Chapter 5

~ Mira’s POV ~

Three.

Not one. Not two.

**Three.**

The number echoed inside my skull. I didn’t move, I just couldn’t. My heels felt soldered to the polished ballroom floor, and the champagne flute in my hand was the only thing keeping my fingers from trembling visibly.

Their scents hit me first.

From my left was cedar and dark smoke, ancient and heavy, like a forest that had never once known daylight. The kind of scent that draped over your skin and stayed there.

From behind was wild earth, the scent of storms born in open mountains. It bypassed every rational thought and spoke directly to my wolf, who dared to whimper like a lovesick fool.

And from my right was something warmer. Amber, sandalwood, and the faint trace of burnt herbs. Familiar in a way that made no sense. Like a dream I’d already dreamed.

*Mine. Mine. Mine.*

My wolf howled the word three times in three different registers, one for each of them, and I nearly choked on the champagne I hadn’t even sipped.

*Absolutely not.*

I set the flute down on a passing server’s tray with practiced calm and turned slowly, to face them.

The first thing I noticed was that they were already watching me so keenly.

Not the curious, admiring stares I’d collected all night from CEOs and dignitaries who wanted a piece of the Cyber Empress’s empire.

No. This was different, it felt like they owned me.

The Lycan King stood closest to my left. I didn’t need an introduction, his energy announced him before his face did. Tall in the way that mountains were tall, broad-shouldered, with golden amber eyes that hadn’t blinked since they found mine. His jaw was cut like someone had taken a blade to marble. Dark hair, swept back. He wore his tuxedo like it annoyed him, like his body was built for armor and nothing else.

**Kaiden.**

Even his name unfurled in my chest like something I’d always known.

His lips parted slightly, like he was about to speak. I looked away before he could.

The ancient vampire was to my right, leaning against a pillar with the kind of stillness that only predators managed. The absolute, unhurried stillness of something that had never once feared being hunted. He was impossibly beautiful. Piercing blue eyes, pale skin that somehow glowed beneath the chandelier light, dark hair threaded with the faintest silver at his temples. He looked mid-thirties. He was, if the whispers about ancient vampires held true, far older than that.

**Killian.**

He wasn’t leaning casually. He was positioned. Blocking my right flank. And unlike the Lycan King, he wasn’t watching me with longing. He was watching me the way you watch something you’d already decided to acquire.

That alone made my spine stiffen.

The third stood directly behind me, and I knew he was there before I turned because I felt him in my chest, behind my sternum, like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to me. When I finally turned to face him, he was already watching me with dark, steady eyes. Bronze-toned skin, high cheekbones, dark lashes. He wore his suit like it was a ceremonial robe, silver sigil pins at his lapel, a Warlock Coven leader’s mark. His gaze moved over my face slowly, like he was reading something written there that I couldn’t see.

**Ares.**

His expression wasn’t hunger, wasn’t possession. It was something worse, “ownership”.

Like he had already lived this moment a hundred times in his sleep.

The silence between us stretched too long for a ballroom full of noise. Around us, the gala continued its spin, laughter, clinking glasses, the swell of a string quartet but here, in this small space between four bodies, the air had gone completely still.

I broke it.

“You’re blocking my exit,” I said.

My voice came out steady. I was proud of that.

Kaiden’s lips curved barely, just a fraction. “We are.”

“That wasn’t a complaint.” I met his gaze without flinching. “It was a warning.”

Killian pushed off the pillar, closing the distance between us by half a step. Not threatening but rather calculated. “You felt it,” he said, his voice low and unhurried, like a man who had never once been told *no* and expected to start tonight. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”

“I felt nothing,” I said flatly.

A lie. We all knew it. The mate bond didn’t ask for your consent. It simply arrived, violent and absolute, and rearranged everything inside you whether you were ready or not.

“You felt *everything,*” Ares said quietly from behind me.

I turned to face him, and the moment my eyes met his, something shifted, just barely, just beneath his composure like he’d been waiting for me to look at him directly, and the reality of it was almost more than even he could absorb.

That unsettled me more than anything else tonight.

I pulled my expression back into neutrality and straightened my spine.

