MasukThe iron door of the laboratory opened with a dull creak and a woman with silent, sinuous steps emerged from the shadows.Silas let out a cynical smile with an expression of feigned respect appearing on his harsh features.“Welcome, Jasmine,” Silas announced, taking a step back. “The pup is ready for the final touch.”Jasmine advanced with a feline parsimony that made my skin crawl. She wore a dark robe that dripped a scent of dry herbs, damp earth, and sulfur.Her eyes were fixed on me, two dark slits loaded with an ancestral malice. My senses hyper-developed by the serum caught her energy; she wasn't a she-wolf, she was something older, something forbidden.Her nails, elongated and sharp like birds of prey claws, slid along the exposed skin of my bloodied arm, opening a fine groove that made me gasp.“My... what a sexy specimen the desert has brought us,” Jasmine hissed, her tongue flicking across her parted lips. “You have a delicious musculature, Mark. It's a pity all this potency
But she turned toward me with eyes ignited in a murderous fire, pushing my chest with her two hands.“How can you say that everything will be fine?! Are you deaf, you goddamn wretch?! Did you not hear what Sarah just said?! It's Ivy's life and her pup's life that is at stake!”Leyla was outside of herself, maddened by the pain of another and the institutional betrayal of the wolves.She began to hit my chest with her closed fists, trying to go around me to go up the stairs leading to the master suite bedroom.Quickly I pulled away from Sarah and grabbed Leyla's body, forcing her down to the mansion's living room.“Listen to me, Leyla, please... this is for the best for everyone,” I tried to reason, my voice dropping to a desperate whisper.“How the shit is this going to be for the best?! You care more about your Alpha's goddamn crown than my friend's life!” Leyla shrieked, with her tears leaping from her eyes.I encircled her with my arms from behind, but she moved with a feline agili
POV: CALEB STONERI had left the campus like a wounded beast after Anastasia's proposal, but my first wolf instinct was not to go to the mansion; it was to go straight back to Leyla's dorm.The spare Mercedes braked with a screech of tires in front of the female dorm building on campus.I didn't stop to turn off the engine; I jumped out of the driver's seat and went up the emergency stairs three at a time, my heart hitting my ribs from adrenaline and fear.I reached the door to Leyla's room and began to pound on it with a closed fist with a violence that threatened to tear down the metal frame.“Leyla! Open the goddamn door! I know you're inside!” I shouted, my Beta voice loaded with an urgency that admitted no replicas.“Go to hell, Caleb!” Leyla's voice came from inside, breaking into an insult loaded with rage. “I told you I didn't want to see your goddamn watchdog face again!”“It's Ivy, Leyla!” I shrieked at her, pressing my forehead against the wood. “Ivy is collapsing at the ma
POV: KILLIAN BLACKWOODIvy's body kept trembling under my hands, while I continued lying beside her on the black silk mattress, my bare chest pressed against her damp shoulder, trying in vain for my Alpha warmth to stabilize the fire devouring her.My fingers didn't stop outlining the contour of her pale face, brushing away the sweat-drenched hairs that stuck to her cheeks.I expected Sarah to finally cross that door with the goddamn inhibitor.Every passing minute was an eternity of torture for my wolf. But what was ripping my sanity away piece by piece was not the fever; it was the broken murmurs that kept escaping her parted lips.“Mark... no...” Ivy groaned in the middle of her delirium, her back arching subtly while her nails dug into the bedspread. “Mark... the bond... burns…”Every time that goddamn name came out of her mouth, I felt like my entire body was going to explode from pure sociopathic rage.My claws extended involuntarily, tearing the silk sheets with a sharp sound.
My military boots clattered against the ground-floor tiles while my trembling hands gripped the wooden railing.I paced in circles around the large mahogany table for nearly twenty whole minutes, feeling as if every passing second were an axe blow against Ivy's life.The air in the mansion seemed to have turned dense, heavy with the furious static that Killian was giving off from upstairs.Finally, Logan's hurried footsteps broke the silence. The guard entered panting, holding a steel tray between his hands.“Doctor Sarah! We have them!”I lunged at him, snatching the tray away with a rough movement.But as soon as my eyes landed on the pre-filled syringes he brought, I felt the ground open beneath my feet.My stomach contracted with a violence that almost made me fall face forward against the carpet.“Goddamn it... Goddamn it a thousand times!” I muttered between my teeth, clenching my fists until my nails hurt my palms.This couldn't be happening. It had to be a goddamn joke from th
With my free fingers, I caressed her sweat-drenched cheek, brushing away the damp strands of hair that stuck to her forehead.“Stay with me, Ivy...” I whispered near her ear, my voice a husky plea. “I promised you I would burn the contracts. I promised you we would be free. Don't leave me alone in this goddamn place.”At that moment, amid the tremors of her lethargy, Ivy's parted lips moved subtly.A raspy and weak murmur escaped her mouth, a whisper that forced me to tilt my ear directly over her lips to catch it in the middle of the gloom.“Mark...” Ivy whispered in her delirium, her fingers twitching against the sheet. “Mark... stop... don't do it… enough...”The name of Mark Richards coming out of her mouth in my own bed unleashed a possessive fury in my hybrid that erased any trace of mercy in my system.My eyes turned completely black and my fangs pressed into my own lips until they bled.The biological trail of that goddamn pup was still infecting my Luna's mind through the mem







