LOGINELI'S POVThe night didn’t end when the laughter faded. It just… softened, like the glow of a candle left too long on a drafty windowsill. I watched my parents and Elena file into the guest rooms, the estate staff moving in a practiced rhythm... fluffing pillows, turning down the bedcovers, humming the same half‑remembered lullaby that had been sung to me when I was a child. For once, the manor didn’t feel like a mausoleum of stone and echoes. Their presence filled the empty hallways, turned the cold air into something that resembled warmth.“Don’t stay up too late,” Mom reminded me before disappearing down the corridor, her voice a thin veil over the ticking of the grandfather clock.“I won’t,” I replied, the lie slipping out before I could catch it.Another small lie.When the doors shut behind them, the house settled back into its usual hush, but it wasn’t the suffocating silence that had haunted me for the past year. It was quieter, as if the walls themselves were holding their br
LUCEN'S POVThe meeting went better than expected.Better than it should have.Laughter echoed through the grand halls of Alpha Neo’s manor as we descended the sweeping staircase side by side, our conversation flowing easily, too easily for two Alphas who, until recently, stood on uncertain ground. The chandeliers above cast warm golden light across polished marble, reflecting the success of what we had just secured.An alliance. The first. Westwood Pack wasn’t known for trust. They were selective, territorial… ruthless in their own way. And yet—here we were.“Didn’t think you’d pull it off this cleanly,” Alpha Neo said with a smirk, glancing at me. “You’re more interesting than I expected, Lucen.”“I don’t make deals I can’t secure,” I replied evenly.He laughed. “Confident. I like that.”Of course he did.Alpha Neo was exactly what rumors painted him to be... charismatic, flirtatious, and dangerous beneath the surface. The kind of Alpha who smiled while calculating your worth. The k
ELI'S POVI didn’t realize how much it would hurt… until it actually did. At first I told myself it was fine. I expected it. That nothing had changed. Because nothing should have changed. ”It was just a contract.” That’s what he said, right?Lucen had smiled, his eyes flickering like candlelight caught in a storm, and the words had rolled out of him as smoothly as silk.So why did it feel like something inside me cracked the moment he walked away?The room still smelled like him.Cedarwood. Bergamot. It clung to the sheets, to my skin… to everything. I sat there long after he left, the blanket pulled tightly around my body, staring at nothing. The sound of the house settling around me felt louder than the wind outside. My breath fogged the windowpane, a thin veil between me and the world I’d just let slip through my fingers.Three days. Three nights. And then... nothing. Cold again. Distant again. Like I imagined everything. Like I imagined everything. “…part of the contract.” I let o
LUCEN’S POVI woke up to silence. Not the suffocating kind that presses on the ribs like a storm‑cloud, not the heavy, tension‑filled quiet I was used to. This one was… warm.My eyes opened slowly, vision still blurred at the edges, and for a moment I didn’t move. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling as my mind struggled to catch up with my body.Then I felt it. Weight. Heat. Soft… and tangled.My breath stilled. I looked down.Eli.He was pressed against me, half-draped over my chest, his body curled instinctively into mine as if it belonged there. The sheets, thin and crumpled, barely covered us, revealing too much—skin against skin, marks scattered across his shoulders like a topographic map of everything I had done. My grip tightened slightly against the linen. Not a dream. It all happened. Every second of it.The scent in the room made denial impossible... cedarwood and bergamot wrapped tightly around the lingering sweetness of him. It clung to everything: the sheets, my skin
LUCEN'S POVThe weight of Eli’s body against mine was a reminder... he was mine. Vulk also knows that. My fingers traced lazy circles over the slick skin of his back, still damp with sweat and the remnants of his heat.The air in the room was thick, cloying with the scent of sex and possession, the sweetness of gardenia and jasmine of omega submission tangled with the sharp cedarwood and bergamot edge of my rut. It coiled in my chest, a living thing, demanding more.Eli’s breath hitched when my grip tightened in his hair, tilting his head back just enough to expose the pale stretch of his throat.My teeth ached with the need to sink in, to mark him again... not just with cum, not just with bruises, but with something permanent. Something that would scream mine to every alpha who dared look at him.“Luceeen, you're making a mistake,” Eli murmured, his voice rough, throat raw from the sounds he’d made for me. His fingers twitched against my chest, not pushing away, but not pulling close
ELI'S POVThe first time I saw Lucen lose control, I knew I was in trouble.Not the kind of trouble that comes with a warning, with time to brace yourself... no, this was the kind that hits like a blade between the ribs, fast and deep, leaving you gasping before you even register the pain. He never withdrew his cock from my hole. His hands were on me before I could think, his mouth crashing against mine like he wanted to devour me whole.The cold, distant mask he usually wore had shattered, and what was left was raw, feral hunger. His scent wrapped around me, thick and intoxicating, the musk of an Alpha in rut, and my body responded before my mind could catch up. My cock twitched, my hole clenched empty, my skin flushed with heat.The bed beneath us groaned under the force of his thrusts. Silk sheets, slick with sweat, tangled around my legs as he drove into me again and again, his hips snapping with a precision that made my vision blur. The sound of skin slapping skin filled the ro
ELRIC'S POVThe hallway swallowed me and Liam whole... Lucen’s broad shoulders shielding Eli like a living wall... and the moment we disappeared from view, the air felt thinner. Emptier. As if something vital had been torn out of the space they left behind.My fists clenched at my sides.
ELI'S POV I wake up choking on darkness. For a moment, I don’t know where I am... only that something is wrong. Very wrong. The air smells of pine and damp wood instead of polished stone and incense. The bed beneath me is too narrow, the mattress uneven, like it was made for survival, not comfort.
ELI’S POVWhen Lucen said the word mating ceremony, something inside me went utterly still. Not calm. Not relieved. Still... like the moment right before a storm breaks, when the air grows heavy and every instinct whispers run even though your feet won’t move.I nodded when he told me. I even smile
LUCEN'S POVThe city glowed beneath my office window, all steel and glass and false calm. One-hundred floors up, the world looked orderly. Predictable. Controlled.That illusion shattered every time I looked down. I held the tablet loosely in my hand, but my grip tightened unconsciously a







