เข้าสู่ระบบThe LionSol watched Malik disappear through the crowd and didn't follow.He sipped his wine.His eyes moved the way they always moved at these things — lazy, unhurried, touching everything without settling — until they found what they'd been avoiding finding for the last twenty minutes.Zeran.And the girl pressed against his arm like she lived there.Sol's jaw tightened.She was touching him again — her hand on his chest this time, fingertips trailing down the front of his shirt like she was reading something written there, her mouth curved up at whatever he'd just said. Zeran wasn't moving away. Wasn't removing the hand. Just standing there letting it happen with that expression he wore when he was deciding whether something was worth his attention.The heat that moved through Sol was not slow.He set his glass down and crossed the room."Am I interrupting something."Not a question.Zeran's eyes moved to him. The girl — Rissa — turned. And Zeran said nothing, just looked at Sol wi
GoldThe room was too loud.That was the first thing Malik registered when Kai's hand left him — the noise rushing back in like something had been muffling it and suddenly stopped. Conversation. Music. Glass on glass. All of it returning at full volume while he stood there with the ghost of a grip on his arm and absolutely no explanation for why his skin was still reacting to it.He didn't move.Couldn't, for a second.Then he heard the voice again — low, unhurried, carrying the kind of weight that didn't need volume — and his body made the decision before his mind caught up.He turned.His eyes found Kai the way eyes find things they have no business finding — immediately, without searching, like they already knew exactly where to go.He stood maybe twenty feet away talking to someone Malik didn't register because the second Kai came into full view everything else in the room went slightly out of focus. Not dramatically. Just — less. Less present. Less important. Like the room had qu
StrawberryThe ballroom had found its rhythm again.Glasses refilling. Conversations rebuilding. The dance floor still moving like nothing had happened, like the last twenty minutes hadn't happened, like Liora's skin wasn't still burning in the exact shape of Keal's hand.She stood near the edge of the room with Derek's drink in her hand and Derek's voice in her ear and her mind somewhere else entirely.Then she felt it.The particular quality of attention that arrives before the person does. She turned.Priscilla was already close. Moving through the crowd with a fresh glass extended, silver dress catching every light in the room, smile arranged into something that almost looked friendly.Almost."Here." She held out the drink.Liora looked at it. Looked at her. Took it.She didn't drink it.Priscilla's smile didn't move. Her eyes traveled down Liora's dress and back up slowly, the kind of look that was never actually about the dress."I must say." A small tilt of her head. "This dre
The DanceThe ballroom hummed with conversation and crystal and the kind of laughter that cost money.Derek crossed the room toward Liora."You look gorgeous."She turned. Smiled.Keal was already beside her when it happened — close enough to feel the shift in her, close enough to watch her face do something soft for another man — and the heat that moved through him was fast and ugly and instant.He turned to her. Not Derek. Her."I don't know what game you're playing." Low. Controlled. "But don't pull that stunt with Priscilla again. She's too fragile for whatever this is."He walked away.Liora stood there and felt something crack open in the center of her chest. The tears came before she could stop them. One. Then another.Derek's hand landed on her shoulder."Hey. You okay?"She nodded. Tried to find the smile. It wouldn't come.His palm curved against her cheek, thumb near the corner of her mouth, and he looked at her like she was worth the trouble."Let me take your pain away."
The Glass — The party was loud and warm and full of people who didn't matter.Lior was becoming intimately acquainted with that fact.She stood at the edge of the room with her wine glass and her dark gown and her very carefully arranged expression of someone who was absolutely fine, watching the night move around her like weather she'd decided not to feel. The dress had been a choice. A deliberate, calculated, slightly unhinged choice — the kind you make when you're telling yourself you're not doing what you're doing. It was cut low and fit close and it meant nothing. She'd told herself that three times in the mirror.She found him anyway.She always found him. Didn't look, didn't have to — her body just knew, the way skin knows heat before the mind registers fire.Keal.Across the room. And Priscilla.Priscilla in a white dress that was having a personal crisis trying to contain her, her mouth at Keal's ear, saying something low and meant only for him. And Keal — God, Keal — his fa
The PullThe party kept going.Music. Voices. People moving with drinks in their hands and nowhere specific to be. None of it existed for Kai.Malik moved past him.Not away — around. Into the party. Into the crowd. Putting bodies between them like distance was something he could build fast enough to matter.Kai turned and watched him go.Something felt off.Not wrong. Just — incomplete. Like a sentence cut before the last word. His eyes tracked Malik through the room and there was something underneath the bond pulling at him separately. Something in the way Malik moved that made him want to get closer and read it properly.He took one step."Sol." Malik's voice across the noise. Warm. Completely normal.Sol turned and Malik reached him and the conversation opened up and closed Kai out entirely.He stood where he was.Then a hand on his shoulder.Keal.Drink in hand. Expression doing something genuine for once — real surprise, sitting unmanaged in his eyes."You found your mate."Kai