“Then let me be clear,” I said, low enough that only the three of them could hear. “I don’t care what the bond says. I don’t care what your wolves or your bloodlines or your prophecies tell you tonight.” I let my gaze travel across all three of them, slow and deliberate. “I have spent three years building something that no one can take from me. I will not burn it down for a pull in my chest.”

Kaiden’s jaw tightened. The easy curve of his mouth was gone. “I’ve waited over a decade for a mate,” he said, and there was something raw underneath the words, something he hadn’t meant to show. “I’m not walking away.”

“That’s your choice,” I said. “Walking away from you is mine.”

“Mira…”

The way Ares said my name stopped me cold.

Not because it was desperate. Not because it was commanding. Because it sounded like a man saying the name of something he had only ever seen in dreams, finally made real.

I hated how my chest responded to that.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“There’s something you need to know,” he said. His voice was careful… too careful, the voice of a man choosing his words like they were footholds on a cliff face. “About tonight. About you. It isn’t just the bond, Mira. There are things…”

“Mira.”

A different voice.

Wrong voice.

My entire body temperature dropped three degrees.

I turned.

Alpha Rowan stood ten feet away, his stormy grey eyes locked on me with an expression I hadn’t seen on his face in three years.

Regret.

“Good…”Let it eat him alive.

He had clearly been watching. His eyes darted between the three men surrounding me and me, and something moved across his face, something that looked dangerously close to jealousy and that was all I needed to see before I placed my lips on Kaiden’s to make Rowan more jealous. He had no right to get jealous. He had no right to anything from me.

Kaiden tasted sweet as he reciprocated, kissing me deeply while the others stared with mouths wide open. 

“Gosh, I didn’t want to stop but self-control Mira, remember you don’t want any mate,” I broke off the kiss aggressively turning to Rowan whose face was dark with anger.

“You were saying?” I asked with a dark smile while my new mates all looked stunned.

“We need to talk,” he said, taking a step forward.

“No,” I said. The word came out precise.

“Mira…”

“Mr. Blackwood.” I tilted my head slightly, giving him the same tone I used with incompetent contractors and journalists who asked invasive questions. “You may direct all business inquiries to my Personal Assistant. Her card is at the reception desk.” I paused. “Have a pleasant evening.”

His face cracked open. Just for a second. Just enough for me to see the man underneath the Alpha…the man who had thrown divorce papers at my face and laughed while I shattered.

I felt nothing. 

I turned back to the three men who were still watching me with varying degrees of intensity, slipped my clutch under my arm, and smiled the smile I reserved for enemies I was about to outlast.

“Gentlemen,” I said. “I have a company to run.”

I walked away.

I made it exactly eleven steps before Killian appeared at my side…not catching up, not rushing. Simply there, as if he had moved without moving, the way only old vampires could.

“Your rejection won’t hold,” he murmured, matching my pace effortlessly. “You know that.”

“A lot of things people said would hold didn’t hold,” I replied, not looking at him. “I’ve stopped letting that slow me down.”

He was quiet for two seconds. Then, softly: “I’ve lived a very long time, Mira. Long enough to know that the bond between a Wyrmblood and her mates is not something even she can…”

I stopped walking.

The word landed between us like a dropped blade.

Slowly, I turned to face him.

His expression hadn’t changed. Still composed. Still watchful. But his blue eyes held something new now… Something that looked almost like a warning.

“What did you just call me?” I breathed.

He held my gaze. “You heard me.”

The blood drained from my face. The ballroom roared around us…laughing, clinking, oblivious and I stood there in the center of it with ice spreading through my veins and one terrible question carving itself into my mind.

He knew my bloodline.

He knew what I was.

How?

And more importantly, “why was he here?”

My grandfather’s voice rose from the deepest chamber of my memory, aged and urgent and afraid.

“Hide, Mira. Hide and never let them find you. They killed everyone. They will kill you too.”

I stared at Killian deeply and for the first time since stepping into this ballroom, I felt something I hadn’t felt in three years. “Fear, “ but I shrugged it off.

I do not care what you know but I, Mira Wrymbrood, reject all three of you as my mate! I seethed turning to face each of them.

“We do not accept your rejection,” the three men shot back in unison like they were triplets from the same womb and I wasn't having it.

“What!?” I thundered in rage.