INICIAR SESIÓNMona POVAlessandro came home less than twenty minutes after my text.He walked through the door, locked it behind him, and pulled me straight into his arms. For a long moment he just held me, face buried in my hair, breathing me in like he needed to confirm I was still whole. When he finally pulled back, his eyes were hard.“Lucas smelled it,” he said. Not a question.“Yes. He said the claim is strong. That any wolf who gets close would notice.”Alessandro’s jaw flexed. He paced the length of the living room once, then stopped and dragged a hand down his face. The broken section of wall from the night before was still covered by a hastily hung tapestry. The house still carried the faint scent of his earlier rage.“Get your shoes,” he said suddenly. “We’re going for a drive.”I didn’t ask where. I just followed.He took the long service road that wound through the outer edge of pack territory, the one that rarely saw other cars. Trees pressed close on both sides. The further we got fr
**Mona POVI spent the next day in the house on Alessandro’s orders.My body was a map of the night before—bruises on my hips in the shape of his hands, the deep residual ache from how hard he had knotted me, the claim mark on my thigh still dark and tender. Walking downstairs took effort. Sitting took more. Every movement reminded me exactly how far he had gone when he lost control.Alessandro left mid-morning to deal with “pack business,” which I knew meant Dargrel. He kissed me once at the door, hard and brief, and told me to stay inside, keep the lights low, and not answer the door for anyone except the Beta’s mate if she came by with food.He did not expect the Beta himself.The knock came in the early afternoon. I checked the camera the way Alessandro had shown me and felt my stomach drop. Lucas, the Beta, stood on the porch in casual clothes, expression unreadable. I hesitated, then opened the door because refusing the Beta without a clear reason would only raise more question
Mona POVAlessandro did not speak when he found me in the courtyard.He took one look at my face, at the way I still wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, and the gold in his eyes went flat and dangerous. He didn’t touch me in front of the students still watching through the glass. He simply nodded once toward the black SUV parked at the curb and walked ahead of me.The ride home was silent except for the low, continuous growl vibrating in his chest. His hands flexed on the steering wheel hard enough that I heard the leather strain. Every few seconds his nostrils flared like he was still smelling Dargrel on my skin.When we pulled into the garage he cut the engine and sat motionless for a long moment.Then he got out, came around to my side, and opened the door.“Inside.”I walked ahead of him into the house. The second the door to the living room closed behind us, the control he had been holding snapped.His fist went through the wall.Plaster exploded outward. The framed photo
Mona POVI felt the shift in the air the moment I walked into the cafeteria.Conversations were already louder than usual. Phones were out. Nina and her group occupied their usual table like a throne, but their eyes kept flicking toward the entrance. Cici waved me over to our table, frowning at whatever she saw on my face.“You look like you didn’t sleep,” she said as I sat down.I hadn’t. Not really. My body still carried the deep, private ache from the night before—the new stretch, the way Alessandro had taken the last part of me and made it his. Sitting on the hard cafeteria chair made the residual soreness flare. I kept my thighs pressed together and tried to focus on the tray I didn’t plan to eat from.I never got the chance.Dargrel’s scent hit me a second before his hand closed around my upper arm. He pulled me up out of the chair hard enough that the legs scraped loudly across the floor. Every head in the nearby tables turned.“End of the week was yesterday,” he said, loud eno
Mona POVMom left for her night shift at sunset with a quick kiss to Alessandro’s cheek and a reminder for me to lock the doors. The second her car disappeared down the driveway the air in the house changed.Alessandro locked the front door, turned to me, and said only one word.“Upstairs.”I followed him to his bedroom—the one he still shared with her on paper, but that had started to smell more like me every time she was gone. He closed the door, locked it, and leaned back against it, watching me with those steady gold-flecked eyes.“You’ve been tense since the meeting,” he said. “Your father’s name in someone else’s mouth. Dargrel’s deadline. The witch. All of it sitting on your shoulders.”I nodded, throat tight.He pushed off the door and walked toward me. “Tonight I’m taking something I haven’t taken yet. If you want me to stop at any point, you say so. But if you trust me… I want every part of you claimed before the rest of the world tries to pull us apart.”My stomach flipped.
Mona POVThe next evening the senior members of the pack gathered in the main hall of the pack house for a closed meeting. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Unmated younger wolves were usually excluded from these sessions. But Alessandro had ordered me to stay close after the memory wipe and the public scene with Dargrel, so I sat on a chair near the wall and tried to look invisible.His scent still clung to me under the blocking soap. The claim mark on my thigh was hidden beneath black tights, but I felt every pulse of it whenever he moved. Every time our eyes met across the room the bond flared, warm and possessive, as if it was making up for the days it had been forced quiet.The Beta finished his report on the northern border. The Gamma spoke about supply caches. Then one of the oldest elders—Gray, a scarred male who had served under the previous Alpha—cleared his throat and looked directly at Alessandro.“There is another matter,” Gray said. “It concerns the girl.”My spine stiffene







