One night stand with a stranger

/Selene's POV/

He always thought of everything except remorse.

After using me, Atlas would send me back to my room and mindlink Veronica that I was done for the day, not out of guilt, not out of any shred of decency, but because he couldn't afford for anyone to smell what he'd done. His secret had to stay buried, and I was the one who carried it.

"Motherf**king rapist," I muttered under my breath the moment I was certain I was out of his hearing range. "Such a waste of his father's sperm."

I got to my room and went straight to the bathroom. I always did this, scrubbed myself like I was trying to wash off more than just his scent.

But tonight, Athena made it harder.

She stirred restlessly while I stood under the water, pressing against the edges of my mind the way she only did after we'd been near him.

"His scent," she whimpered softly. "Don't wash it away."

I scrubbed harder.

I understood her, in the way you understand something you wish you didn't. The bond still recognised him as ours regardless of what he did with it. Athena didn't experience what I experienced fully; she only felt his proximity, his scent, the biological pull the Moon Goddess had stitched into us before either of us had any say in the matter.

"He is not ours," I reminded her, not unkindly. "He chose that. Not us."

She went quiet. But she didn't go away.

My tan skin was flushed red by the time I stepped out, the mirror showing marks I'd learned to stop being angry about. I dressed quickly and pulled my phone from its hiding spot. Nobody in this pack knew it existed, and I intended to keep it that way. If Veronica ever found it, she'd smash it just for the pleasure of watching something of mine break.

I was barely five minutes into scrolling when I heard it, the light, deliberate sound of feet tiptoeing toward my room.

I shoved the phone under the mattress and closed my eyes.

The door opened slowly. Veronica, convinced as always that she was being subtle, peered inside.

I can hear you breathing, you walking, yellow daisy. I still have werewolf hearing even if I can't shift.

"Wake up," she barked, abandoning the pretence. "Atlas won't let anyone else cook for him. You know that. Get up now."

"Okay," I drawled, stretching the word just long enough to make her hiss before she stormed out.

The kitchen was quiet when I got there, which was the only thing that made it bearable. I was still deciding what to make when Mistletoe One appeared in the doorway. I could never remember her actual name and had stopped trying.

"Slavey... Atlas says don't bother tonight. He won't be sleeping in." She pointed at me like I was a dartboard when she said it, which was unnecessary, but then again, so was she.

I didn't even react to being called a slave. I was too busy doing a very enthusiastic internal celebration.

I skipped back to my room, fell onto my bed, and was asleep before I'd fully decided to be.

The nightmare woke me before dawn, as it always did.

I lay there for a moment in the grey half-light, heart still hammering, before I registered that it was Saturday.

My least favourite day of the week.

Saturdays meant everyone was home. Everyone home meant twice the chores, twice the eyes watching, twice the opportunities to make my life unbearable. I dragged myself up and got to work before Veronica could find a reason to stomp on my foot again.

I was mopping the corridor when I heard them, a cluster of girls around the corner, voices low and conspiratorial and thoroughly entertained by whatever they were discussing.

Sex. They were talking about sex.

I slowed my mopping without stopping it entirely, keeping my movements steady while my ears did the actual work. I was bracing myself for something I recognised: the pain, the coldness, the dissociation that had become my only frame of reference.

But that wasn't what they were describing at all.

Pleasurable. One of them actually used that word. Another laughed about a recent encounter with the kind of ease that suggested it was something she'd chosen freely and enjoyed thoroughly. A third mentioned a club, Expensive, and their plans for that night.

I stood there after they moved on, mop in hand, genuinely unsettled.

Is that what it's supposed to feel like?

The question sat in my chest for the rest of the afternoon. I turned it over while I scrubbed and swept and pretended to be exactly what everyone in this pack believed I was. But underneath the performance, something had quietly made up its mind.

I was going to that club tonight. And I was going to find out for myself.

Athena stirred at that decision, a low, reluctant sound somewhere behind my ribs. Not quite a protest. More like a reminder.

"Atlas," she murmured.

I knew what she meant. The bond. His claim, however broken and one-sided. The biological loyalty she couldn't switch off, even when she wanted to.

I paused. Considered it. Thought about every night I had spent going somewhere else inside my own head just to survive what he did to me.

Has he ever considered us?

The answer arrived before the question finished forming.

I kept walking.

The biggest obstacle, of course, was making sure Atlas couldn't summon me while I was gone.

Sleeping pills.

The thought arrived cleanly. The execution took slightly longer. I wasn't going to be sent on any errands, and I couldn't exactly walk into a pharmacy. But then a very specific yellow dress floated through my mind.

Veronica. Highly insomniac. Her pills would be strong enough to floor a horse, let alone one arrogant Alpha heir.

I waited until I heard her leave for the market, then moved quickly. Her room was unlocked, she never worried about me stealing because she never believed I had the nerve, and the pill bottle sat right there on her dressing table like it had been waiting for me.

I took five, tucked them into my bra, and was back in my room before anyone noticed I'd moved.

