CHAPTER 4

Dimitri’s Pov

The days that followed were pure fucking torture, and I was ready to tear apart anyone who came near me. My wolf raged inside my skull demanding we claim what was ours.

I locked myself in my office and tried to focus on pack business, but all I could think about was Seraphina spread out on my bed with her fingers buried inside herself as she moaned my name. 

My cock had been hard for three days straight and no amount of touching myself helped because my hand wasn't her tight pussy wrapped around me.

"You need to claim her," My wolf snarled for the hundredth time as I gripped my desk hard enough to crack the wood. "She's ours and she's suffering in heat without us."

He was right about the heat. Her scent was everywhere in the pack house and it was driving every unmated male insane with want. 

I had to post four guards at her door just to keep them from trying to get to her, even then I could hear them pacing the hallway like animals stalking prey.

I undid my pants because the pressure was unbearable and wrapped my hand around my cock, closing my eyes and remembering how she looked when she came. 

Her back arched and her pussy clenching around her fingers while my name fell from her lips like she was born to scream it. 

I stroked myself harder and faster, imagining it was her mouth on me instead and how she would look on her knees with those violet eyes staring up at me, while I fucked her throat.

"Fuck," I groaned as I came, but it barely took the edge off because the mate bond was screaming for real contact not this pathetic substitute. 

I cleaned myself up and tried to go back to the paperwork Viktor had brought, but her scent hit me and my cock was already getting hard again.

A crash from upstairs had me running before I could think, and I found Mikhail trying to break down Seraphina's door, while the guards tried to stop him. 

My vision went red when I heard him talking through the door about how he could ease her suffering if she would just let him in and how an unmated female shouldn't have to suffer alone.

"Get away from her," I roared, grabbing him by the throat before slamming him through the wall into the next room. "She's mine. If you go near her again, I'll rip your throat out, brother or not."

Mikhail shifted and lunged at me with his teeth bared, snarling through our mind-link about how I couldn't claim her anyway because of pack law, so I might as well let someone else help her. 

That was the wrong thing to say because my wolf took over completely, and I shifted mid air before colliding with him in a tangle of teeth and claws.

We destroyed half the pack house in our fight and I had my teeth at his throat ready to tear it out, when Viktor and six other wolves finally pulled us apart. 

Mikhail was bleeding from dozens of wounds and one of his legs was broken, but I didn't care. He had tried to touch what was mine.

"Enough!" Elder Isaac commanded as he arrived with the rest of the Council. "This madness has to stop before you tear the entire pack apart over your forbidden mate."

They convened in what was left of the main hall while I paced back and forth, still partially shifted because my wolf wouldn't calm down knowing Seraphina was upstairs in heat without us. 

I could hear her whimpering through the floor and it was taking everything I had not to go to her.

"The law is clear," Elder Ruth, giving me a pitying look. "A guardian cannot claim their ward regardless of a mate bond because it violates the sacred trust of protection."

"Then I'll step down as Alpha," I said without hesitation. "Name Viktor as my successor and I'll leave with Seraphina tonight."

"You know that's not possible," Isaac said, shaking his head. "Leaving would make you both rogues and with her rare white wolf bloodline, every unmated Alpha on the continent would hunt her down to claim her for themselves."

I snarled at the thought of another Alpha touching her and had to fight not to destroy what was left of the furniture. 

The thought of formally rejecting the bond made my chest feel like it was being ripped open. The rejection could kill us both with how strong our connection was.

"There might be another way," Viktor said carefully, watching me pace. "The ancient rite of Lunar Trial where the Moon Goddess herself judges if a taboo mating serves the greater good of our kind."

Everyone went silent because the Lunar Trial hadn't been invoked in over a century and most thought it was just a legend. 

It required both mates to undergo three tests of control desire and sacrifice with failure meaning death for both parties.

"The trial is brutal," Isaac warned. "You would have to prove your bond serves a purpose beyond your own desires and that your mating would strengthen rather than weaken pack law."

"What are the tests exactly?" I asked even though I already knew I would agree to anything that gave us a chance.

"The first tests your control when faced with your mate in the peak of mating fever," Ruth explained. "You must resist claiming her while she's in heat and begging for you which considering your current state seems unlikely."

"The second tests your desire by forcing you to watch another touch your mate without intervening," Isaac added and I growled so loud, the windows shook. "And the third tests sacrifice by making you choose between your mate and your pack with only one able to survive."

"Many who attempt the trial don't survive the first test," Viktor said quietly. "The mating fever combined with the moon's power drives them mad and they either claim each other which means instant death or they go feral and have to be put down."

I thought about Seraphina upstairs suffering through her heat alone and made my decision. The mate bond was already driving us both toward madness and at least the trial offered hope even if it was slim.

"I'll do it" I said, meeting each Elder's eyes. "Whatever it takes to be with her legally, I'll do it.”