LOGINAshton's POV.
His heat was overwhelming but I didn't run. Instead, I took a step forward, my arms gently resting on his bare chest. "Hey." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Stay with me."
His head lifted. Even behind the warrior's mask, I could see how hard he was trying to hold on. His jaw tightened, breath dragging through his teeth like he was swallowing fire.
"Go," he rasped. "Run."
"I'm not running."
"You should be afraid of me." He pushed my hands away.
"I am.." I said honestly. " But i'm still not running."
His expression changed after I said that. I didn't understand what pulled me closer, but I could feel my wolf restless inside. I took another step toward him. Then another.
He growled... low, fractured, warning. "Don't."
"There's a way to stop this," I said. "The old history book in my packhouse... I saw something... something similar to this... The Aurion Frenzy."
He growled again. "Too much talking," his voice raised. " How would your old history book help?"
He moved away from me and crouched by the rocks."Moon wolves and sun wolves aren't meant to be near each other," I continued. "But under a Blood Moon, the rules break... A moon wolf's energy can pull a sun wolf back from the edge... This frenzy," I stopped in front of him. "My cold against your fire... I can reach you, but I have to be close," my eyes stayed on him.
His chest heaved. "How close?"
I didn't answer with words. Instead my knees hit the ground in front of him and placed my hands on his large shoulders.
The heat was searing. It felt like pressing my palms to a forge. I hissed through my teeth but didn't pull back. The blue light I had felt earlier... the one that bloomed under my skin without warning, it stirred again.
He went rigid under my hands. I felt it... the frenzy, massive and hungry, pressing against the thin wall of his control. And beneath it, something else. Something that recognized my wolf the same way I recognized his.
I have to pull him back, before he's far gone. "Look at me," I said. "Only at me."
His hands came up and wrapped around my wrists. Not cruel. Desperate. Then he raised his head, fixing his gaze on me. The gold in his eyes cracked wider.
For a long moment we stayed like that. His fire... my cool light, pushing against each other, then slowly, achingly, beginning to balance.
It was working. He was starting to get calm. But then the frenzy surged suddenly.
A sound tore from him that was more beast than man. His control snapped like a rope pulled too tight.
"It's not working," I whispered. "This would not work... We need to be closer than this."
Before I could think, he moved, shoved me, and both of us fell. My back hit the cold floor, his weight above me. His burning forehead dropped to mine, and his breath ragged against my mouth.
"I can't..." His voice broke. "I can't stop it. I'm sorry. I'm..."
"I know." My wolf was no longer afraid. He was pressing forward, certain in a way I had never felt from him before. A pull I couldn't name and couldn't fight drew the word out of me before I had decided to say it. "It's alright."
He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes searched mine with a desperation that had nothing to do with the frenzy anymore. "You'll be hurt."
"I'm already in a cave, in enemy territory on a Blood Moon night," I said. "Hurt is relative."
Something that might have been a laugh broke out of him... brief and startled and gone immediately. His thumb grazed my cheekbone. Careful. Like I was something he was afraid to break.
"Tell me to stop," he said. "Say it, and I'll find another way to die."
I looked at him... this massive, masked stranger who had killed three Crescent wolves for a lonely moon omega he had never met, and I said nothing.
He kissed me. It wasn't gentle. It couldn't be. The frenzy was still in him, still burning, and the kiss tasted like smoke and something wild that called to the part of me I had always been told was broken.
His hands mapped me like he was memorizing something he knew he wouldn't be allowed to keep, and the blue light under my skin flared bright, flooding outward to meet his fire.
Where his heat should have scorched me, it didn't.
He stripped away my tunic, bracing his heavy frame above me. His large hands gripped my hips as he drove his thick, veined dick fully inside me in one deep thrust.
A sharp gasp caught in my throat, stretching me completely, but the expected pain never came. Instead, an overwhelming wave of sweet, intoxicating heat flooded my senses.
A low moan escaped my lips, echoing off the damp cave walls.
If anyone found out, I would be charged and killed for betrayal.
But as he pulled back and drove into me again, harder, deeper, that fear shattered into nothingness. Nothing mattered but the weight of him.
With every heavy, punishing thrust of his dick, I could feel the suffocating heat reduce, absorbing into my own cool essence.
My blue light flared beneath my skin, wrapping around his scorching fire, taming it, soothing him from the inside out.
The madness of the sun-frenzy made him wild, his movements relentless, forcing the breath from my lungs until I could barely breathe.
My fingers dug into the thick muscle of his massive chest, anchoring myself to him as he kept riding me.
Desperate for more of his heat, my legs lifted, curling tightly around his waist to lock him against me. I dragged my hands over his sweating chest, sliding them under his arms and finally resting them flat against his broad back, feeling the violent tremors of his muscles slowly begin to ease.
His lips traced a path up my neck, hot against my skin until it found my ear. He breathed out a ragged, broken sound into it and damn... it felt good.
He fucked me faster and faster, and finally, a loud, shattering groan filled the cavern. His entire body locked up, his muscles turning to granite beneath my hands as he reached climax. I could feel his thick, warm seed flowing inside me.
He collapsed against on my body, resting his heavy head on my shoulder. I mapped his back with my fingers, tracing the rigid lines of his spine until I could feel his ragged breath balance again.
He fell asleep quickly. I stared at the cave wall and tried to understand what had just happened. I should have been frightened. His arm tightened around me without waking. Even unconscious, he held on.
