The city was always filled with activities at every hour of the day, and the afternoon was no different from the night when chaos really reigned supreme. It wasn’t like Damon’s empire, where order was enforced with power and fear falsely served as respect. No, this city was feral… alive with the kind of chaos that made predators thrive. It was the perfect stage for someone like Draco… a man banished not just by his own bloodline, but by his very nature.His car came to a halt outside the rusted gates of an old warehouse, with its windows broken and walls tattooed with endless graffitis. Two armed men stood guard, peering suspiciously until they recognized the man stepping out of the car. Draco didn’t need introductions, not when he wore his reputation like an evil cloak.He was tall, and powerfully built just like Damon, carrying an aura that instantly silenced laughter, and choked conversation. He could easily force uneasiness into anyone near him, and his cold eyes ha
Draco Grey woke up with a loud yawn, his head sinking into the soft pillowcase, with his hair tousled into disarray. The soft sound of breathing beside him brought his attention to the figure lying across the bed… naked, nameless, and marked by the evidence of a night of reckless partying and sexual frenzy. The woman was beautiful in a fragile kind of way, petite just the way he liked them, with small love marks dotting the succulent skin of her neck. Draco’s lips curled into a slow, dangerous smile as fragments of the previous night’s frenzy crawled back into his mind.He did not remember her name… He never remembered any of their names.A small groan came from her lips as she slept, and he reached over lazily, brushing her cheek with his hand… not with tender affection however, but with the relaxed calmness of a man testing the texture of an object. She flinched a little in her sleep, as if her body was instinctively recoiling from his touch. Draco’s smile widen
By the time the first light of the new day slowly crept out, Damon had still not moved from where he laid in the ruins of the ceremonial grounds… Elena was gone, leaving Damon with nothing but the echo of her howl and the ghost of her touch on his throat when she nearly ended him. He kept on thinking about that moment, over and over again… the look in her eyes when she pulled back. Wild, broken, furious, but alive. Alive enough to choose walking away from him rather than finish him off. Alive enough to leave him tormented with a burning question… ‘Did she spare me because she still feels something… or because killing me wasn’t worth her time?’For years he had lived without doubt or hesitation, always being decisive with his decisions. Yet now he was standing in the ashes of his choices, wallowing in uncertainty. He had marked her… He had tried to shape her with pain and cruelty, convincing himself it was for her own strength. But the mate bond… the one link he thought was
Silence followed after the howl, and for a moment, in a single dangerous moment of relief… Damon dared to believe that his words had reached her. Her eyes had looked into his, making it seem like the storm within her had finally receded back to the abyss from which it had surfaced. The mate mark on her neck was still glowing, but it was softer, holding back her fury and pulling her back from the edge of complete chaos. He moved closer, carefully, as if he was approaching a wounded predator.“Elena,” he whispered again, with his voice carrying a vulnerable tone that was far from his usual Alpha command. “It’s me, Elena. Look at me. Please… it’s me.”She looked at him carefully, her eyes burning straight into his soul as he saw the conflict within her… an aching war of rage and pain being held back by a forced bond. He felt a glimmer of hope in his heart… Maybe, just maybe, this was the turning point. Maybe she would hear him. Maybe the bond was stronger than her pain.But then… Elena t
Her howl rose through the night again, mournful this time, shaking every soul present to their core. It was not merely anger fueling her rampage… It was grief, the pain of every scar, every wound, and every rejection she has ever faced poured into a single, devastating release.“Elena…” Damon whispered in a soft and pleading voice. His heart was aching terribly as he watched her, his eyes blurring with something he had not felt in years… Tears threatening to fall.“Elena…”Her name was like a broken prayer on his lips as he moved forward toward her. The sound of his paws on the rubble was enough to draw her attention to him, and when her head snapped toward him, Damon’s breath completely froze again in his throat.Her eyes were still blazing with unbridled rage and pain, locked onto him like blades, with her lips peeled back into a snarl so bloodthirsty it frightened even him, Alpha that he was.The sound that came from her throat was no ordinary growl, and he knew it. He should have
Another powerful howl tore from Elena, tearing through the night like the splitting of the sky itself. The ground trembled once more, and the trees at the edges of the ceremonial grounds shuddered violently, bowing in fear. Even Damon felt his heart freeze in his chest as the sound pierced him to his very marrow. This was not the cry of a newborn wolf finding her voice… this was the cry of a force that had slept for centuries, now awakened in wrath and possibly driven by vengeance.Damon’s eyes remained locked on her glowing form, lost for words and completely unsure of what to do next. That howl was power, a power that he knew was beyond anything he had ever seen in his entire life as a wolf and an Alpha. He could hardly believe that this was Elena, the woman he had dismissed as wolfless, fragile, weak. Waiting for Nyla's oppression to toughen her up before he decided on what he wanted to do with her. Now here she stood… larger than any Alpha wolf he had ever seen, a storm hidden in