登入🌸VIOLET🌸"They are about fifteen of them, Boss W."My entire body went rigid.Boss W.The words barely registered at first, sound arriving before meaning did, and I stayed pressed flat against that cold stone wall, barely breathing, my fingers curled hard enough against the rough surface behind me that I felt every jagged edge biting into my skin.W? Did he mean the notorious head of the rogues, the man who'd been terrorizing this territory for over two decades, the one whose name Marisol and Lydia had speculated about over a television broadcast covering an attack that had left Xavier bleeding.My stomach dropped straight through the ground beneath me.No. My mind rejected the thought before it could even finish forming, throwing up every wall I owned against it.Then I heard that voice again.That exact voice, the one I had spent years constructing careful, deliberate barriers around, the one that still showed up uninvited in nightmares that woke me shaking some nights even now, y
🌸VIOLET🌸The village sat quieter than I'd expected. Too quiet, maybe. Small houses stretched along narrow dirt roads, simple, lived-in places with laundry strung between posts and a few children playing barefoot near doorways, chasing each other with sticks.People stared as our trucks rolled in, curious rather than afraid, and that somehow made me more uncomfortable than open fear would have. These people didn't look like they were bracing for an attack. They looked like they had no idea one might be coming at all.We went straight to the village head, an older man with a round stomach and a wooden walking stick, and confusion crossed his face the second Bryce explained why fifteen armed cadets had just rolled into his quiet little village."An attack?" He repeated it slowly, like the word tasted foreign in his mouth."Yes." Bryce nodded, official and stiff. "Alpha Xavier suspects there may be an attack on this village."The old man's brows pulled together hard. "That can't be righ
🌸VIOLET 🌸My eyes opened slowly, and for a few seconds I had no idea where I was at all.The ceiling above me sat unfamiliar, dark and expensive-looking, wood beams crossing overhead in a pattern I didn't recognize, and the sheets beneath my body felt far too soft to belong to my own bed.I blinked. Once. Twice. Then I shot upright so fast my head spun hard, black spots bursting bright at the edges of my vision.My gaze swept the room fast. Dark walls. Low, warm lighting even in daylight, the curtains pulled heavy across enormous windows. Black furniture arranged with the exact same severe precision I'd already memorized weeks ago.My stomach dropped straight through the mattress.Xavier's room.I stared down at the sheets pooled around my waist, my heart slamming hard against my ribs. I was in Xavier's bed, in Xavier's room, and I had absolutely no memory of how I'd gotten here.Last night came back in pieces, sharp and disjointed. The fight with Marisol. The empty street. The man'
🌸VIOLET🌸I finally left the club sometime around midnight, my head still spinning from everything that had happened in the dressing room, my thumb hovering uselessly over a blank text message to Marisol that I'd started and deleted four separate times.I had absolutely nothing to say that could fix what I'd broken.Sorry felt too small.Sorry felt like something you said for showing up late, not for making the strongest person I knew disappear into pills just to get through a panic attack alone because I hadn't been there to help her through it the way she'd always been there for me.Guilt sat heavy and sour in my stomach the entire walk out through the back exit.The street outside stretched quiet and dark, mostly empty except for the occasional sleek black car belonging to someone who could actually afford to be out this late without worrying about it. No cabs cruised past. I pulled out my phone and booked a ride instead, the app showing seven minutes until arrival, and I decided
♣️XAVIER ♣️The call ended with a click, and I lowered the phone, staring at the dark screen for a full second before tossing it onto the table with more force than the motion required.The club was closed for tonight.GoodShe had a mission tomorrow, and somehow Violet Woods had still found time to walk straight back into that building and dance for a room full of men.For money.My jaw tightened.No.That wasn't actually the part that clawed hardest under my skin. If it were only money driving her back through those doors, she would have taken what I threw at her that night and stayed away entirely, or come straight to me and asked for more if what I'd given her hadn't been enough.But she went back. After everything that happened between us. After she knew I had caught her.She still walked straight back into that fucking club.I dragged a hand hard over my face, my palm scraping against days-old stubble I hadn't bothered shaving.It’s for the sick pleasure of it, apparently.The i
🌸VIOLET🌸When Xavier said punishment, my stupid, traitorous mind had gone somewhere entirely different than what actually happened.Something flirty.Something dirty.Some part of my body had genuinely gotten excited at the possibility, hopeful in a way I refused to fully examine, when it had absolutely no business feeling anything close to hope in that particular direction.Instead, he had worked me until every single muscle in my body felt personally betrayed by its own existence.Weights. Repetitions. More weights. More repetitions, over and over until my arms shook holding nothing heavier than air. He hadn't flirted once. Hadn't smiled. Hadn't touched me anywhere except to correct my grip on a bar, brief and clinical, gone the second the adjustment was made. He hadn't even looked at me longer than strictly necessary the entire session.And somehow that had been worse than anything I could have braced myself for.My whole body ached now, deep and thorough, the kind of soreness th