"Don't feel this," I whispered to myself. "Don't remember this... This was survival and that's all."
But the warmth at my back said otherwise. I closed my eyes.Outside, the Blood Moon began to fade. I told myself I would leave before he woke. The herb was still safe in my tunic pocket. El was still waiting.
Xander's POVAkim was crying in my arms.His face was red, his little fists were tight in my tunic, and he was shaking his head like he wanted the gold light to go away.The circle on the floor had gone dark again after that flash. But the box on the stone table was shaking where Alaric had dropped it. Alaric had both hands on the lid trying to keep it shut, and the whole table was vibrating.Ashton was still sagging against my chest. His back was against me, his breathing uneven. My one arm was around him, and my other arm was around Akim, who was curled into my neck."Hold him tighter," Ashton said, his voice thin. He reached up and put his hand on Akim's back over mine. "He's scared.""I got him," I said low, into Akim's hair. "I got you. It's dark now. Look, no light."Akim didn't stop. He pushed his face harder into my neck and cried harder.Noah was right beside us where I left him, sitting on the floor with his legs tucked under him. He wasn't crying. He was watching Akim with
Xander's POVThe light was still there.Gold. Everywhere. It covered the stone walls, the mages' grey robes, and Ashton's face. The orb in the open box pulsed like a heart, and the mark on Ashton's back was burning beneath his shirt.Ashton made a small sound, like he was trying not to let anyone hear how much it hurt.I moved toward him with Akim in one arm and Noah beside me, catching Ashton when his knees buckled. I lowered myself with him, pulling him against my chest before he could hit the floor. Akim clung to my tunic while Noah stared at the glowing orb."Ashton," I said, placing my hand against his lower back. The heat coming through his shirt was frightening. "Look at me."He opened his eyes, his breathing uneven. "It hurts, Xander. It's pulling at me.""Pulling you where?""I don't know." He squeezed his eyes shut. "I can feel something down there."Before I could ask him anything else, Alaric slammed the box shut.The light disappeared instantly, leaving the temple dim exc
Zeth's POVThe council room was already full when I walked in.They all stood. Criff, Drago, Sisil, Ahmor, Mark. I didn't tell them to sit. I walked to my chair and sat first. Then they sat. Criff straight as a stick, Drago already sweating through his linen, Sisil with her papers neat, Ahmor with his fists on the table like he wanted to fight someone, Mark holding his ledger and not looking at anyone.Sisil had grain numbers laid out. Same papers she brings every week."My King," she said, calm. "We were waiting. Sera village reports...""I know about Sera village," I said.I kept my voice flat. My hands were on the table. I made them stay still.Drago wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Criff watched me with those thin eyes.Sisil paused. Just a second. Then she went on like I had told her to continue."Then you have seen my report. They lost another three bags last night. No footprints. People are talking about...""People are talking about a lot of things," I said. "Let's talk ab
Ashton's POVXander didn't waste time. He picked up the wooden box with the orb inside and tucked it under his arm. Then he gently tapped Noah awake and lifted him against his chest. "Come," he said to me.I picked up Akim. He wrapped his little arms around my neck and rested his head on my shoulder. We slipped out the back door of our chambers and took the narrow path behind the kitchens like Zeth said. The air smelled like smoke and fresh bread and oil from the kitchen fires. Servants were moving around carrying pots, but no one stopped us. The Aurion mages lived in the old temple at the edge of the palace grounds, half hidden by overgrown trees. It wasn't as big as the Noctaryn temple. It was small, with stone walls, no windows, and a heavy wooden door that looked like it had been there for a hundred years. The stone around it was covered in moss.Xander knocked three times, hard. For a while nothing happened. Then the door creaked open.Three mages stood inside. Old, all of the
Ashton's POVXander was pulling his shirt on when we heard the knock.We were about to leave. Akim and Noah were still asleep on the big bed."Who is that," Xander whispered.The door opened before I could answer. Zeth.He didn't wait to be let in. He pushed the door with his shoulder and walked in with a small wooden box under his arm and his face blank. Xander pulled his shirt down fast. "What did you find out?"Zeth looked at the children first, then at me. His eyes stayed on me a second longer."Mara," he said.He put the box on the table and opened it. Letters. A map. And in the middle, wrapped in cloth, something that glowed faint.I moved closer. Xander did too."She was writing to me," Zeth said, voice low. "Ten letters. Sisil stopped them. She told the riders not to carry anything from Aurion while I was in Noctaryn."Xander frowned. "All ten?""All ten," Zeth said. "The last one was three days before she died. She said she found where it lives and she was going that night."
Zeth's POVI stood outside Mara's door with Alaric beside me. My hand was on the wood and I didn't push it right away because once I push it, there's no pretending anymore.Alaric let me stand there. He just breathed next to me, old and loud through his nose. His staff made a small mark in the dust on the floor."You have to open it, my King," he said."I know, I know..." I told him.I pushed.The room smelled like her. Dust and that lemon oil Hana used to put in her hair when she was little. Her bed was made neatly with yellow sheets tucked tight. For a second it was like no one ever died here. Like she just went somewhere and would be back.I almost called her name. The thought came so naturally that it hurt when I remembered she would never answer.Then I remembered how we jumped on this same bed when we were kids. Father came in shouting about how a future king and a lady should not act like village rats. She fell off laughing and chipped her front tooth. She had that little chip







