Chapter 23: Blood on the Sheets

Natalia POV

The silver blood on my upper lip tasted like copper and cold mountain water.

Reymond didn't move for two seconds. He stayed on his knees, staring at the drop as it ran down my chin, his face completely drained of colour. Then he scrambled up off the stone floor, his broad hands catching my shoulders before my knees could give out entirely.

"Don't touch me," I snapped, leaning back against the edge of the table.

"Natalia, you're bleeding."

"I can feel it," I said, wiping my chin with the back of my sleeve. The smear left a faint, luminescent streak against the grey wool. "I've been feeling it since the broadcast. Every time I draw a breath, it feels like someone is pulling a thin wire out of my lungs."

"The bond is feeding," Reymond said flatly. He didn't try to touch me again, but he stayed close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body. "When the council leader forced the ultimatum, your blood activated the defence protocol. My wolf took the energy to heal my chest. It took it from you."

"Then turn it off."

"I can't." He looked down at his own hands, his knuckles raw and bruised from the courtyard fight. "It's an ancient Walker blood seal. It doesn't have a pressure valve. The only way it stops taking is if the host stabilizes the current, or if one of us dies."

I let out a harsh laugh that turned into a cough, wiping another drop of silver from my nose. "Convenient. So if I don't give you what you want, my own body burns itself out to keep you standing."

"That isn't what I want," Reymond growled softly, the gravel returning to his tone, though it lacked its usual sharp edge. "I didn't design the contract to drain you."

"No, your father did," I said, pushing past him toward the heavy double doors that led out of the great hall. "And you just inherited the dividend."

"Where are you going?"

"To my room. Where nobody is trying to bleed me dry for the northern territory."

He didn't follow me down the hallway, but I could hear his heavy, measured tread fifty paces behind me all the way to the master wing. He didn't offer to help me up the spiral stone stairs, and I didn't ask. Every step felt like walking through wet cement. The silver light under my skin wasn't glowing brightly anymore; it was pulsing in low, dull throbbed intervals, synchronized with the heavy pounding in my ears.

I shoved the bedchamber door open, stepped inside, and tried to slam it behind me.

Reymond’s boot caught the frame before it could latch. He pushed his way into the room, turning the iron key in the lock with a sharp clack. He tossed the heavy iron ring straight into the burning grate of the hearth.

The metal hit the red coals with a dull clink.

I turned around, my back hitting the carved wooden post of the four-poster bed. "What do you think you're doing?"

"You're not sleeping alone tonight," Reymond said. He unbuckled his tactical shoulder holster, letting the leather straps and his heavy sidearm drop onto the floorboards with a thud. He started unbuttoning his shredded dark shirt, his hair messier than I’d ever seen it. "If the bond pulls from you while your pulse drops during sleep, you won't wake up."

"So what's your plan? Stand over my bed like a guard dog?"

"No," he said, pulling the ruined shirt over his head and tossing it aside. The dark claw marks across his ribs were already half-healed, smooth pink tissue closing over raw meat—paid for by the blood currently dripping down my chin. "If the current is starving, we feed it properly. We don't let it leach off your life force through a broken seal."

He walked straight toward me, his heavy chest heaving, his silver eyes completely stripped of the cold, calculated Alpha mask he wore down in the hall.

"If the Council wants your blood, Natalia," he murmured, his hands coming up to cup the sides of my jaw, his thumb wiping away the last trace of blood from my lip, "they will have to taste mine on your lips first."

The heat of his palm hit my freezing skin like a match dropped on dry grass. The wire pulled tight in my chest, but this time, it didn't feel like a leak. It felt like a floodgate opening from both sides.

"You lied to me for seven years," I whispered, holding his gaze even as my fingers reached out on their own, clutching the rough material of his trousers.

"I know."

"You took my choice."

"I did."

"I hate you for it," I said, pulling him down until his forehead rested against mine.

"I know," Reymond breathed against my mouth. "Prove it."

I didn't give him the satisfaction of waiting for a gentle permission. I grabbed the front of his waistband and yanked him into me, my lips locking onto his with a fierce, punishing weight. He let out a low, guttural sound in the back of his throat, his broad arms wrapping around my waist and lifting me clean off the floor.

My boots hit the edge of the mattress, and then we were down on the heavy velvet spread, the heavy oak frame groaning under our weight.

There was no polite lingering, no slow negotiation of layers. The threat outside the walls, the betrayal in the great hall, the cold air whistling through the stone windows, all of it vanished behind the sudden, overwhelming fever of the bond.

