chapter 6

~ Mira’s POV ~

“What!?”

The word tore out of my throat before I could hold it in, and for a single, humiliating second, the composure I had spent three years perfecting fell right down the middle.

Three pairs of eyes stared back at me. Unmoved, Unbothered, Almost… amused.

“We do not accept your rejection,” Killian repeated, this time just for me, his voice low and unbothered like he was simply clarifying a business term that I’d misunderstood.

My jaw clenched. “That is not how this works.”

“Oh, but it is.” Kaiden stepped forward, arms folded across his chest, his golden amber eyes sweeping over me with an infuriating kind of patience. “A rejection requires mutual acceptance. We don’t accept. Therefore, it doesn’t hold.”

I turned to Ares, half expecting him to be the reasonable one. He raised both hands slightly, a gesture so calm it made me want to scream.

“He’s right,” Ares said. “It's a law older than any of our councils.”

Law.

I almost laughed. These three stood here quoting law at me, when every law I had ever trusted had been used to exile me, strip me, and leave me bleeding in the dark.

“I don’t care about your law,” I said, dropping my voice to something dangerously quiet. The voice I used right before I dismantled a company. “I have built an empire without a single person’s permission. I will build my life the same way.”

“That kiss said otherwise,” Kaiden murmured, a slow smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

Heat crawled up my neck so fast I could feel it reaching my ears.

The kiss.

I had done that to myself. I had grabbed Kaiden’s lapel and pressed my mouth to his to wipe that wretched jealousy off Rowan’s face and now it was being used against me like a sword. His lips had been warm and he had kissed me back like he’d been waiting to and that, that was a problem I would deal with privately.

“That was a quick decision,” I said flatly.

Kaiden’s smile widened. “Right.”

I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face said it.”

Killian cleared his throat softly, drawing my attention back to him. The amusement was gone from his expression now, replaced by something more deliberate. His piercing blue eyes held mine and I felt it again, that specific, targeted chill that had stopped me cold moments ago.

Wyrmblood.

He had said it like the word was already familiar in his mouth. Like he had carried it for a long time, waiting for the right moment to place it in front of me like a card on a table.

“How do you know that name?” I asked. My voice didn’t shake. I was proud of that, given that every alarm in my body was screaming.

He was quiet for a beat too long.

“Killian.” His name in my mouth felt strange, intimate, wrong. “Answer me.”

“Not here,” he said.

“Here.” I held my ground. “Now.”

His jaw shifted slightly. Then he glanced, just once, almost imperceptibly at the crowd swirling around us. The laughing guests, the clinking glasses, the humans who had no idea that standing in the center of their elegant gala were three supernatural rulers and the last surviving bloodline of a clan powerful enough to have made all of them kneel.

“There are ears in this room,” he said. “Not all of them are human.”

I didn’t respond but my eyes moved across the ballroom slowly, scanning the way I had trained myself to scan. He was right. I could feel it now that I was paying attention. Threads of supernatural energy weaved between the guests like invisible smoke. A glamoured witch near the champagne tower. Two men by the east corridor whose heartbeats were too slow, too controlled—a woman in emerald green whose pupils had gone slightly vertical under the chandelier light.

I had walked into this room thinking it was my arena. I was suddenly less sure of the floor beneath my feet.

“Fine.” I stepped closer to Killian, dropping my voice further. “Then tell me when and tell me where. And understand me clearly, if your answer is anything other than the full truth, our conversation ends and I will make sure your life becomes considerably more complicated.”

Something moved in Killian’s expression. Not fear. Ancient vampires didn’t fear. But it was the closest thing to respect I had seen on his face since he’d appeared at my side.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Neutral territory. The Ashveil Hotel. I have a private floor.”

“I’ll choose the location,” I replied immediately.

A pause. “Agreed.”

I took a step back, putting space between us again. My chest was tight and I refused to let it show. I needed to get out of this ballroom, out of range of their scents and their eyes and the relentless pull of the bond tugging at my ribs like a hook.

“Mira.”

Ares again. That voice.

I turned to him and found him watching me with an expression so open it caught me completely off guard. Every other supernatural being in this room was layered, glamour and power and masks stacked over whatever lived underneath. But Ares looked at me like he had already stripped all of that away a long time ago and simply had nothing left to hide.

It terrified me more than Killian’s secrets.

“The dreams,” he said quietly. “You’ve been having them, haven’t you? About the night your family…”

“Don’t.” The word came out sharp, a blade unsheathed so fast even I felt the edge of it. My hands had curled into fists at my sides without my permission.

He stopped and held my gaze. Nodded once, slowly, like he understood that he had just stepped on something that hadn’t healed and was choosing to step back.

Something about that restraint undid me more than if he had pushed.

I turned away from all three of them before any more damage could be done, straightening my spine and tilting my chin up as I moved back toward the center of the ballroom where the noise and light and shallow safety of the crowd waited.

I grabbed a fresh champagne glass from a passing server, took a slow sip, and smiled at a French billionaire who was trying to catch my eye across the room.

Business, Empire, Forward motion. Those were the only three things that mattered.

But my wolf sat quiet inside me now, no more howling, no more reckless longing. Just a low, watchful presence that felt less like defeat and more like strategy.

Three mates.

One who kissed like a promise I didn’t ask for. One who knew a secret that could get me killed. One who had apparently been dreaming of me.

And somewhere behind me, the man who had thrown me away was watching all of it with stormy grey eyes and regret that had arrived three years too late.

I allowed myself one small, private smile into the rim of my champagne glass.

Good. Let them all burn a little.

But even as I played the room, laughed at the right moments, exchanged business cards, charmed and deflected and performed the Cyber Empress with flawless precision, one word pulsed at the back of my mind like a second heartbeat.

Wyrmblood.

Killian knew.

Which meant the question wasn’t just how.

The real question was, who else did?

I was halfway to the exit when I felt it. A cold, deliberate brush of energy against the back of my neck. Not supernatural instinct, not the bond, Something else entirely. Something targeted.

I had felt something like it once before in the forbidden lands, moments before a warlock had tried to trap me inside a soul snare.

Someone in this ballroom had just cast something at me.

My steps didn’t slow. My face didn’t change. But my senses went razor sharp in an instant, drinking in every thread of energy in the room, and when I identified the source,

My blood ran ice cold.

A woman stood near the grand archway, half-draped in shadow. Elegant, Dark-haired. Her eyes locked on me with the specific kind of hatred that wasn’t new, it was personal. Ancient.

And beside her, so close their shoulders almost touched, was a face I hadn’t expected to see tonight.

Alpha Rowan.

They were speaking in low tones, her lips barely moving, his expression shifting from anger to something that looked disturbingly close to hunger.

She passed him something small. A folded paper, A photograph. I couldn’t tell from here.

But whatever it was, Rowan looked at it and then looked straight at me.

And smiled.