~The Profile That Shattered Me~

Victor would taste like duty if I let him kiss me. He wouldn't taste like sin.

The thought arrives unbidden, while I'm still sprawled across tangled sheets with my thighs slick and my chest heaving. One hand curled between my legs like it forgot the performance was over. The video was already sent. The proof he wanted had been delivered. The last filthy offering before I torch this whole game to ash.

I mean, I've been crushing on Victor since highschool, I should be happy that I am going to marry him, despite the fact that it's a contract marriage. I've been hoping for the both of us to get together and now that the prayer has been answered, I've lost my taste in him and it's all because of a hot stranger named Shadowking.

Then the phone lights up.

‘Perfect ruin. Your melodious screams always fix every broken thing in me. But we're not done.’

‘Next time: in the flesh.’

The words hit like a fist to the sternum.

My pulse, which had finally started to settle, kicks back into a sprint. ‘In the flesh?’

I stare at the screen until the letters swim. Four months of faceless hunger. Four months of imagining his voice in my earbuds telling me exactly how slow, how hard, how long to ride the edge. And now he wants skin and no camera between us.

I know I want him even if he's a stranger, but in flesh? C’mon, he came too late. I have a contract to sign in order to prove Aunt Dolores wrong.

The thought of wanting him in flesh excited me but then, I remembered Victor and released a sigh I didn't realize I was holding. My thumb shakes when I tap his profile.

I've never looked before. I never needed to. The anonymity was the whole point. A shadow I could beg without consequences, without a name to haunt me after.

The handle is still ShadowKing. The bio image loads first: a black wolf silhouette cut sharp against a glittering skyline at night. It looked familiar in a way that made my gut clench before my brain caught up.

There's a link. A private gallery. I tapped it and the fall began.

The photo opens slowly, expensive, high-resolution the way money buys time.

Black-tie gala. Midtown ballroom. Crystal chandeliers spilling light across shoulders wrapped in tailored midnight wool. He stood with the kind of arrogance that bends rooms around him. White hair swept back. Jaw that could've been carved with a blade. Mouth set in a line that promises ruin and restraint in equal measure.

Then his eyes.

Mismatched. One blue so pale it's almost silver. One dark amber that glows like backlit whiskey. Both fixed on the camera like he already knows who's staring back and exactly what they're thinking.

The caption loads beneath.

‘Jax. Lycan Alpha Emperor. Annual Unity Gala, 2025.*

The air leaves my lungs in one violent exhale.

I know that face. I've seen it in grainy security stills. In redacted pack bulletins. In the nightmare reel that plays whenever I pretend the past is something I can outrun. Jax. The man whose private vault I cracked with trembling hands eighteen months ago in another part of New York. Nine hundred thousand dollars. Enough to silence Drake, buy his ticket out, secure my own exit visa, and cover six months' rent on this glass prison forty floors…

I stole from HIM.

And then I spent four months whimpering his name, except I didn't know it was his name. I called him ShadowKing while I spread myself open for his lens. While I sobbed ‘please let me come’ into a microphone he controlled. While I shattered so hard I saw stars and hated how desperately I needed it.

Every video. Every voice note. Every time I edged until I broke. He watched. He listened. He ‘knew.’

 I can't think straight anymore. I lunge for the app controls.

Delete. Uninstall. Clear cache. Force restart. My fingers fumble over each command like it'll erase what I've done, but the evidence isn't on my phone anymore. It's on ‘his.’ My wrecked and flushed face was on his face. My voice breaking on his name. My body arching exactly how he commanded.

He has everything.

And he just told me ‘next time in the flesh.’ He had found his little thief despite the fact that I changed my identity.

A knock at the bedroom door nearly stops my heart.

"Raven." Aunt Dolores's voice carries that measured calm she uses for scripture readings and sentencing. "Victor is here. He's brought the contract personally. He wants you to sign tonight."

I press my forehead to my knees and try to breathe. "I'm not feeling well."

Silence stretches. Rain hammers the windows.

"He's a good man," she says through the wood. "He's stable and honorable. This contract is your future, child. Three signatures and you're bound for the year. Let me remind you that after that, if you prove yourself, perhaps something permanent." A pause that feels like judgment. "It's time to stop entertaining distractions. Victor is what you need. I don't give this favor to just anyone, so use it wisely or it might never come again."

The scar flares again, vicious. I have no idea why this stupid scar was always flaring and reacting, like it was alive.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because the man she wants me to marry is sitting in my living room with a pen and promises while the man I've been begging to destroy me already has a collection of exactly how I sound when I shatter.

Aunt Dolores's footsteps fade down the hall. The apartment goes quiet except for rain and the low rumble of Victor's voice answering something she asked.

I slide off the bed onto the floor. Back against the frame. Knees drawn up. Phone dark in my lap.

Panic tastes like leftover arousal and three-day-old guilt. They're knotted so tight I can't separate them anymore. I robbed him. Ran from him. Built this whole glass life on money I stole from his vault. Then I handed him the one thing I had left that still felt like mine: my surrender, piece by filthy piece.

And he took it.

Took it and asked for more.

The scar won't stop pulsing. It doesn't feel like a wound anymore. It feels like a leash. Like something dragging me toward him whether I fight it or not.

Out somewhere in this same city, Jax is watching a video of me coming undone and deciding what happens next. But what would he do with it? I mean, he's a ruthless and cold boss right? He wasn't truly obsessed with my moans was he? 

You fool! For goodness sake Nymeria, you have changed your identity right? But not your voice. Shit!

I didn't run far enough. I never do.

The phone stays facedown on the carpet. I didn't touch it. The truth is already branded under my ribs, burning hotter with every breath.

The wolf I begged to own me is the one I betrayed. And those mismatched eyes that see straight through lies just promised to find me, and to think, he's not even a wolf, he's a fucking Lycan! The dangerous type, just great!

He's coming to make my pay for my crimes and when he does, there won't be a screen left to hide behind.