Reymond’s hands were rough, urgent, and precise. He tore the fine linen of my shirt straight down the seam, his mouth trailing down from my jaw to the exposed curve of my throat where his bite mark was still deep and purple. He didn't bite down, but the pressure of his lips against the mark made the silver light under my skin flare to life, blinding and white-hot.

"Look at me," he commanded, his voice dark and thick as he pressed his body flush against mine.

I opened my eyes. The room was spinning, lit only by the orange glow of the hearth and the silver light spilling out of our own veins.

"You want your agency back, Princess?" Reymond rasped, his fingers tangling in my hair, pulling my head back just enough to expose the pulse beating wildly at the base of my neck. "Take it. Command me. Tell me to stop, and I'll step out that window into the snow."

"Don't you dare stop," I snarled, rolling my hips up against his, driving my nails into the hard muscles of his back until I felt his skin break beneath my hands.

He didn't flinch at the pain. He welcomed it., as he stripped of my clothes, and so i did to his pants.

His cock stood firm and hard.

When he drove into me, it wasn't a soft re-entry into the relationship. It was a raw, territorial collision. The parasitic drain instantly reversed its direction; instead of a cold wire pulling power out of my lungs, a thick, molten current of Reymond’s own Alpha energy slammed back through the blood seal, filling the hollow ache in my ribs with terrifying speed.

I gasped, my back arching off the silk sheets as the sheer sensory overload took over. Every touch was magnified tenfold. I could feel the rough calluses on his hands, the steady, violent thud of his heart against my chest, and the deep, possessive roar of his wolf echoing beneath his skin.

Reymond didn't hold back. His pace was relentless, heavy, and grounding, driving us deeper into the mattress with every stroke. He pulled my hips wide, his thumb digging into my pussy, he rubbed his two fingers gently, as he pushed and pulled out precisely.

At a moment i could not resist, my mind was already over powered. And getting too wet

"Mine," he growled into the hollow of my neck, his breath hot against my ear as his movements grew faster, harder, completely unhinged from his usual iron discipline. "Say it, Natalia. Tell me who owns this blood."

"It's my blood," I panted, clutching his wet shoulders, dragging him down until my teeth caught the tender muscle between his neck and shoulder, biting down hard enough to taste the hot metallic tang of his skin. "My blood. My terms."

He let out a raspy groan, his hips snapping forward with a final, overwhelming force that shattered what was left of my control.

The silver light exploded behind my eyes. The blood seal burned like a branding iron against my collarbone, but the cold weakness was completely gone, replaced by a roaring, intoxicating heat that left me gasping for air as the room dissolved into pure physical friction and noise.

When the storm finally subsided, the quiet in the bedchamber was absolute, save for the heavy, ragged sound of our breathing.

Reymond remained collapsed on top of me, his heavy head rested in the crook of my neck, his body slick with sweat. His hand was still locked tightly around mine, our fingers intertwined against the dark velvet pillow.

I lay there in the dark, watching the embers in the hearth die down into grey ash. The nosebleed had stopped. My chest didn't ache anymore. The power in my blood felt steady, dense, and fully anchored to the man lying across my lap.

Slowly, Reymond shifted his weight, pushing himself up on one elbow. He looked down at me, his silver eyes dark and shadowed in the fading light. He reached up, his thumb gently tracing the line of my lower lip, which was bruised and swollen from his mouth.

"You're stable," he said quietly.

"I am," I replied, my voice raspy.

He didn't move away. He stayed right where he was, his weight pressing down on me, his claim clear and absolute. But when I looked at his face, I didn't see the victorious Alpha who had won a battle. I saw a man who knew he had chained himself to the flame he was trying to contain.

Beside the bed, buried beneath his discarded leather holster and my torn shirt, his tactical radio crackled to life with a burst of harsh static.

"Alpha," Mauris’s voice cut through the quiet room, sounding small and distant. "The Southern Council envoy just crossed the lower perimeter bridge. But he isn't heading for Geneva. He’s taking the mountain road straight to your father’s old estate."

Reymond’s eyes narrowed, all the lingering warmth from our flesh evaporating instantly into ice. He didn't look away from me as he reached over the side of the bed and snatched the radio off the floor.

"Why?" Reymond asked flatly.

"Because, Alpha..." Mauris hesitated, the static hum filling the pause. "The envoy just radioed the border gate. He claims he has an order signed by your late father, authorizing the immediate opening of the deep vault beneath the estate."