That evening, I cooked for Atlas. Fish and chips, per Veronica's gracious instruction, and endured her stomping on my foot for the crime of arriving thirty seconds late. I stood at the stove, thought about the knife in my hand and the back of her head, and decided I valued my pathetic future more than that particular satisfaction.

On my way to his room, I stopped at a corner and stood very still for a moment, heart hammering. I had crushed the pills earlier and mixed them into the flour coating, the same way he always liked his fish prepared, hoping the strong seasoning would mask everything else. I brought the plate close and inhaled carefully.

Nothing. Just fish and spice and the faint sweetness of the wine.

I released the breath I'd been holding and walked the rest of the way. He was still in the bathroom when I set everything down. I left without making a sound, keeping my footsteps deliberate and unhurried even as every instinct screamed at me to run.

Back in my room, I pressed my ear to the door and waited.

Silence from the end of the corridor. Then, after what felt like an hour but was probably twenty minutes, nothing at all.

I exhaled slowly. Locked my door. And finally let myself smile.

I didn't know much about makeup. I curled my blonde hair, applied mascara, shaped my brows, and swiped on a clear gloss. I found the burgundy dress I'd rescued from the bin weeks ago not knowing why I was keeping it. Now I knew.

At eleven I slipped out of the pack house the way the girls had described. Quietly, carefully, without looking back.

The night air hit me like something I hadn't been allowed to have.

I flagged down a cab on the main road, gave the driver the name of the club, and spent the entire ride assembling what was left of my courage into something that resembled a plan.

"ID?" the curly-haired bouncer asked flatly.

I let my face do the work, a quiet sniffle, eyes downcast, the universal signal of a girl having a terrible night.

"Boy problems," the larger one said to his colleague. Then to me: "Go ahead. Just this once."

"Thank you," I whispered, in a small voice I didn't know I owned.

Inside, the music was a physical thing, pressing against my eardrums, vibrating in my chest. I kept my sensitive hearing partially muted and pushed through the crowd of sweaty, glistening bodies until I reached the bar.

"Two glasses of your strongest," I told the bartender, setting down a ten-dollar bill before he could flirt his way through the order.

The alcohol burned going down. I welcomed it.

The third drink was where things began to soften at the edges.

By the fourth, the lights had blurred into something warm and impressionistic, and the music felt less like noise and more like permission. I danced. Properly danced, for the first time in what might have been years, without thinking about who was watching or what it might cost me.

Someone grabbed my waist. I pushed him off. He looked like he wanted to argue until something behind me apparently changed his mind and he disappeared without another word.

I turned to see what had scared him, and that was when I felt it.

Not the treacherous warmth I associated with Atlas. Not the curdling shame that always followed it. This was something else entirely. Something that started quietly and spread slowly, like sunlight easing through a window rather than a fire you hadn't consented to.

He was tall. That was what I registered first through the pleasant haze of alcohol and moving lights. Tall, and still, and looking at me with an expression I didn't have the vocabulary for, because nobody had ever looked at me that way before. Like I was something worth being careful with.

Athena, who had been dormant all evening, went very still inside me.

Then, softly, almost carefully whispered,

Him.

Just that. One word from a wolf who barely spoke anymore. Not the desperate grasping she did around Atlas, not the reluctant biological pull of a wound that refused to fully close. This was different. This felt like recognition rather than compulsion. Like something settling into place rather than tearing itself apart.

I reached for his hand before I'd consciously decided to. He looked down at our joined hands, then back up at me, and something in his expression shifted into something warmer. Gentler.

He understood. He didn't push. He simply stayed.

What followed came to me in warm, unhurried fragments, his laugh, low and unguarded. The way he kept checking that I was still present, still willing, still there with him. The way my body, for once, didn't feel like a place I needed to escape from as he dragged me to his hotel room.

I stayed entirely, unexpectedly, here. Moaning through the haze of pleasure as he made love to me. My mind was fully present in a way I hadn't been in longer than I could remember.

I woke to softness.

That was the first thing I noticed, the sheets were soft in a way that my floor and my soaked mattress never were. I lay still for a moment, just breathing it in, before the rest of my situation began arriving in pieces.

Tattooed arm draped loosely over my waist. My own bare shoulder. The steady warmth of someone sleeping beside me, not the cold transactional silence that followed Atlas, but the easy, unguarded sleep of someone who had nothing to be ashamed of.

The soreness I felt was different, too. Not the kind that made me want to scrub my skin off. Just the quiet physical evidence of something that had, apparently, been what it was supposed to be.

Athena stirred gently, turning her attention toward the man beside me, the way a flower turns sunlight without thinking.

Ours, she murmured.

And for once, there was no conflict underneath it. No shame chasing the word, no guilt tangled through it. Just quiet, wondering certainty from a wolf who had spent months whimpering over a man who didn't want us.

This felt nothing like that.

I ignored her anyway. I had bigger problems.

I turned slowly toward the curtain.

Daylight. Full, bright, unforgiving daylight pressing hard through the gap.

"F**k," I breathed.