LOGINElleThe succession elder stepped out of the crowd first.He had argued hardest for Soren after I stopped the transfer, insisting Moonlight needed a proven warrior more than it needed to wait for an heir who might never return. Soren had sat beside him at council, carried his wife’s coffin, and trained both of his sons.Now the elder looked at him without warmth.“Did you know who Franz was when he came to our boundary?”Soren’s mouth tightened. “He was a Silver Claw rogue making a claim every wolf in this kingdom has heard since childhood.”“He showed you the crescent mark,” Dad said. “The same mark my missing son carried beneath his left shoulder.”“A scar can be copied.”“Not that one.” Dad’s answer entered every mind through the pack link. “Our healer recorded it on the night Franz was born, before he was stolen. Soren knew because he had read the sealed succession records while preparing to inherit my seat.”The elder’s face changed.Dad did not let Soren fill the silence. “Franz
ElleThe day after I signed myself to Dominic for a year, he drove me back to Moonlight and held my hand for most of the trip.He had let me sleep past noon. The bruise along my jaw had darkened, and Dominic kept looking at it as if he might turn the car around and hunt Soren down himself.Each time his thumb crossed the moonstone at my wrist, the word from the rooftop came back.Mate.I kept it to myself.Dominic had not repeated it after waking. He had ordered breakfast into the villa, argued with Mrs. Vale about whether I needed a physician for my jaw, and stood too close while I dressed. He behaved like a man whose wolf had nearly marked me and who remembered none of it.That should have made the word meaningless.My wolf disagreed.The car slowed at Moonlight’s western boundary. Home reached me through the cracked window: pine, wet earth, woodsmoke, and the familiar pull of the pack bond. Boundary stones flashed beneath the ferns as they recognized my blood. My wolf lifted her he
ElleDominic stripped off his shorts without looking away from me.He let the shorts fall. Water tracked over his chest beneath the royal crest, and every careful rule he had made for himself burned in his eyes.I took the condom from his hand and rolled it down his cock myself. His stomach tightened whenever my fingers brushed him, but he did not rush me. He let me look. He let me choose.“Lie back,” I said.Dominic obeyed.Power still crowded the air around him. It lived in the breadth of his shoulders, the gold in his eyes, and the way the old wards had followed him from the pool, silver light pulsing beneath the stone floor. None of it changed the fact that he waited with his hands open at his sides.I climbed over his hips.His palms closed around my thighs, warm and rough, but he did not guide me. I rubbed myself along him once, slicking the condom, then positioned him and sank down.The stretch stopped me halfway.Dominic’s fingers flexed, ready to lift me off if I asked. “Slow
ElleDominic watched me cross the roof.There was nothing courtly in the way his gaze moved from my bare legs to the knot of my robe. The king could hide behind stillness when ministers challenged him. His wolf had no interest in pretending I did not affect him.“You didn’t give me much space,” I said.“I made it to the roof.” His attention returned to my mouth. “That was the best I could do.”I let the robe fall.His fingers curled at his sides.The black swimsuit covered enough to be decent and did nothing to make the look on his face decent. Heat moved through me before I touched the water.I stepped into the pool and swam toward the middle. The capital spread below us, part ancient stone and part glass, with moonlit roads threading between pack shrines older than the Crown. Somewhere beyond the eastern wall, my family carried Franz home. Somewhere inside the palace, Rosalie was learning her seal no longer answered to her.For the first time all day, no one needed anything from me.
ElleDominic helped me into my coat and kept his palm against my back all the way to the car.Mist blurred the windows. The moment the door closed, the quiet changed. Aurelia’s wards had stripped away the world; the royal car held it just beyond the glass, close enough for me to see and too far away to touch.Dominic sat beside me, thigh against mine. The first time the car turned, his arm went around my waist and stayed there.“You know I’m not going anywhere,” I said.“I know.”“Then why are you holding me like I might?”He glanced at his hand, almost irritated to find it there. “I keep deciding to give you space. It lasts about thirty seconds.”My wolf stopped clawing at my ribs when I settled closer. Dominic shifted from holding my waist to holding my hand, his thumb moving over my knuckles with no rhythm he seemed aware of.The villa stood in the oldest part of the royal district, where glass towers gave way to walls built before wolves answered to a single crown. The road narrow
ElleThe black folder lay between us.The old contract had offered one private year, a fortune, and an ending decided before either of us understood the beginning. I had refused because Dominic’s lawyers did not get to decide how much I was permitted to feel.I opened the new version.The year remained. So did the secrecy and the money, though the amount had been moved into a trust under my control rather than paid as an allowance. New clauses placed my parents, Franz, and Moonlight under direct royal protection for the full term. No order touching my family could be sealed without Dominic’s signature. No member of his household could overrule me where my safety was concerned. If Rosalie approached me outside an official event, I had the right to summon the king’s guard in my own name.Rosalie’s name never appeared. It did not need to.I turned another page. “You gave me authority over Crown guards.”“A limited authority tied to your protection.”“Your council will love that.”“My cou







