Mag-log inHi, if you have read this far, it means you must really like this story or you're curious. Either way I say thank you.
Silent for four years. Silent since Rivan died. Silent through every night I wished I weren’t alive. Silent through the guilt, the nightmares, the loneliness.Until now.And what does he choose to say, after four years of silence?We need to mate.His voice cut through my skull again, rough and impatient:We need her.I pressed my palms over my eyes. Of all times you finally speak, this is the one you choose? Not when I begged for strength? Not when everything was falling apart? Now? Now, when I can barely think straight?We cannot reject her. She is ours.Mate. Now. Claim her. Mark her. Fill her.The words hit like a punch. My wolf—my silent, grieving wolf was back, and all he wanted was the one thing I couldn’t give him.Shut up, I snarled internally. Of all the times to wake up, you choose now?She’s ours. Take her. Knot her. Breed her.Safe to say the rut made him just as insane as I was.Shut up, I snarled back internally, the frustration boiling beneath my ribs. You stayed sile
The first mistake I made was agreeing to do this here. I sat in Kiyan’s room, surrounded by a fortress of yellowed scrolls and ancient tomes that smelled like dust and forgotten wars. Kiyan’s room always looks like it’s trying too hard to pretend it’s in order. Scrolls stacked in crisp piles. Everything aligned like soldiers waiting for inspection. Everything tidy, everything proper, except the scent in the air that completely ruins the illusion.Beneath the candle smoke and parchment, beneath whatever incense he burns, there’s still that lingering musk of rut and sex clinging to the walls like it knows it belongs here.The air was thick, heavy with the weight of secrets we’d been unearthing for hours, but my mind wasn’t on the parchment anymore. It was on her. Always her, these days. The rune on my chest pulsed faintly with every breath, a constant reminder that my body wasn’t my own anymore, not since the mate bond snapped into place like a trap I’d walked straight into.Kiyan
By the time dinner was over and the sun began sinking behind the western towers of Norsen, all I wanted was a bed, a blanket, and the sweet, comforting silence of not having to think about Aklan for even five seconds.Ferna, Elsie, and I made our way down the long stone pathway toward our dorm wing. The courtyard lanterns were lighting themselves one by one, reacting to the fall of night, and the air was pleasantly cool. The kind of cool that made your shoulders relax even after the most stressful day.Elsie was recounting some ridiculous story about how her Lycan noble lover had tried to impress her by lifting a boulder the size of a cow, only for it to roll and nearly crush his foot. Ferna was wheezing with laughter loud enough to echo off the brick walls.And I… I was laughing too.A real laugh.The kind I hadn’t felt in days. For a moment, a tiny, fragile moment, Aklan disappeared from my mind entirely. No memories of his hands on me. No phantom heat blooming in my stomach. No
They kept talking, or more likely, Elsie spoke, Ferna lectured, but their voices started to drift into background static because a scent cut through the air like a blade.The same scent that has crowded my senses ever since the day of the festival. Citrus. Warm earth. Heat.Aklan.My head snapped up before I could stop myself. I no longer had control over my own body.And there he was.Walking into the cafeteria, like the entire building should rearrange itself around him, broad shoulders, sweat-damp hair, that aura that sucked the oxygen from every room. He looked exhausted, irritated, and unfairly beautiful, and then—His eyes locked onto mine.It wasn’t subtle, wasn’t accidental. It was instant, sharp, like someone grabbing me by the spine.His gaze hit me so hard my breath stuttered in my throat.And I swear, I swear on every god of the nine realms, his chest rose just a little faster when he saw me. Like, he hated that he had been looking for me. Like, he hated that he found me.
Lunch was supposed to be simple.Just… lunch. A plate of food, my two friends, and one quiet hour where I could pretend my brain wasn’t a chaotic battlefield of memories I absolutely did not ask for.Ferna and Elsie sat across from me, chattering like nothing in the world had shattered.This was the first lunch we’d managed to have together since Aklan became my personal tormentor, and I was doing a spectacular job of pretending I was fine.But my fork had been dragging the same stripe through my mashed potatoes for so long that the grooves looked like an artist’s sketch. I kept trying to eat, truly, but each time the fork rose toward my mouth, my stomach tightened. Not from nausea, but from the humiliating, unbearable, pulse-deep reminder of what Aklan had done to me the last time we trained.I was not fine.Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in that changing room:His mouth bruising mine, his hand under my bra, thumb rolling over my nipple until I forgot my own name, his finger
“Hi”, she said, carefully approaching me with that hungry look. Her gaze was firmly placed on the barely there boner that rocked my towel.I smiled, trying to cover up my irritation. “Valora. Hey!”“Aklan,” she said, with that soft, breathy voice she always used when she wanted something. “Why have you been avoiding me since the other night?”Avoiding her. Right. It could only count as avoidance if she ever came to mind in the time we hadn’t spoken, so no, I wasn’t avoiding her; she just simply stopped existing in my subconscious.I grabbed a towel and wiped my face, giving myself a few seconds before I answered. If she knew how close I was to ripping the walls down with my bare hands just from trying not to think about Rosalind, she’d probably choke on her own spiteful laughter.“I haven’t been avoiding you,” I said, keeping my tone even. “I’ve just been taking some time to clear my head.”Her brows pulled together, not convinced. She moved closer, each step slow, deliberate—like a







