Before the Queen: 5

Lira (POV)

The celebration was for us. Or that’s what I was told, anyway.

The bonfire outside roared high enough to kiss the moon, flames flickering like tongues licking at the stars. Tables buckled under the weight of roasted venison, blistered fruit dripping with honeyed spice, and wine so strong the scent alone could make your head spin.

Laughter cracked the air like thunder. Werewolves in human form danced, drank, and touched like nothing could touch them.

It was supposed to be our night. A night for the Alpha and his mate to confirm the mate bond. Me.

There should’ve been blood vows under the moonlight, a ritual of binding, power offered and received, something to comprehensively deepen our bond besides what the initial meeting and marking with teeth do. Instead, there was him inside someone else, and me feeling it through the bond.

But I was late, not on purpose. Draven had me patrolling the outer sectors that day—his twisted version of a gift. I was his “warrior queen,” he said. Giving me a knife and leash was a compromise, and it made me forget the cage underneath it all.

I’d come back bloodied from a skirmish at the border, my hands stained and aching. I’d stopped to wash the blood off before entering the hall. But it wasn’t iron I smelled when I got close. It was lilac. Sugar. And something far more rotten.

I stepped into the hall, and the heat hit me like a wave. The fire crackled high in the center, and the air shimmered with heat and pack pheromones, but that wasn’t what stopped me in my tracks.

It was the pull in my chest, a sharp tug followed by another. It was right where the bond between mates lived—threaded like barbed wire through my sternum.

Something was wrong; my legs locked, and my vision swam. For a split second, I couldn’t tell if I was standing in the great hall or trapped in a stranger’s body. A low sound—half groan, half growl—spilled through the bond and into me, but it wasn’t mine. It was his.

Then the heat hit. Between my thighs. High and sharp and not mine. I staggered a step, knees threatening to give. My breath caught. He was fucking her. And I was feeling it through the bond, through us.

I didn’t know whether to scream or vomit.

My fists curled, nails splitting skin. Pain meant nothing. I pressed my blood-slicked palm to my sternum as if I could claw it out. Rip it from my chest before it could kill something in me.

That was the moment I knew, but instead of turning around, I turned the corner into his private room.

My eyes locked on them. And everything stopped.

Draven stood behind her, shirt discarded, pants shoved low on his hips. His hands were on her body like he knew it by instinct. One gripping her throat. The other wrapped tight around her waist, holding her in place as he slammed into her, over and over, with a rhythm that spoke of ownership. His cock driving so deep into her that the table beneath her trembled from the impact.

She was bent over it, palms spread flat for balance, hair tangled from his fists. Her head tilted back in abandon, mouth open in a moan that made my jaw lock. Her moans weren’t soft—they were ecstatic, loud enough to echo, to mock—the kind of sounds a mate makes when they know the bond isn’t theirs, but they’re winning anyway.

Draven’s jaw was clenched, his neck taut, and his eyes half-lidded in a look I’d once mistaken for love. The bond mark on his throat gleamed with sweat—my mark. Mine. And yet, he wore it while fucking someone else like I didn’t exist.

His thrusts grew harder. Rougher. His hips slapped into her ass with brutal force, the slap-slick sound of their bodies meeting, again and again, ringing in my ears like thunder. And I felt every second of it.

The way her body clenched around him. The way he groaned when he bottomed out. The sick, sticky heat blooming between my legs that wasn’t mine but wanted me to want it anyway. My wolf recoiled. Whimpered. Confused—because where did the pleasure end and the betrayal begin?