CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ALPHA’S ACHILLES

LUCIEN

I didn't sleep. Well, not really.

How could I, when the very air in this cramped box of an apartment was saturated with her?

Ariana was a chaotic heat source pressed against my chest. Her heartbeat was a frantic yet rhythmic drum that seemed to sync with my own pulse against my will.

My arm was locked around her waist, anchoring her to me as if she might evaporate the moment I let go.

The humiliating truth? I... needed it.

The relentless energy that had been shredding my insides since that first kiss finally went quiet the moment our skin made contact.

It was like being a dying man finally finding a lung-full of oxygen. I was a pure-blood Alpha who didn't bow to the moon, yet here I was, playing the role of a human heater for a girl who had prayed for my indigestion.

When her eyes finally fluttered open, I felt the change instantly. Her scent sharpened. The vanilla and ozone were immediately replaced by the sour tang of realization.

She froze.

I watched the back of her head, sensing the exact second her brain cycled from "Where am I?" To "Oh god, the monster is still here."

I nearly chuckled.

She tried to pull away, but I didn't let her. Not yet. I wanted to feel that spark of defiance one last time before the day reclaimed us.

“Mr. Black... Mr. Black!” she hissed, her voice tight with rising panic. “Damien!”

I let go, then, rolling back with a smirk that felt like armour. “Was it so hard to call my name, rabbit?”

She didn't answer, but her face was blotched red with embarrassment and shock.

She scrambled out of bed as if the mattress were on fire. I sat up, calmly adjusting my cuffs and knotting my tie.

I could have woken her hours ago, but there was something morbidly fascinating about watching her sleep. She was peaceful, for once, and not trying to verbally disembowel me.

Ten minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom in a sharp black pantsuit. She pinned her hair up and grabbed her bag, her eyes darting everywhere but at me.

We didn't speak. The silence was thick and charged with the lingering ghost of the heat we’d shared under the covers.

The drive to the office was worse. As we approached the headquarters, she suddenly became a twitching mess of paranoia...or was it anxiety...I couldn't quite place it.

“Garage! Garage!” she yelled, ducking her head so low that she was practically under the dashboard when I slowed down near the front entrance.

“You even know how to bargain,” I mused, steering the obsidian sedan into the underground lot.

The second I parked, she was gone. She didn't look back, disappearing toward the elevators with a pace that suggested she was fleeing a crime scene.

I watched her go, and for a split second, a flutter of genuine panic rose in my chest. My wolf clawed at my ribs, howling at the distance growing between us.

But it wasn't as bad as yesterday. The night of contact had done something to me. I felt...recharged. I was calm. I was in control. Or so I told myself.

I drove home, the silence of my own car feeling strangely hollow now. When I walked into the Blackthorne estate, my mother was already there, pacing the living room like a vulture waiting for a carcass.

“Where is she?” she demanded, peering behind me with a look of profound disappointment.

“Who?” I asked, moving past her.

She shuffled closer, her nose wrinkling as she circled me. “You dare ask who, when her scent is clinging to your skin like a second suit? You slept there, didn't you?”

I didn't give her the satisfaction of a reply. I walked into my room and shut the door on her muffled huffs of indignation.

I had more pressing problems than my mother’s matchmaking obsession.

I pulled out my phone out of my pocket and dialled the one person who dealt in the impossible.

“Seth. Get here. Now.”

“You look like you’ve been starved, Lucien,” Seth remarked an hour later, watching me devour a steak in the dining room. The staff had already bowed out, murmuring their greetings to the ‘Oracle’ before fleeing the room.

“I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours,” I grunted. “I was busy, and then... the woman refused to feed me.”

Seth burst into a hollow, mocking laughter, taking the seat across from me. “Someone actually dared to starve the King? She’s either very brave or very stupid.”

“Brave,” I muttered. Ariana’s face flashed in my mind. The way she’d stood her ground in that red suit, the way she’d looked at me in the dark.

A fresh wave of agitation surged through me, making my fork scrape harshly against the fine china.

“What is wrong with you?” Seth’s smile faded. He was an Oracle for a reason; he could smell the instability coming off me in waves.

“That’s why you’re here. I lost control in the office yesterday. I almost shifted in front of her.”

Seth’s face tightened. “On purpose?”

“No. It was like being a yearling at a full moon. Ever since that kiss, my energy has been a wreck. I can hear her heartbeat from a mile away. I’m locked onto her, Seth. When she’s close, the energy builds until I’m vibrating. But when I touch her...”

My voice trailed off, the memory of her skin beneath mine making my jaw clench and my heartbeat quicken.

“When I touch her, it all goes quiet. I stayed with her all night just to stop the shaking.”

Seth went silent, his brow furrowed in deep thought. He’d lived through decades of wolf lore, but I could tell this was new territory.

“Locked heartbeats... energy that calms with contact... It sounds like a beta wolf in heat, Lucien, but you’re a pure-blood Alpha. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“I’m like a machine that needs a recharge,” I said, the words tasting like ash. “She has a level of control over me that is dangerous. I thought about getting rid of her.”

“And?”

I looked at him, knowing he'd find my resistance to kill absurd. But to hell, it wasn't just a resistance!

“The mere thought felt like a death sentence,” I admitted.

Seth stood up, his expression solemn. “Can I pass my energy through you? I need to see the flow.”

I froze, my gaze turning lethal. “You know what you’re asking, Oracle. To let another’s energy into my core... it’s taboo. It’s a violation of the pack.”

“If I make a mistake, I’m dead. I know,” Seth said quietly, his eyes dark and serious.

I sat back with a sigh, my heart thudding a heavy, warning beat. I nodded once, and Seth moved behind me, his hand coming to rest between my shoulder blades.

I felt his energy gather like a cool, probing mist in my spine.

He took a deep breath, but something went wrong.

Suddenly, a violent jolt of white-hot power erupted from my stomach and my core.

My eyes tore open. It wasn't my strength or energy. It was a barrier. An ancient, golden, and utterly unyielding.

Seth was thrown back like a feather, his boots skidding across the floor as he gasped from the backlash.

He looked at me, his eyes wide with a mix of awe and terror.

“Lucien,” he breathed, clutching his chest. “It’s not a curse. And it’s not a recharge.”

I stared at him, my pulse racing. “Then what is it?”

Seth swallowed hard, his voice barely a whisper. “The barrier... it didn't just reject me. It claimed you. You’re bound, Lucien. She isn't just a girl. She’s your fated mate.”

The fork in my hand snapped in two.