Chapter 6

MORANO

I stepped into the room with my blood boiling, ready to rip the truth out of her throat. I had the file in my hand and a massacre on my mind. But the second the door swung shut, the air changed.

She stood there in that red sheer robe, a vision of silk and sin. My anger didn't just fade; it evaporated. Her hair was a waterfall of fire against her pale skin, and those ocean-blue eyes looked deep enough to drown in. 

The robe was useless, barely clinging to the curve of her heavy breasts and the flare of her hips. What the hell was this? How could a counterfeit bride make my pulse hammer like a sledgehammer?

I expected her to cower. Instead, she moved. She walked toward me with a slow, predatory grace that caught me off guard. Her fingers, small and steady, reached for the buttons of my shirt. 

She began to undo them one by one, her eyes locked on mine. She wasn't just submitting; she was hunting me. I’ve had a thousand women throw themselves at me, but this was different. 

This was dangerously enticing. A cold thought flickered in the back of my mind…was this a trap? Did Fiorello train her to seductively distract the monster while he sharpened his knife?

The second she pressed her body against mine, my wolf, Raga, let out a low, guttural growl I’d never heard before. He wanted her. He wanted to claim every inch of this lie.

I wanted to flip her over and take her right there against the door. I wanted to feel her tighten around me until she choked on my name. My mind filled with the filthiest images…stretching her out, marking that porcelain skin, and wrecking her until she couldn't scream for anyone else. 

I wanted to feel her heat, to bury myself so deep in that tight, wet silk that the world outside ceased to exist. If this was what the "fake" twin felt like, I didn't give a damn about the real one. 

There would be no war if she kept me this satisfied. I let her take the lead, my hands finding the swell of her hips as she kissed me. Her mouth was a drug, soft and demanding. 

I followed her rhythm, drowning in the scent of vanilla and arousal, but the Alpha in me stayed awake. I was alert, waiting for the hidden blade or the poison. Fiorello had sent a lamb to my bed, but I was starting to realize this girl was a siren.

"Keep playing your game, wifey," I thought, my hands tightening on her flesh as I pulled her closer. "Because once I start, I'm never letting you go."

I pulled her head back, exposing the pale column of her throat. I buried my face in the crook of her neck, my teeth grazing her collarbone as my hands gripped her hips like a vice. 

My cock was a hard, throbbing weight, threatening to tear right through my trousers. The scent of her…sweet, musk, and pure heat…was making me lose my mind.

Then the world shattered.

The bedroom door burst off its hinges with a deafening crack. I barely had time to blink before the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed through the room. A searing, icy heat punched into my stomach, sending me flying backward.

I hit the floor hard. Usually, a bullet was just an annoyance…something my wolf would spit out in seconds. But this time, the wound didn't close. It felt like liquid fire was being poured into my veins. 

I looked down, gasping for air, and saw the dull, metallic glint.

Silver.

I was an Alpha, but the silver was a parasite, draining my strength and shackling my wolf. I tried to push myself up, my muscles screaming, but my arms gave out. I looked at Jayla. 

The shock in her ocean-blue eyes cut deeper than the bullet. She looked small, terrified, her red hair wild around her face. She was a lie, a fake, but she was my wife. 

I was supposed to be the monster that protected her, not the one bleeding out at her feet. Three masked men stepped into the room, their boots heavy on the hardwood. 

They looked down at me, their eyes filled with a sick, twisted joy. "Look at the great Sin-Eater now," the leader sneered, his voice muffled by the black cloth. 

"Looks like you’ll be eating the soil instead of your bride tonight." They laughed, a cold, hollow sound that made my blood boil despite the weakness.

"Who sent you?" I wheezed, the words tasting like copper.

"Does it matter?" another one mocked, stepping closer and kicking the silver deeper into my stomach. I let out a low, guttural groan, my vision tunneling. 

"You were so busy trying to get laid that you forgot you have enemies, Morano. What a waste of a wedding night."

I watched them through the haze of pain. I was fading, the beast inside me whimpering in the dark. The leader raised his gun to finish me, the cold barrel aimed straight at my skull. 

I waited for the end, my heart hammering a slow, dying rhythm against the silver in my ribs.

Then, she moved.

Jayla stood up, pale and naked in the center of the room, completely unbothered by the three armed men. She reached for her robe, sliding it over her shoulders with a calm that chilled my blood. She looked at me and smiled.

The realization hit me like a second bullet. It was a setup. Fiorello hadn't just sent a fake bride; he had sent an assassin. He had sent his own blood to gut the Sin-Eater while his guard was down. 

Everything…the shyness, the seduction, it was all a lie to get me into this bed.

“You all didn’t have to do that,” she said. Her voice didn't sound like her own anymore. It was deeper, vibrating with a strange, ancient force that made the shadows in the room dance. “You just ruined my night.”

Wait…I got it all wrong. She wasn’t with them on this.

Now, I wanted to scream at her to run. I wanted to tell her to shut her mouth before they turned their guns on her. Where the hell was Jake? Why was the house so silent? 

She started walking toward the masked men, her hands tucked behind her back like she was taking a stroll in a garden.

She was going to get herself killed.

“I’ve always thought of my wedding night,” she continued, her eyes fixed on the leader. “Do you know what it means to be a virgin for twenty-three years? Untouched? I wanted to be ruined so bad tonight.”

My brain stalled. She was a virgin? The "fierce" Jayla wouldn't have been. This girl was a mystery wrapped in a storm, and I was too weak to untangle it.

The leader let out a mocking bark of laughter. “Get the girl. Shut her up.” His men lunged, but they never reached her. The lights vanished. The room plunged into a suffocating blackness.

In the dark, the world turned into a slaughterhouse. I couldn't see her, but I heard her. She moved like a flash of jagged lightning, a blur of impossible speed. 

I heard the wet, heavy sound of flesh tearing. I heard the screams…sharp, short shrieks that were cut off by the gurgle of blood. The scent of copper filled the air, thick and cloying, as blood splattered across the floor, some of it hitting my face.

When the lights flickered back to life, the room was a tomb.

The three men were gone…shredded into piles of meat and bone. The leader’s head was several feet away from his body. And in the center of the carnage stood my bride.

I stared at her in awe, my pulse fluttering. Blue lightning crackled in her eyes, dancing across her pupils like a storm. I didn't flinch as she walked toward me. 

My mind raced…did Fiorello know? No. If he knew his daughter was a monster of this caliber, he would have kept her as his greatest weapon. He wouldn't have traded her away for a business deal.

She knelt over me, the blue static in her eyes beginning to flicker like a dying candle. She pouted, her lips trembling with a strange, dark playfulness. “Did you enjoy the show?”

I couldn't find my voice. I could only offer a slow, heavy nod as the silver continued to eat me alive from the inside out. My heart was a stuttering engine, failing with every breath. 

I was looking at a miracle and a monster, and for the first time in my life, I was the one being consumed.

“The wound will take time to heal,” she whispered, her hand moving to cover mine. “It’s silver. It hates us.”

The "us" hung in the air, a final tether between us. Then, the light in her ocean-blue eyes didn't just fade…it turned a ghostly, milky pale. At the exact same heartbeat, my own vision washed out into a hollow white.

The room, the blood, and the scent of ozone vanished. Her body went limp, her forehead dropping against my collarbone as the last of her strength evaporated. 

We slipped from the world together, two ghosts falling into an abyss, bound by a marriage of secrets and a floor soaked in someone else's blood.

I didn't know if I would wake up as a King or a corpse, but as the darkness swallowed us whole, I knew one thing.

If I woke up, I’d either kill her for the lie or crawl through hell just to taste her power again.