MasukRaina's POV
Just on that last inch for our lips to lock into each other, Alpha Lucien abruptly stood up real quick and then shoved my hands off instantly.
I stumbled back slightly in the chair, caught completely off guard. As much as I know, the charm was supposed to have him. It was supposed to have locked in the moment I blew it into his face, just the way old and strong curse didn't leave room for resistance. And yet he was standing there above me
Lara's POVThe way Lucien was taking all of this so personally told me he was definitely up to something. And I needed to get out of whatever feeling he was trying so hard to put me in before it swallowed me completely.So I bit his lip. For the second time.He pulled back immediately, and before he could register what came next, my hand was already moving. The slap connected hard — hard enough that his face turned to the side from the force of it, and the sound of it in that small room was something neither of us was going to pretend we hadn't heard."Fucking asshole." I said it directly at him, not lowering my voice for anything.He touched the side of his face. Then he looked back at me, and — of all things — he chuckled."Oh, Lara." The sound of it was low and almost amused, which was somehow more infuriating than if he had been angry. "
Beta Draven's POVI don't think I was going to stop until I got this door open.That was the decision I had arrived at somewhere between the second and third time my knocking went unanswered. Not a rational decision, not something I had talked myself into — just a certainty that settled in my chest the way certainty does when the instinct behind it is too strong to argue with.I had seen her walk out of the main hall with him. I had watched it happen and given her the signal she asked for — *stand down, I have this* — and I had stood down because Alpha Lara had not once in six years asked me to hold back when she did not mean it. She knew what she was doing and she communicated clearly. That was who she was.But she had been in there a long time now. And the door was locked. And she was not answering.From the other side of the door, I could hear things — faint, indistinct, nothing I could pick apart into individual words or voices, but enough to know that there was sound. Enough to k
Lara's POVFor a second, I quickly separated my lips from his to confirm what I was feeling.Because it wasn't something I could explain away as a moment or a reaction or six years of unfinished business finally finding a surface to land on. It was something else. Something specific and unmistakable, the kind of thing your wolf recognises before you do — before your brain has caught up, before you have given it permission.I looked at our hands. Still linked. His fingers around mine.And the bond was right there. Visible in the way that things between destined mates become visible when both wolves are present — a faint luminescence where our skin met, warm and certain and completely unbothered by my feelings about it.*Lucien is my destined mate?* The thought moved through me and I genuinely did not know where to put it. *How is this possible?*I
Lara's POV"Really?" He replied and advanced toward me again, like my warning had simply not registered. "Nothing to say to me for real?"If I wasn't sure of anything at that point, I was at least sure of that — I was not intimidated by his words or the way he was closing the distance between us like he had every right to."Yeah, nothing." I said it with all the boldness I had walked into this building with. "What is there to possibly talk—"He interrupted me mid-sentence."How about this?" He paused and then pointed his right fingers directly at me, like he was building a case. "How did you become the Moonshade clan's new Alpha?" He tilted his head slightly. "You really owe me a lot of explanation, more than you think."And then, the way he moved — that slow, deliberate step forward that had always been specifically designed to get inside a
Raina's POV"Mr. Rylan!" Kane called out the moment the chairman got close enough to hear him, straightening himself up like a man who believed he was about to receive backup. "These two imposters were posing as the Alpha and Beta of the Moonshade clan." He gestured toward Lara and Draven with the confidence of someone who had not for one second questioned whether he was about to make the worst mistake of his career. "But don't worry, I was just about to apprehend them before you got in here."The chairman looked at him.And then he slapped him.The sound of it filled the immediate space around us — clean and sharp, the kind that made heads turn even from a distance. And before Kane had even fully processed the first one, Mr. Rylan slapped him on the other cheek without pausing, not even for a second, like he had already decided how many were necessary and was simply delivering them efficiently
Lara's POV"Mr. Kane." Raina's voice came through immediately, sharp and pointed, directed at the council assistant who had just arrived at our spot like someone had summoned him on cue. She pointed her finger directly at me. "Well, it's her. She's the one who is impersonating the Alpha."I looked at Kane steadily. "You are Rylan's assistant."He straightened up as if the words had personally offended him. "You think that you are on a first name basis with the chairman?" He let out a short, disbelieving sound. "Unbelievable." Then he turned to his guards standing just behind him and gave the instruction without even looking back at me. "Take this woman away, right now."They started moving toward me.I raised one finger before any of them got within arm's reach of me, and the calmness in my own voice surprised even me. "I don't know if you are blind or if you just chose to be stu
Lara's POVBy the time the nurse was satisfied that I was steady enough to be left alone, I had pulled myself together enough to look like a functioning person. Breathing was even and my hands had stopped shaking. The face in the small mirror above the sink looked tired but held together.That was
Lara's POVI moved out to the corridors, and guess what?Alpha Lucien was right there, placing a lady into a wheelchair that one of the nurses had just wheeled over — on his instruction, obviously, since that was what all the urgency had been about… The emergency. The ‘quick, I need a doctor.’ That
Lara's POVI didn't waste a single second after that call.I threw on the first decent outfit I could find, grabbed my bag, and was out the door before the thought of breakfast even crossed my mind. Whatever was in that hospital report wasn't something I was going to sit at home and stare at the ce
Lara's POV"Lucien, mark me."I moaned the words like a prayer I had been holding back for five years, helpless and wanting as we were both soaked from the shower. I had woken up from sleep and come to him in my nightwear — the thin kind that could be pulled off with one hand — and somehow we had e







