تسجيل الدخولAric’s POVThe room still smelled like her.Selene’s scent lingered faintly, soft, wild, familiar, etched into the stale air of the abandoned chamber like a ghost that refused to fade. I stood there long after she slipped out with Lyra, long after her footsteps disappeared into silence down the corridor, long after I ran out of reasons to remain in the place that had once broken her.But I didn’t move.My hands were still shaking.Not from desire.Not from the memory of her lips on mine.Not from the heat of her body pressed against me.From rage.Pure, unrelenting fury.The kind that simmered beneath the skin, slow and vicious. The kind that made breathing feel like swallowing shards of glass. The kind that blurred my vision and turned my pulse into something violent.I was furious at everything.At the Alpha King.At Damon.At Ivana.At this cursed castle.At the suffocating politics that ruled this land.At the rotting council that fed on suffering and called it tradition.If I was
Selene’s POV“You didn’t hold me. Not once. You never asked how I was doing. How I felt. What I wanted.”The words left me before I realised I had spoken them.They came out raw.Stripped of politeness.Stripped of diplomacy.Stripped of the careful softness I had been trained to wear like a second skin inside this castle.I slowly shook my head as the memories returned with the sharpness of a blade.“It was always about you,” I continued quietly. “Your title. Your alliances. Your future heir. Your mother. Your reputation.”Damon’s lips parted slightly, his breathing catching as though some apology sat trapped behind his teeth.But before he could speak, I lifted my hand.A silent warning.A boundary he no longer had the right to cross.“I loved you,” I whispered softly.His eyes flickered instantly, wounded by the gentleness in my voice. Because it wasn’t tenderness.It was grief.The ache of mourning every illusion I used to believe in.“When I bonded with you,” I continued, “I thou
Selene’s POVFor a long moment, there was nothing.No sound.No movement.No breath.Only the two of us suspended inside a silence so heavy it felt capable of crushing bone.The air in the chamber was thick, still warm from the steam that had followed me out of the bathroom, yet cold along the edges in the way only ancient pack castle walls could be. Damon sat at the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped forward as though the weight of the Moon Crown, past, present, future, had finally settled onto him all at once. His eyes, usually sharp with Alpha discipline or shadowed by guilt, now looked dark. Hollow. Empty.He was waiting.For an answer.For a truth neither of us had dared speak aloud for six years.And I stood there wrapped in a towel, damp hair clinging to my shoulders, my skin still flushed from the scalding water I had used to erase the evidence of a man who was not my mate.But even beneath the heat, I felt cold.The kind of cold born from years of loneliness.Years of hoping
Selene’s POVMy chest twisted painfully.The truth was too massive to ignore: he was the Alpha King’s eldest son. Duty would always come for him. Bloodlines would always own him. There was no universe where he could burn down the entire pack hierarchy for me. No reality where he could abandon the family that had shaped him into who he was.He couldn’t choose me.Not in the end.Not when everything finally settled.But I didn’t say any of it.I didn’t want him to think I doubted him. I didn’t want to break him apart with a truth he wasn’t ready to face.So I stayed silent.“I’ll see you again,” I whispered softly. “We’ll talk again. I promise.”He looked at me as though the promise itself wounded him.Then he kissed me.A desperate, aching, consuming kiss.One that burned.One that begged.One that spoke every forbidden thing he couldn’t force himself to say aloud.It felt like a beginning…And like the ending of something sacred.When he finally pulled away, my legs felt weak beneath
Selene’s POVTime moved differently when Aric held me.Not slower. Not faster.Just… elsewhere.It was as though the abandoned pack chamber carved out its own pocket in the universe, a sliver of existence untouched by anything beyond its crumbling stone walls. The world outside didn’t just fade, it ceased to matter. The Alpha Council became a distant, irrelevant machine. Ivana’s poisonous words and the crushing burden of the Moon Crown dissolved into nothing. Even Damon, his grief, his desperation, his slow unraveling, felt like a faraway echo I couldn’t afford to hear.There was only Aric.His arms around me.His breath warming the side of my neck.The familiar scent of pinewood and midnight rain clinging to his clothes like armor.I hadn’t realised how starved I had become for safety until the moment he pulled me against him. It was physical, this hunger I’d carried without understanding. The kind that became painfully real the second his body surrounded mine, the second my cheek re
Cassandra’s POVMy body trembled in Arden’s arms, a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill seeping from the stone walls of this forgotten room. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a frantic warning—I shouldn’t be here, in the dark with him, where every shadow could betray us.The palace slept beyond these doors, but danger lingered in every creak, every distant footfall.Richard’s wife. That was what they called me. A title that bound me tighter than any iron chain ever could. And yet here I was, slipping through corridors like a ghost, drawn to Arden as though he were the only light in this suffocating world.His scent reached me first—earthy from the road, laced with that faint, warm spice that always made my knees weaken. It wrapped around me, pulling me under, and my body responded before my mind could stop it.Heat bloomed low in my belly, a traitorous ache pooling between my thighs, urging me closer despite the fear clawing at my throat. And in that quiet press of
Selene’s POVFour moons.That was how long I’d been gone from the packhouse. Four moons since I’d walked out of the Alpha’s wing and left behind the life everyone believed I would crawl back to.And for those four nights, my communicator crystal hadn’t stopped pulsing.Damon called at dawn, dusk, m
Selene’s POVThe moment I stepped into the Bloodmoon Throne Hall, the air shifted.Conversations died mid-sentence. Music stumbled. Wolves who had spent their lives mastering composure forgot how to breathe.For a heartbeat, the entire room—the nobles, the Elders, the ranked wolves, the courtiers—s
Selene’s POVLuna Ivana never broke her promises.And that was the problem. Her promises were never gifts, they were traps, wrapped in silk and sealed with poison.The next morning, she summoned my parents.They arrived with stiff backs and tighter expressions, every step echoing their shame. My f
Selene’s POVThe engine’s low hum filled the night, steady and hollow like a heartbeat in a crypt.“Where to, Luna?” the driver asked, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. His tone was careful—deferential—but I caught the flicker of pity in his eyes.Where to?For the first time in my life,







