Dreams and dust

Sophie’s POV

Tell me you don’t feel it, Sophie. Tell me the bond means nothing to you.”

I jolted awake, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged animal. His voice still echoed in my ears, rough and demanding, even as the afternoon light streaming through my studio windows dragged me back to reality. My cheek was stuck to my forearm, a fabric swatch pressed into my skin leaving little indentations, and my body hummed with a heat that had nothing to do with the Los Angeles sunshine.

“Mama? I’m hungry.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, my wolf stirring restlessly beneath my skin as I straight“ened too quickly. Ethan stood in the doorway, his small hands gripping the frame, and those grey eyes—those damn grey eyes that were a mirror of his father’s—watched me with concern that no six-year-old should have to feel.

“I’m fine, sweetheart,” I managed to say, my voice rough from sleep and dreams I had no business having. Dreams that felt more like memories of my fated mate, the one bond I should have been celebrating, not running from.

“Just fell asleep for a minute. How was school?”

I could still feel phantom hands on my skin, phantom lips trailing fire down my neck. My wolf Soso whined pitifully in the back of my mind, mourning what we’d lost, what we’d run from seven years ago.

“Stop it,” I told her firmly. “He made his choice. We made ours.”

But she never listened. She’s my wolf afterall.

The dream had started the way it always did, with me nineteen and stupid, standing in the Steele mansion library pretending to read while my entire being tracked the sound of Dominic’s footsteps in the hallway. Even before I’d seen him, Soso had known he was there. She would perked up, alert and yearning, pulling at me to go to him.

That should have been my first warning that something was wrong. We’d only met three months earlier, when my mother finally sank her claws into the wealthy Richard Steele. I’d been polite and distant, calling Dominic my stepbrother because that’s what he was on paper.

But Soso knew better.

The moment our eyes met at that first family dinner, I’d felt it, the snap of recognition, the pull of destiny, the absolute certainty that this man was mine. Fated mates. The rarest, most precious gift the Moon Goddess could bestow, and she’d given him to me.

My stepbrother. My mother’s fiancé’s son. A man already engaged to someone else.

The cruelest joke in the world.

In the dream, I was alone in the library when Dominic found me. His scent hit me first—pine and rain and something I couldn’t name, something that made my wolf preen and my body ache. He closed the door behind him with a soft click that sounded like a death sentence and a promise all at once.

“We need to talk about this,” he’d said, but his eyes told a different story. They were molten silver, his wolf clearly at the surface, fighting the same battle mine was losing.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” I tried to sound firm, like I wasn’t slowly dying from the need to touch him. “You’re engaged. We’re family now. This…” I gestured helplessly between us, at the invisible thread pulling taut, “…this doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” He crossed the room in three strides, and I backed up until I hit the bookshelf. He caged me in with his arms, his face inches away from mine, and I could see his wolf in his eyes, dominant and demanding.

“You’re my MATE, Sophie. We are FATED! Do you know how rare that is? How impossible?”

“I know it’s impossible,” I whispered, and I meant it. Not rare—impossible. Because fated mates were supposed to be a blessing, and this felt like a curse.

His hand came up to cup my face, his thumb brushing my cheekbone with devastating gentleness.

“I can’t stop thinking about you. My wolf is going insane. Every time I see you, smell you or hear your voice…” He closed his eyes like he was in pain. “Tell me you don’t feel it too.”

But I did. God, I did. My wolf was clawing at me, desperate to complete the bond, to mark and be marked, to claim what was ours. And the human side of me was barely stronger, wanting him with an intensity that terrified me.

“Dominic, we can’t…”

“Can’t or shouldn’t?” His forehead touched mine, and the contact sent electricity racing through my veins. “Because my wolf doesn’t understand shouldn’t. He only knows that you’re ours.”

Ours. The word had broken something in me.

I reached up and pulled him down, claiming his mouth with mine in a kiss that tasted like surrender and rebellion all at once. He growled fiercely, his wolf approving, and kissed me back like I was air and he was drowning. His hands were everywhere, pulling me against him, and I felt the evidence of his desire, hard and insistent against my hip.

“Sophie,” he groaned against my lips. “If we do this…”

“Then we do this.” I was brave in the dream, reckless in a way I would never dare to be in waking life.

“I’m yours. I’ve been yours since the moment we met.”

He then lifted me, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carried me to the leather couch. His mouth found my neck, his teeth scraping over the spot where a mating mark would go, and my wolf howled with need.

“I want to mark you,” he whispered against my skin.

“I want everyone to know you’re mine. I want to complete the bond so thoroughly that nothing can ever separate us.”

“Yes,” I breathed, and I meant it with every fiber of my being. “Yes, Dominic, please…”

And that’s when dream-Dominic had looked at me with those devastating grey eyes and said the words that always woke me up: “Tell me you don’t feel it, Sophie. Tell me the bond means nothing to you.”

Because I couldn’t tell him that. Not then, not now, not ever.

The bond was everything to me, and also the worst thing to ever happen to me. It had destroyed me.

“Mama, you’re doing the face again.”

I blinked, focusing on Ethan, who was now much closer, his little face scrunched with worry. My face was hot from the dream, the memory and the shame of wanting something I could never have.

“Sorry, baby. Just a weird dream.” I stood up, stretching my stiff muscles from sleeping at my drafting table. This was my life now. Los Angeles sunshine, a successful interior design business, a son who had his father’s eyes and his father’s stubborn intelligence. This was what I’d built from the ashes of my broken bond. “What do you want for dinner?”

But Ethan wasn’t listening. He wandered to my desk, his small fingers picking up the business magazine that I’d stupidly left out. New York’s Most Influential Business Leaders Under Forty.

And there, on the glossy cover, was Dominic Steele.

My heart stopped. Soso perked up, recognition flooding through both of us even though it was just a photograph. He stood in his office, backlit by Manhattan’s skyline, looking every inch the powerful Alpha heir he has been born to be. Seven years had only made him more devastating, the sharper edges, harder jaw, and those enchanting grey eyes that could strip a soul bare.

“Mama, who is this?”

Ethan’s voice was curious and innocent, and that shattered me. Because he was holding a picture of his father, those identical grey eyes studying the photograph with an intensity that felt like fate laughing at me.

“Just a businessman, sweetheart.” The lie tasted like ash. “No one important.”

But Ethan tilted his head, that gesture so achingly familiar it hurt. “He has eyes like mine.”