CHAPTER 6 - The Alpha’s Command

ELARA'S POV 

I woke up, my breath caught in my throat. The sheets beneath me were damped with sweat, my skin was warm and sticky. For a moment, I didn't even know where I was anymore but the ache between my thighs immediately reminded me. Light night hadn't been a dream. He'd taken me. Again.

At this point, I didn't feel this was for me being his breeder but his pleasure and dominance.

But something felt…. different.

The pain wasn't as sharp. My muscles didn't scream when I moved and my body felt as if it had begun to heal overnight. Too quickly. 

My fingers drifted down to the bruises I knew were there, but they'd already faded.

My wolf stirred faintly in my chest. It was the first time in days she’d moved.

I blinked forward at the door as it opened with a soft creak. Leah entered, arms full of folded towels and a shallow bowl of steaming water. Her steps were careful and deliberate and for the first time, she really didn't meet my gaze no matter how I tried to make her look at me.

What's wrong with everyone in this place!

She looked afraid.

“Leah?” My voice cracked. “What’s wrong?”

She said nothing for a moment as she knelt beside the bed, preparing oils and clothes. “You need to be clean. And calm. He’s summoned you.”

“Summon me?” I sat up slowly. “Why does that sound worse than usual?”

Leah’s hands shook as she reached for a bottle of perfume. “Because tonight… it’s his chambers. Not the breeder wing.”

My breath caught.

“He’s never… before—”

“I know. I don't know why but he has never brought any woman into his chambers,” she dipped a cloth into the water and began gently wiping my skin, her movements too soft and maybe a little too precise.

“Two guards were punished this morning. For looking at your door too long. One's in the infirmary.”

My eyes widened in shock and my stomach twisted. “He’s watching me closely now?” 

“More than you know,” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Don't speak unless spoken to. Don't challenge him. Just… let him do what he wants.”

“What he wants,” I scoffed. This was unbelievable! Even if I was his breeder, I am also a human!

“I don't want to go,” I told her, folding my arms.

“I know,” Leah murmured, rinsing the cloth. “But you will.”

She bathed me in silence, the scent of rosewater and lavender thick in the air. Then she helped me into a barely-there gown, sheer silk that clung to my skin like mist. My wrists were circled in golden cuffs, lighter than the silver, but no less symbolic.

I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the girl staring back.

When the guards arrived, they didn’t speak. One merely gestured for me to follow.

We walked in silence through Kael’s private wing. The halls here were different, quieter, darker, colder. Servants bowed as we passed, but none looked me in the eye.

I was no longer just the breeder, tonight, I was something else entirely.

And I wasn’t sure what was worse.

The heavy doors groaned shit behind me. I watched Kael stand by the window, his back to me, framed in silver light. One hand rested on the glass and the other around a half-filled tumbler of dark liquor. He didn't turn when I entered and also didn't speak.

But I was sure he knew I was there.

The silence coiled around us like a living thing, pressing against my skin and making the sheer skin of my gown feel even thinner. I stayed near the entrance, refusing to move closer. I didn't care if this was his room. If I had to be here, I'd come on my own terms.

Then his voice came, low and cold.

“Come here.”

Two words. Sharp. Clean and commanding.

And yet… my legs moved.

I hated that. I hated how my body listened to him even when my mind screamed no! But I wasn't afraid. I was burning, angry and embarrassed. Stripped of dignity and still somehow needing something I didn't want to name.

I stepped forward slowly until only a few feet separated us. He turned at last, eyes meeting mine.

Stormy. Cold. Unreadable.

And yet, hungry.

I could sense he had been upset by something before I came in and that was why he was acting more cold than usual. His gaze didn't wander lazily, it was consuming. He looked at me like he was trying to decide which part of me to test first. My throat tightened, but I refused to look away. If he wanted obedience, he could drag it out of me this time.

He stepped forward, closing the space between us in two slow, precise strides. I didn’t back down.

His fingers brushed my wrist, running lightly over the golden cuffs. He didn’t ask. Didn’t say anything. I just reached for the thin strap on my shoulder and pulled it down. My breath caught as silk slid down my arm.

Then the other strap followed.

The gown pooled around my feet in a soft sigh of fabric.

I stood bare before him, naked, flushed and trembling. He stepped into me and I felt it again, that tension and something I wanted to give into badly. The need I really wanted to deny.

His hand curled around my waist, drawing me close. The other moved up my spine, slow and possessive. His mouth grazed my collarbone, his breath hot and uneven. My lips parted, ready to say something, to curse him or challenge him, but no words came.

He swept me into his arms like I weighed nothing, carrying me to the bed and lowering me onto the mattress with infuriating care.

This wasn’t like last time.

Still rough in how he took control, but this time, it was slower. Hungrier. His hands weren’t violent; they were intentional. Studying, searching and learning. He didn’t speak,  just touched the outline of my jaw, the slope of my shoulder, the center of my chest, as if trying to read a story written on my skin.

And my body… responded.

My breath quickened. My fingers clutched the sheets. I hated how each brush of his fingertips set my nerves alight. I hated the way my heart betrayed me, thudding harder with each second he hovered above me.

Instead, Kael leaned down until his forehead touched mine, his breath shallow and uneven. One hand rested over my racing beating, the other cradled the side of my face like he needed to ground himself or me.

I felt suspended, held in some place between surrender and defiance.

He whispered nothing. Demanded nothing.

He only looked at me.

And that… unsettled me more than anything.

This wasn’t love. It wasn’t tender. It was command and silence. But underneath it, there was something else, something I didn’t yet understand.

And I was terrified that I wanted to understand it.