Bloodlines and Bitter Wine

POV SIENNA

The waiter poured the red wine with precise care, filling each cut‑crystal glass barely one‑third full before placing the plates down and retreating quietly behind the dark panels. The steak steamed on warm volcanic stone, seared dark and golden at the edges and deep red at the centre, glistening, almost rare. Its wild, iron‑rich scent hit my instincts at once. My she‑wolf turned restlessly inside my chest, tasting the air with a satisfaction I struggled to hide. I picked up my knife and fork, cutting a small piece while keeping my eyes lowered.

"Enjoy your meal, Hayes," Killian said, lifting his glass of Cabernet Sauvignon with a calm that raised goosebumps along my spine.

I ate in silence for a few minutes, pretending the food was the only thing that mattered. The meat was exquisite, tender as butter, and the wine carried a finish of blackberries and oak that warmed my throat and softened the tightness in my shoulders. Killian ate with the same deliberate grace, measured movements, straight back, the cuffs of his white shirt immaculate against the table. Yet his gaze never fully left my face.

"Twenty‑one," he said suddenly, slicing neatly through his steak without looking away.

I nearly choked on my wine. I set the glass down gently on the cloth.

"What?"

"Twenty‑one, birthday in March," he repeated, his tone easy, as if commenting on the weather. "Third‑year film student. Civil registration filed in the human southern district after your father passed. No criminal record, no prior pack markings, no registered affiliations."

Heat flooded my face in an instant rush of anger.

"You looked through my private files."

"I reviewed the pack residency and security records," he corrected with cold arrogance. "You are an unclassified she‑wolf living in Iron Ridge’s main house. It is my duty to know what kind of people share my family’s roof."

"I am not some 'kind of person'," I hissed, leaning forward. "And you had no right to pry into my private life."

Killian rested his cutlery neatly and leaned back, watching me over the rim of his glass.

"Four years difference," he murmured, almost to himself, brushing my anger aside. "I thought you were a spoiled girl Marcus was indulging. But you are twenty‑one. You are a grown woman, Sienna. A woman who chose to hide among humans for three years instead of claiming the place her blood gave her."

"I did not want a place in a pack full of people like you," I replied, a sharp ache in my chest as I remembered my father’s warnings. "My father kept us away to protect us."

A shadow darkened Killian’s grey eyes. The faint mockery vanished completely.

"Your father ran because he was a coward," he said, without mercy.

"You know nothing about him!" My voice rose, my nails digging into the wood beneath the table.

"I know he left you penniless in a strange city," he said, every word striking like a heavy blow. "I know what abandonment feels like, Hayes. Do not tell me tales of noble fathers who were only ever absent."

The raw hurt in my throat made me want to fling my glass at him. But before I could speak, Killian looked down at the stem he held between his fingers. For a heartbeat his unbreakable armour cracked. It was barely there, a flicker, as firelight caught the tension in his jaw and the bitterness around his mouth.

"Marcus is not my real father," he said.

The words hung heavy and still between us. The air felt suddenly cold. I froze, my fork halfway to my mouth, staring at him in disbelief.

"What did you say?" I whispered.

Killian took a long drink of wine before meeting my eyes again. There was no arrogance left, only an old, raw truth he had carried for years.

"You heard me," his voice dropped rough and low. "Marcus never shared my blood. My mother was meant to be his Luna, until she decided pack life was too hard. She got bored. The weight of it was too much for her."

He paused, muscle jumping tight in his jaw.

"She fell pregnant by another wolf, a stranger no one ever saw again. When I was born she left me on the doorstep like something she did not want and ran off with the first mercenary who promised her an easy life. She never came back. Not once."

Silence settled over the booth, broken only by the soft pop and crackle of the gas fire. My mind raced, piecing together everything I had seen. The heir who pushed himself harder than anyone, the leader who demanded perfection, the man who seemed to own the world had never been born into it. We were not step‑brother and step‑sister, not by blood, not by lineage, not by any twisted biological tie. We shared nothing but the roof Marcus had placed us under.

"Marcus could have sent me anywhere," Killian continued, his fingers tightening around the glass until it creaked. "No one would have blamed him. I was the by‑product of the woman who betrayed him. But he gave me his name. He raised me, trained me, made me the weapon Iron Ridge needs. That is why I owe him everything. That is why I will be Alpha even though I do not carry his blood. I have to prove every single day that I am not the trash my mother threw away."

A sharp, unexpected pain twisted in my chest. I looked at him properly then, the faint scars on his neck, the rigid set of his shoulders, the loneliness he carried like a second skin. I had seen him as a spoiled monster, but beneath the expensive suits and the cold authority was just a boy who had been left behind, fighting to earn the right to belong. An orphan, in his own way, just as I was.

"Killian..." I began, and for the first time there was no sarcasm in my voice.

He blinked, as if suddenly realising how much he had said. The cold mask slipped back into place instantly.

"Do not look at me with pity, Hayes," he said roughly, though his eyes betrayed him. "I did not tell you this for sympathy. I told you so you understand why nothing will ever turn me against Marcus. And so you understand that this idea of family is a convenient lie your mother tells herself. We are not family."

I swallowed hard, feeling something warm and electric shift inside me, strengthened by what I had just learned.

"If we are not family..." my voice trembled in the dim light, "then what happened last night in my room..."

Killian leaned forward across the table, closing the space between us until his scent of burnt cedar and storm filled every breath.

"What happened last night has nothing to do with family, Sienna," he whispered, hunger and certainty burning deep in his eyes. "And we both know it will happen again."