CHAPTER ONE

Chapter One

The Woman Who Breaks Men

Two hundred years, and not a single one had tasted different.

Ronan Lucien Thorne stood at the edge of his territory, arms crossed over his chest, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers — unlit. He didn’t smoke. He just liked the burn between his teeth. The illusion of control. Of choice.

The trees were still. The night wind cold. The world kept turning, and still he was here.

Unchanged.

Unmoved.

Unfucking fulfilled.

Sex was a game to him now. A joke. He could take lovers to the brink of madness and leave them begging, ruined. But the moment they tried to give anything back affection, devotion, even reverence his beast roared in protest. Every woman who’d tried to worship him had ended up tossed from his bed with trembling limbs and bruised pride.

He didn’t want worship.

He wanted to be taken.

But no one had the teeth to do it.

Until the stories started.

He heard them whispered in dens and elite clubs. In dark corners of cities where wolves prowled under glamours, rubbing elbows with bored billionaires and creatures of the night.

“She broke me.”

“She made me crawl, and I’d do it again.”

“I came to her angry. I left… emptied. In the best way.”

At first, he ignored it. Another Dominatrix. Another leather-wrapped fantasy peddler for pathetic mortals. But the more he listened really listened the more something in him… twisted. Tightened.

Because it wasn’t just lust in those stories.

It was peace.

“I couldn’t look at another woman for weeks,” one man had said, dazed and smiling like a devout worshipper. “She didn’t just fuck me. She saw me.”

Ronan hadn’t been seen in centuries.

Not since the Moon Goddess tore him apart.

And maybe that was why, three weeks later, he found himself standing outside an unmarked door on a quiet street in the human part of town dressed in black, heart hammering, predator trying not to feel like prey.

He’d paid through encrypted channels. No name. No questions. One night. One session. No strings.

The room smelled like leather and lavender, steel and shadow.

The lights were low.

And then he saw her.

Talia.

She didn’t look like the women who came to his bed. She didn’t posture or preen. She didn’t bare cleavage or fish for attention. She simply stood black gloves on her hands, heels like weapons, dark eyes steady.

Still.

Powerful.

Her presence hit him like a drug. Not beauty. Not sex.

Control.

She moved toward him slowly, gaze trailing over his tall frame, his thick arms, his sharp cheekbones and battle-hewn body not with admiration. With assessment.

“You're late,” she said.

Ronan’s jaw clenched.

His wolf bared its teeth inside him.

And something else… bowed its head.

“I don’t do rules,” he said coldly.

She smiled a dangerous, knowing curve of her lips.

“You do tonight.”

And just like that, the hunger inside him twisted into something he hadn’t felt in over two hundred years.

Hope.

The door clicked shut behind him.

The silence inside was deliberate. Not sterile loaded. No music, no murmurs. Just his breath, his heartbeat, and the subtle creak of her heels as she circled him.

Ronan stood still, refusing to shift, though every part of him tensed beneath her gaze. Talia moved around him like a lioness assessing meat. Unhurried. Unbothered. In control without needing to speak it.

Then she stopped.

Behind him.

Her breath was a whisper against his neck.

“Take off your shirt.”

His beast snarled at the order not from anger. From awareness.

He’d been commanded before. Never like this.

Ronan hesitated for the first time in decades. Then he obeyed. Fingers flexing, he peeled the black cotton from his body and let it drop. He heard the faint sound of her approval not words. Just the hmm of satisfaction.

“You’re used to being the one in charge,” she said, stepping in front of him now. “But you came here to surrender, didn’t you?”

His jaw clenched. “I came here to see what the fuss was about.”

“Liar,” she said, her tone flat. Unbothered.

And then..she slapped him.

It wasn’t hard. Not brutal.

But it rang through him like prophecy.

Ronan’s head snapped to the side. His skin stung. His cock twitched. And deep within, the tether holding his beast tight started to fray.

He stared at her, panting slightly.

She hadn’t moved. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t gloat.

“You want to feel small,” she whispered. “Just once.”

He didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

She stepped closer, placing a gloved hand on his chest not to caress, but to press. It wasn’t rough, but it didn’t need to be.

Something in her dominance wasn't just learned. It wasn’t kink. It was… older.

Instinctive.

Like she’d been born to wield obedience.

Ronan’s breath hitched.

Then her hand slid higher over his throat, not choking, just holding.

Not asking.

And suddenly the air shifted.

Not the room.

The world.

Something opened inside him wide and cold and bright. A space carved by the Moon Goddess herself, two hundred years ago, now echoing like a wound touched for the first time.

His knees nearly buckled.

Fuck. Fuck.

He stepped back.

She let him.

“You’re not ready,” she said simply.

He turned away from her like a man escaping a fire. Heart hammering. Skin flushed. Cock painfully hard and utterly ignored.

He yanked his shirt back on with shaking hands.

And left.

The night air slapped him.

The street was empty. His body was wired, feral but his soul?

His soul felt… seen.

Ronan gripped the edge of the nearest building, teeth bared. Not in rage.

In panic.

Because he didn’t know what she was.

But she wasn’t just a Dominatrix.

She was the answer to a curse he wasn’t ready to lift.