LOGINShare
sympathy
publish date:
2026-06-20 10:00:46
Latest chapter
bound by deception renewal
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE — "RENEWAL"Irabella's POVThe wine-red dress hung against my skin like something I hadn't agreed to wear.I stood in front of the mirror longer than I should have, running the same argument in a loop that refused to resolve, refused to let me move.You don't have to go down there.You don't have to give her the satisfaction.Go down there and act like you don't care. Because you don't.I almost laughed at myself in the glass. Oh, who was I kidding. Of course I cared. Isabella's words from that morning hadn't moved an inch all day — lodged behind my sternum like a splinter I couldn't reach, working deeper with every breath. A surprise tonight. The kind that's going to change your entire life. Under the dress, under the careful makeup hiding eyes still swollen from last night, my whole body was bracing for something I had no name for yet.Be careful tonight, Ira. I told the woman in the mirror that plainly, the way you'd warn someone you actually loved. Whatever ha
bound by deception consummate
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO — "CONSUMMATE"Irabella's POVI turned. Forced the smile up from some buried, ruined place I didn't know I still had access to."Yeah. That would be great." My voice came out smooth, disgustingly smooth, smooth enough to fool a room. "And as Daemon's secretary — and your sister — let me know if you need anything for it."I made it to my room before my legs understood what they'd just agreed to.The door locked behind me with a click too loud for the silence it dropped into, and then my breath simply stopped arriving. Caught somewhere high in my chest, shallow, useless. My hands shook — not trembling, shaking, violent and constant, like something underneath my skin was trying to get out. A thousand needles. That was the only language my body had left. A thousand needles, all of them aimed in.Don't give up.My wolf's voice, low and frantic, pacing the inside of my ribs. He's ours. You promised to get him back.He doesn't love us. The thought arrived with its own teet
bound by deception sympathy
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE — "SYMPATHY"Irabella's POVHis call came before I'd even sat down. Before my coffee. Before I'd finished hating him for this morning.I walked into his office wearing the only armor I had left — a face scrubbed clean of everything that had happened at seven AM. His hands on me. His forehead against mine. The voice that had cracked open for exactly four seconds before he'd slammed the door shut on it again. I wasn't handing him that twice in one day. Not for free."You called for me, boss."He didn't look up.He stood instead. Crossed to the cabinet behind his desk with the kind of controlled, unhurried violence I was starting to recognize as his actual native language, and pulled out a stack of files thick enough to need both arms. He dropped it on my desk. The whole surface jumped."Work on this. I need it finished by end of day."I looked at the stack. Then at him."You're joking.""I don't joke about deadlines.""This is—" I flipped the top folder open. Three mo
bound by deception aura for aura
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT — "Aura For Aura"Irabella's POVDerek was still talking.I knew that because his mouth was moving and sound was coming out of it and the sounds were arranged in the shape of words — warm words, easy words, the specific register of a man who was very good at filling space with himself in ways that felt like company.I heard none of it.My fork moved across my plate. Came back. Moved again. The mechanical performance of a woman eating lunch who had completely lost the thread of what eating was for.His hand found mine on the table.Light. Easy. A touch that asked nothing and expected everything to be fine.My skin crawled.I looked at our hands. His fingers over mine, warm and well-meaning, and felt the specific wrongness of it move through me like a frequency I couldn't tune out. Not disgust — nothing as clean as that. Just the bone-deep knowledge that this was the wrong hand. The wrong warmth. The wrong weight against my skin.I picked up my glass with my other h
bound by deception Silence
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN — "Silence"Irabella's POVThe video played for eleven seconds.I watched all eleven of them. Then I watched them again. Frame by frame, my thumb dragging across the screen, some part of me convinced that if I looked closely enough I'd find the detail that made it not what it looked like.There was no detail.His mouth on hers. Her hands at his face. The specific intimacy of two people in a private room with nowhere they needed to be.The phone slipped from my hand.Landed somewhere in the sheets, screen still glowing, and I sat in the dark with my wolf making a sound low in my chest that had no resolution to it. Just grief. Just an animal that had been so certain of something and was now being shown proof to the contrary.Three months.Hallways and offices and a wall outside a ballroom with his fangs at my throat and his voice gone wrecked saying things that had felt like the truest things anyone had ever said to me.And the same night I'd lain here replaying his
bound by deception recording
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX — "Recording"Isabella's POVThe mirror knew all my secrets.I had sat in front of this particular one for five years — watched myself become a wife in it, a Luna, a woman who had built an entire architecture of self around a man who was currently sleeping four doors down and hadn't touched me with genuine want in longer than I was prepared to calculate.I sat now in only a towel.Hair wet. Skin still warm from the shower. The woman looking back at me from the glass composed and certain and running through the evening's inventory with the specific efficiency of a general reviewing a battlefield at dawn.Derek had called.The alliance was in motion.The recording was ready.And Daemon was somewhere in this house moving through his evening routine with that closed, unreachable quality he'd been wearing since the party — since the hallway, since Ira walked back into that ballroom with her throat marked and her chin up and that gold dress doing things to the air around
You may also like
Accidentally Pregnant By My Alpha Best friends
Alexis Dee500.2K viewsAlpha Reid
C.J. Primer719.5K viewsChosen By The Moon
LycanNS547.3K viewsShifted Fate
Alicia S. Rivers1.3M viewsDarkthorne's Biggest Mistake
Caitlyn Brown76 viewsThe Plus-Size Luna:My Sister Was His Bride, I Am His Mate
Shooting Star79 viewsSPREAD FOR THE ALPHA DADDIES
Naughtyfantasier 145 viewsSorry Ex, I Belong To The Cursed Alpha
Ambrosewrites52 views
