CHAPTER SIX

Talia

The morning air in Velvet Nocturne was rarely still.

Even when the sessions ceased, even when silence blanketed the walls like velvet, there was a thrum beneath it all a hum of restraint and satisfaction and something deeper... older.

Talia padded into the ritual room barefoot, a black silk robe clinging to her body like shadow. Her hair was unbound. Her skin smelled of sandalwood and last night’s memory.

She lit a single stick of incense and let the smoke curl into the air like a question. Beneath the stillness, her senses stirred pricked by a shift. A presence.

She wasn’t alone.

Talia didn’t flinch when she turned and found the man standing at the doorway, dressed in dark grey, with a cane he didn’t need and a gaze that stripped more than clothes.

He was beautiful in a cold, deathless way.

“Velvet Nocturne doesn’t open until nightfall,” she said calmly, walking toward the altar. “You’ll have to come back if you’re looking for a session.”

“I’m not,” he said. His voice was silk on stone. “I’ve come to observe.”

“I don’t allow observers.”

“You allowed him.”

Her hand froze mid-air above the matches.

A smile curled the edge of his mouth. “The one who left disoriented. Marked. Shaken. You reached inside him. You touched something holy.”

Talia’s back straightened. “Who are you?”

He stepped forward into the soft candlelight. His eyes glowed faintly gold.

“Someone who remembers what you were before you buried her,” he said. “And what you will become again.”

Talia’s heart did not race. But something beneath it... shifted.

He walked a slow circle around the room, studying her ropes, her blades, her throne-like chair.

“I felt the ripple. He’s not just broken. He’s cursed.” A pause. “And you stirred it.”

Talia tilted her head. “What are you here for?”

He turned, smiling faintly. “To watch your rise. And his undoing.”

Then, just like that he was gone.

The scent of him lingered cedar, ash, and divinity.

Talia stared at the empty doorway, her pulse steady but her thoughts unraveling.

She had always known that power came at a price.

Now... someone had come to collect.

---

Ronan

He hadn’t slept.

Not even after draining two glasses of neat bourbon and trying to burn the memory of her voice from his skin in a cold shower.

Every attempt to ignore her to ignore what she stirred only made it worse.

The beast was coiled beneath his ribs like a dragon in chains, snapping at everything and everyone.

When he passed the training ring, pack members flinched from his presence. No one spoke. Not even Elias, who watched from the upper level, arms folded, unreadable.

Ronan stormed into his private quarters and slammed the door.

He leaned against it and let out a breath ragged and shallow. His skin felt too tight. His body too full of things he didn’t have words for.

He had touched submission.

And instead of weakening him... it had settled something.

For a moment.

But now the absence of it burned.

His phone buzzed. A private message. No number. Just coordinates.

Velvet Nocturne.

Again.

His hands shook.

Not from fear.

From need.

He growled low and tossed the phone onto the bed. Paced once. Twice.

Then stopped.

Because the wolf inside him wasn’t snarling anymore.

It was waiting.

And the man the Alpha was starting to realize…

He didn’t want to fight it anymore.

He wanted her to leash him.

---

The Moon Goddess

The temple glistened with starlight.

Naked bodies writhed beneath her like worship, their mouths whispering praises as their hands painted devotion across her skin.

She lay reclined on a throne carved from lunar stone, legs parted, her high priestess, Maelis, kneeling between them tongue lapping slow and reverent like prayer.

Another priestess suckled one breast while fingers teased the other, and a third curled behind her, whispering sinful things into her ear that made her laugh like thunderclouds.

“More,” she murmured, voice heavy with power and pleasure. “Don’t stop. I want to feel everything.”

The moonlight overhead pulsed in rhythm with her breath, bathing the entire sanctuary in a silver-blue glow. Every sigh, every moan, every slick stroke of tongue across her heat rippled across the astral plane.

But still, still her gaze never wavered from the pool in front of her.

A liquid mirror of stardust and shadow, showing her him.

Ronan.

Her cursed wolf.

He stood alone now, body tense and spirit unraveling. His beast snarled within, but his soul... his soul trembled.

Because of her.

Because of that mortal woman with leather in her grip and dominance in her breath.

A Dominatrix.

The goddess moaned low, hips bucking into Maelis’ mouth as a jolt of heady ecstasy coursed through her — not from the priestesses around her but from him.

From Ronan.

“Do you feel it?” she gasped, gripping the armrests of her throne, nails digging into marble.

Maelis moaned against her, answering without words.

“Yes,” the goddess hissed. “He tasted submission. And now he hungers.”

The mirror rippled. Ronan’s face twisted in frustration. In need.

The goddess grinned.

“Oh, my sweet wolf...”

She cupped Maelis’ face and pulled her closer between her thighs, forcing her deeper.

“This is what you’ve done to me, Ronan Thorne. I burn with every breath you take. I ache whenever your beast howls.”

She tilted her head back, mouth parting as climax built again.

“I was divine. Pure. Unshakeable.”

A shudder tore through her as another wave rolled in, pleasure blooming behind her eyes.

“But now I come, and come, and come and still I am starving.”

The mirror flared, showing Talia. Calm. Controlled. Dangerous.

“She touched what I couldn’t tame in you,” the goddess whispered, breathless. “She will either break you…”

Her smile curved wicked and wet.

“Or she will awaken me through you.”

The stars above screamed in white-hot silence.

And the goddess climaxed again, laughter echoing across galaxies manic and vengeful and soaked in lust.