LOGINRosalie’s POVMy throat went dry. I had slipped.The truth was far heavier than he knew. Alpha Eric was fully aware of my brilliance; he knew I was a prodigy with numbers and data patterns. That was exactly why he had forced me into the shadows of the pack house in the first place—to exploit me. For years, he had locked me in his private office, forcing me to audit his secret financial ledgers, untangle corrupted supply lines, and map out the logistics of his territory. He used my brain to perfect his empire, but to keep the pack from realizing a female possessed that kind of invaluable strategic power, he stripped me of all credit. He forced me to wear the rags of a low-ranking servant by day, hiding my worth so he could keep me entirely under his thumb as his private, unacknowledged tool. If any other Alpha discovered what I could do with data, I would have been stolen away as a war prize or a breeding pawn.But I couldn't let Dominic know any of that."I kept
Rosalie’s POVThe harsh morning light cut through the gaps in the heavy velvet curtains like the blade of a fresh silver dagger, slicing across the master mattress and forcing my eyes open.My first instinct was the scent. Mint, cedar, and the heavy, metallic tang of an ancient, suffocating power.I was still pinned against Dominic’s chest. The massive, unyielding furnace of his body had radiated heat into my frozen spine throughout the entire night, keeping the lethal frost of the Moonshade toxin from permanently locking down my wolf core.A sudden, sharp wave of reality hit my brain, and the fragile peace of our midnight confessions dissolved instantly. This was the man who had choked me in the mud yesterday. This was the tyrant who had locked the iron chains around my wrists until the flesh tore.Furious at the sudden, involuntary wave of comfort my body had found in his arms, I gritted my teeth and threw my weight forward, trying to aggressively push awa
Dominic's POVThe embers in the grand hearth were burning down to a deep, bleeding crimson, casting long, fractured shadows across the ceiling of the master bedroom. It was three in the morning. The room was deathly quiet, save for the frantic, erratic rhythm of my heart beating against her back.Rosalie was fully conscious now, her skin absorbing my heat, but her mind was already clawing its way back to the defensive. I felt the subtle, sharp tension in her muscles as she tried to create a single inch of distance between us under the heavy wolf furs."Are you holding onto me so tightly because you're afraid I'll slip out of your arms and run away again?" she whispered into the dark, her voice trembling but laced with a deliberate, mocking edge. "Don't worry. This time I won't steal anything important. Maybe just some clothes and some cash for the road."My jaw tightened against her hair. "Stop trying to incriminate yourself on purpose.""You want to hear th
Dominic’s POVI didn't bat an eye as she fell silent, but beneath the surface, my mind was racing through a labyrinth of her contradictions. I still couldn’t decide if she was hiding a master thief behind a victim's mask, or if this fractured reality was truly her.Usually, my instincts as an Alpha King were flawless. They had never failed me. And the very first time I had looked at Rosalie, my baseline instinct hadn't been to see an enemy—it was that she was an abused girl, a fragile soul forced into my territory against her will, wanting absolutely nothing to do with being my Luna or being near me. I had genuinely believed that.That was why the intercepted phone call had completely thrown me off. Hearing her speak of a plan had made me think she faked every single thing. But then, the memory of her getting poisoned right after she became my Luna flashed through my head—she had hallucinated her trauma of abuse in front of me. She couldn't have faked that. The terror
Dominic’s POVThe mechanical detachment I had forced upon my mind over the last fourteen hours disintegrated in a single, catastrophic heartbeat.Under my palm, her skin wasn’t burning with the righteous fury of a trapped mastermind. It wasn’t hot with the fever of a infected wound. It was marble. It was a stagnant, radiating frost that leaked into my bones, a terrifying, lifeless chill that made my wolf instantly let out a sharp, frantic whine of pure, unadulterated terror.The heavy iron chains weren’t rattling because she was bracing herself for my next strike. They were vibrating because her fragile frame was caught in the grip of a violent, erratic tremor, her teeth clicking together so hard the sound echoed off the stone headboard. Her breathing was a series of shallow, fractured gasps, her chest barely rising beneath my hand.“Rosalie?” My voice didn’t sound like a king’s. It was raw, cracked, and punctured by a sudden, suffocating panic that clawed at my
Dominic’s POVThe heavy oak door handle was cold beneath my palm, just a fraction of an inch from locking into place. I had delivered my ultimatum. I had left her wired, shivering, and suspended over the razor-edge of an unfulfilled peak, confident that the cold mechanical reality of her captivity would finally force her brilliant, calculating mind to fracture. I had told her to burn. I had reestablished the boundary between master and captive, reminding her that her razor-sharp tongue had no power against the structural walls of my kingdom.Then, her voice cut through the quiet vault of the master suite like a razor blade slicing through raw canvas.*”Fuck you…”*My fingers froze against the polished brass. A sudden, violent spike of adrenaline hit my bloodstream, turning my vision sharp at the edges. My wolf, a beast that had spent a lifetime watching grown warriors drop to their knees in absolute, trembling submission, let out a low, dangerous vibration agains







