Chapter 5

Arthur's POV

The council’s pressure is a weight I’ve worn so long I forget it’s there until someone tries to move it.

If the Luna seat stays empty much longer, the throne shifts to another Alpha family. My father repeats the law like a threat. My mother repeats it like a prayer. I sabotage their matches with such efficiency they’ve started calling it a skill.

They say it’s stubbornness. It isn’t. Loyalty is not the same as stupidity. The woman I chose years ago is dead, and I am not in the habit of replacing the irreplaceable.

“Another introduction Thursday,” my father says in the morning call, his voice is stone. “No incidents, Arthur. The council is watching.”

“Then tell them to watch,” I say, signing a stack of contracts. “They’ll be bored.”

My mother’s voice replaces his—warmth and steel. “What happened today? Please tell me you didn’t send that poor girl running.”

“This time,” I say, thinking of a business card glinting against café wood, “it wasn’t me.”

I don’t explain that I arrived late on purpose, and still walked in on a scent that cleared the noise in my head like wind over a lake. I don’t explain that the headache that’s stalked me all week vanished the instant I saw her. I certainly don’t explain the coffee.

Before my mother can press, my beta, Simon, knocks and slips in, face pale. “Alpha—there’s been a mix-up. The match your parents arranged wasn’t… that woman. Wrong contact sent. Wrong place.”

I stare at him. Silence stretches until he shifts, takes a step back under the weight of it. I look down at the card I kept instead of tossing. The name is crisp, clean ink. Sienna Wren.

My wolf gives one slow, deliberate turn and faces the door. Not to chase. Not yet. To consider.

The council, the laws, the endless parade of daughters with careful smiles—they all blur. For the first time in a long time, I’m thinking about something that isn’t a decree or a ledger.

She threw coffee in my face and walked away like she owned the street. I press my thumb to the edge of her card until the paper bites. Interesting.

“Find out everything,” I tell Simon. “Company. Manufacturing. History. And book me a meeting with her. Not a date. A deal.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

I don’t say that my wolf—who suffers fools even less than I do—stopped prowling the instant she looked me in the eye.

Sienna's POV

I tell myself I’m done. I tell myself I’m a businesswoman with more leverage than I had yesterday, and I don’t need to tangle with a king who mistakes competence for bait.

So I go where power lives—in my work.

The new flagship smells like cedar shelves and fresh fabric dye. Limited-edition pieces hang under soft light, fur-trim details catching the glow—ethically sourced, legally documented, everything aboveboard because I built it that way. Customers drift. Staff smiles. The register sings.

Then the past walks in wearing expensive disgust.

Owen sees me first. He’s taller, sharper, the boy rubbed into a blade by other people’s hands. He grabs my sleeve like he has the right, eyes sparking with the same brittle pride that used to make him spit out medicine.

“You left,” he says, an accusation, not a fact. “Changed your mind? You want your nanny job back?”

For a minute I can’t breathe. He was small once. Feverish. He would only take the spoon from me. I knitted him a hat with ears and he wore it until summer.

Memory is a knife with a soft handle.

Landon arrives behind him, an “ah” forming in his mouth, the expression of a man who thinks he’s solved the puzzle. “Here to apply?” he says mildly. “If you’re truly struggling, we might find a place.”

Brianna drifts in last, perfume first, eyes raking my display. “The taste,” she says, lips twisting. “Tragic. Even for a… shop girl.”

My wolf surges, a wave I can’t hold back. The medication is a pebble against a flood.

“Do not touch me,” I tell Owen, wrenching free. “Do not speak to me like I belong to you. I severed every tie with you and yours years ago. You are nothing to me now except a warning.” My voice shakes and doesn’t break. “You will pay for what you did. Eventually.”

They weren’t ready for that. Landon’s face goes flat; Brianna’s goes sharp. Owen’s mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again, teenager caught between pride and confusion.

“What does that mean?” Brianna snaps, too loud for a boutique. Heads turn. “What are you implying?”

It’s enough. Demetria steps forward with two security guards who believe in her more than they believe in quiet.

“Out,” she says, perfect customer-service smile with knives behind it. “Rudeness isn’t welcome here.”

They sputter and posture, and then go, because this is my ground and I don’t flinch.

I take the pill bottle from my pocket and dry-swallow two more. Nothing happens. My hands still buzz. My wolf still claws. The city hums too brightly and my heart is an animal in a trap.

The bell over the door rings again.

Arthur fills the entrance like the storm he thinks he is. He doesn’t look at the racks or the price tags. He looks at me. The headache that’s been drilling the backs of my eyes since the argument ebbs, and I hate that my body notices him before my brain can refuse.

“I have another business matter,” he says.

“No,” I snap, because anger is easier than fear. “There’s nothing to discuss with a man who lives between lust and rumor.”

His mouth tics. He steps closer, and with every inch the air shifts, heavy with a dominance that makes lesser wolves bare their throats. I do not bow. My wolf’s hackles lift—and then, traitorously, settle. The pounding in my skull fades to a whisper.

“Mind your attitude,” he says, voice low. “You want the truth? This isn’t about rumor. It’s about Chess. I know about Landon. I know what he did. And I know about your wolf.”

Cold slides down my spine. “You know nothing about me.”

“I know enough to recognize late-stage instability,” he says, without malice, which somehow makes it worse. “Wolves without pack or mate spiral. They go feral or they go still. It ends in blood or in nothing. You’re close.”

I hate the tremor that wants to climb my hands. I lock my fingers together until the bones protest. My wolf edges toward him anyway, seduced by the quiet in my head. I hold her back with both fists.

“What do you want?” I ask, because I’m tired and because my enemy has my symptoms memorized.

“A deal.” He doesn’t make me beg for the terms. “I stabilize your wolf. I end Landon’s reign and salt the earth he stood on.”

My laugh is short and mean, the kind you don’t recognize as yours. “And what do you get, King?”

His eyes are cold but I could fall into them. “You.”

The word hangs between us, a thin line humming with current. I should say no. I owe him nothing. He is everything I swore off: power with a cruel mouth, and also a man who thinks the world is a door that opens because he looked at it.

“What are your terms,” I repeat, because I need to hear it out loud to kill it.

He doesn’t blink. “Marry me.”

The room shrinks. The hum of the store dims to a distant shore. My wolf goes perfectly still, as if the world has finally said something she recognizes.

“Absolutely not,” I say automatically.