the space beh
She didn’t dream that night.Sleep refused to come after surrender. Jasmine lay tangled in velvet sheets that still smelled of heat and skin and the wet earth where he had taken her. Her body thrummed, low and coiled like a harp still quivering from the strike.Roger had left her aching.Not with pain. Not even with pleasure. But with something worse... the ghost of him, the heavy absence of teeth never quite biting. The promise of ruin that hadn’t yet come. Her thighs still burned where his mouth had lingered. Her skin smelled of pine and sweat and sex.And Jasmine knew the pack would smell it too.Morning in Blackfang was brutal in its stillness. Mist clung to the barracks and stone arches like silk dressing a corpse. Wolves sparred in silence, fists cracking against bone, the clang of steel and barked commands echoing off the valley walls.Jasmine sat before the fire, naked beneath a black robe, her legs crossed, her fingers dipped in oil. She smoothed it along her thighs slowly, s
The forest opened like a secret.Thick branches arched above Jasmine, their leaves trembling in the soft hush of morning. Mist clung to the earth, curling around her ankles as she walked barefoot along the hidden path, guided only by scent and instinct and something deeper... something feral... thrumming beneath her skin.A low rush of sound met her ears before she saw it.Water.And then the trees parted.There, carved into the bones of the land, was a pool fed by a high fall... a silver sheet of liquid tumbling from jagged stone into a basin the color of dark glass. Steam rose from it, curling up like smoke from an altar. The air was warm here. Wetter. Heavier.Jasmine stepped forward without hesitation.She let her robe slip from her shoulders, the silk whispering down her skin in a slow cascade. It pooled at her feet like blood. Beneath, she wore nothing.Not even shame.Her body was flush from the moon fever, skin hypersensitive, nipples already tight in the humid air. She moved
The moon hadn’t changed.It still rose pale and full, still spilled silver across the forests like an open throat, still bathed Blackfang in that eerie glow that turned everything beautiful and brutal at once.But something inside Jasmine had changed.She felt it first in her skin.It started with heat... subtle, creeping. A flush over her collarbones when she dipped into the basin that morning. Then deeper, a bloom between her thighs that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with ache.By midday, the ache had turned to tension.And by evening, tension to tremble.She stood at the edge of the Blackfang compound’s overlook, bare feet sinking into moss, her robe falling open just enough to catch the wind, letting it kiss the fever off her chest. Her eyes searched the horizon, but nothing grounded her. The trees danced. The mist moved. Her blood throbbed with a rhythm she didn’t recognize.The fever wasn’t in her mind. It was in her bones.Elora had once described it like d
The room was nothing like the others in Blackfang.No velvet. No firelight. No seduction laced in wine or shadows.This chamber was stone and bone. Cold in the walls. Ancient in the scent. Carvings spiraled over every surface... glyphs etched in claw and blood. The center held a shallow pit, the floor covered in thick white ash that pulsed faintly, like it remembered heat.Jasmine stood at the edge of it, barefoot again, a thin tunic clinging to her curves like fog. Her breath fogged in front of her.Behind her, Roger’s voice cut through the stillness.“Remove it.”She didn’t turn.The tension between them had become a third presence... an entity with breath and teeth.“Is this part of the lesson?” she asked, her voice all smoke and silk.“No,” Roger said. “It’s part of the ritual.”Slowly, Jasmine tugged the tunic over her head. Her skin prickled in the cold, nipples tightening, the scars along her spine catching the torchlight. She didn’t cover herself. Didn’t hide.Roger stepped fo
The training yard behind the eastern wing of Blackfang was drenched in twilight. Torches burned low in sconces embedded in stone, their flames crackling like whispers. The scent of ash, sweat, and pine clung to the air.Jasmine stood alone in the center, her feet bare against the packed dirt. A long coat hung open over her skin... nothing underneath. The chill bit into her nipples, pebbled them. She didn’t shiver.She was waiting.Not for instruction.Not for permission.For confrontation.It came in the form of Roger’s heavy footsteps, boots crunching gravel behind her. He didn’t announce himself. He never did.“Trying to provoke me again?” His voice was low. Dangerous.She didn’t turn. “I thought you liked being provoked.”He circled her like a wolf, his eyes dragging over her. She felt them like claws. She kept her gaze forward, refusing to flinch when he stopped directly behind her.“You’re not ready,” he said.“For what?”“For what you are.”She turned then, slowly. Let the coat
The night was darker than most. Not starless, but close. A velvet sky veined with thin, silver clouds stretched above the Blackfang compound, casting the yard in shifting shadows that moved like silk over flesh.Jasmine didn’t return to her chambers.Instead, she walked the courtyard barefoot, the pads of her feet still sensitive from being braced against the rough sparring post. Her thighs trembled with aftershocks. Her lips... bruised, swollen... still carried the taste of him. But she didn’t rush. Her steps were steady. Slow.She hadn’t been claimed.She’d taken.And now she was thinking. Feeling. Wanting more.She found herself beneath the arch of the old observatory tower, a place of half-forgotten rites and locked doors. Moss grew between the stones. Moonlight filtered through the cracks in the ruined dome above, painting her in lace-light. Jasmine leaned against one of the crumbling columns, letting her wrap slip further down her shoulders. The bruise on her breast—Roger’s mout
The Blackfang sparring yard smelled like sweat, blood, and the kind of want that clung to the skin long after the fight ended. Dust floated in sunlit shafts that cut through the tree-filtered sky, catching on the curve of Jasmine’s hip as she stood barefoot in the ring, a strip of black fabric knotted at her chest, barely covering her breasts. Her thighs gleamed with sweat. Her mouth wore the kind of smile that made men forget who they were.Across from her, Roger rolled his shoulders, muscles flexing beneath the leather cords strapped across his chest. He watched her not like a man, but like something more primal. Something that had stopped pretending to be civilized.“You planning to fight in that?” he asked, voice a gravel-coated drawl that curled around her spine.Jasmine stretched, slow and shameless, the arch of her back purposeful, sensual. Her breasts lifted, barely contained. “You afraid of losing to someone in silk and bare feet?” she asked sweetly.Roger’s jaw ticked. His h