His Touch, My Ruin

Selene’s POV

I lay there, motionless on the bed, the morning lights filtering across the heavy curtains while the linen sheets tangled around my legs, my skin still humming with the ghost of his touch.

One of his arms still gripped my waist, heavy and dangerous. The kind of danger that didn’t scare me anymore…but should have. Last night’s memories are still stuck to me like a permanent picture.

The way Kaelen had touched me…Moon goddesses, his hands had memorized every inch of my body like he was starved of it for so many years and I was his salvation. His fingers were gripping my thighs, while his mouth had mapped my skin with devotion.

Each kiss dragged me deeper into the kind of madness that made me forget my name. When he moved inside me, it wasn't just with force…it felt as if he needed to prove something like he wanted to claim all of me, my soul, my wounds.

“You’re mine Selene. And I’ll never let go,” he whispered. His breath was warm against mine while he devoured every single ounce of my body and made me moan his name like a raving mad woman.

And I let him.

But nothing else existed anymore, not the lies u had run far away from, not the pain Rael made me feel every day when he betrayed me. Kaelen lay beside me, his breath rising and falling in heavy gasps against my neck, his voice growling my name like it tasted better than power, and his body tangled with mine in a storm I never wanted to escape.

But then—

I remembered it all, just like a cruel blade slicing through me at his thought. I hated that his name echoed in my head like a curse stuck with me forever. I had felt the same thing with him too, believed he loved me…believed it with the stupid, blind faith of an omega who didn’t know the cruel side of love.

The way Rael would whisper every promise to me in the dark, just the same way Kaelen did last night when he made love to me, and now here I was, tangled in his arms, as if history wasn't trying to repeat itself and the universe wasn't trying to warn me of facing the same fate with his cousin.

My stomach twisted. My body still ached from Kaelen’s touch, but my heart….it was pulling away from him, not after all I had been through. I moved slightly, just enough to shift his arm off my waist, but then he stirred.

“You’re awake my love,” Kaelen murmured, his voice still heavy with sleep, and something tender—affection maybe. But if I stayed here for any moment, I would find myself finding it harder to resist him.

“Come here.” He whispered, his lips brushing my shoulder. I stiffened. “Don’t touch me.” His hands froze, his brows drawing together as he rose on one elbow. 

“Did I do anything wrong to you last night, Selene?” I sat up, dragging the sheets around me like some sort of clothes to cover my nakedness. “Last night…shouldn’t have ever happened.”

He blinked, the expression on his face like that of someone who had just been slapped. “Do you regret it?” He asked.

“I didn’t say that,” I looked away, the weight of his stare burning into my skin. “We just got caught up in the moment. That’s all it was…we.”

“That's bullshit.” His voice echoed through the room. “You know that what happened between us wasn't just a one-night mistake, we love each other and we gave in to our feelings.”

“I don’t care what you call it,” I snapped. “You think you know everything because you’re an Alpha? You don’t know what it’s like to be lied to…to be used.”

“I’m not my fucking cousin!” He yelled, sitting up now, nothing funny about the expression on his face. “I’m not Rael.”

“Maybe not. But you're still a man with power. And that kind of man always wants something.” He stood up from the bed, putting on his trousers. “So that's it? You want to shut me out because of what that bastard did to you?”

“I’m shitting you out because I know this story of ours will end the same way it did with your cousin.” He stepped forward, closing the distance between us in an instant, his eyes blazing with rage.

“You think I don’t have demons? You think I don’t fight every instinct to have all the power in the world, to protect the people I love instead of destroying them?”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about the engagement?” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “Why did I have to find out by listening to your conversations with the council like some dirty secret?”

He bowed his face in shame. “I didn’t know, Selene. I swear to the Moon goddess, I was blindsided by them.” A bitter laughter escaped my lips. “Of course, just like Rael never meant to deceive me every night just to have my body.”

“Just like he never meant to leave me broken and humiliated, right?”

He reached for my hands, gripping them as if trying to beg me to believe his words. “I’m not Rael. I’ll never hurt you, Selene.”

“But you’re still capable of hurting me.” I sat back, silence stretching between us, thigh with unsaid words, with everything we felt but refused to speak.

Then—

A knock, sharp, and brutal, cut through the moment in an instant. 

“Alpha!” 

The door burst open. And there he was, Kaelen’s beta…Thorne was standing there, panting, his eyes wide open. Kaelen moved in an instant, every tension redirecting to readiness.

“What is it?”

Thorne didn’t glance at me, but his voice was tight. “We found tracks. Fresh. In the eastern ridge. Not one of ours.”

Kaelen’s voice dropped. “Rogues?”Thorne shook his head. “It’s worse, Alpha. They're wearing Rael’s symbol. And they’re inside our borders.”

My heart stopped, every word I had just heard sounding like my worst nightmare which was about to come true. “No one gets into this territory without a fight,” Kaelen said coldly, nothing funny about his eyes which were already changing.

Thorne hesitated to speak, but parted his lips to say something. “There’s  many of them… and they weren’t hiding their trail. They want us to know they’re here.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, rising from the bed, wrapping a robe around me. Thorne’s eyes finally met mine. “It means they came for something. And they won’t go back without it.”

And in that instant, I felt every single drop of blood draining from my face. Rael wasn't just looking for me anymore.

He was closer than ever and coming for me.