All Chapters of Moaning For The Enemy: Her Sister's Betrothed Alpha : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

IRIS’S POVThe Sanctuary didn’t feel sacred. It felt like a tomb built to lock the outside world out and trap the rot inside forever. The air up here was so thin every breath felt like sucking through wet cloth. Woodsmoke hung heavy, mixed with that sharp metallic bite I knew too well from the facility days. Cold stone. Old blood. Desperation that never quite washed away.I stood frozen in the middle of the vast hall, fingers wrapped tight around the snub-nosed revolver in my coat pocket. The gun felt like a toy now, useless plastic against the scene in front of me.“Ethan?”The name slipped out like something fragile I’d been holding too long. My brother. The kid who used to sit cross-legged on the rug explaining how every number had its perfect place, like puzzle pieces waiting to click. The one I’d watched vanish behind flames and smoke the night the Calder estate burned. He stood by the massive stone hearth now, taller than I remembered, but hollowed out. Cheeks sunken. Eyes flat

IRIS’S POVThe Sanctuary didn’t have bedrooms; it had cells. Silas had directed us to a chamber carved directly into the mountain's north face, where the walls were weeping with condensation and the only furniture was a heavy, low-slung platform draped in furs that smelled of cedar and old, dead things. There were no doors, only an open archway that looked back into the main hall where the copper cables hummed like a hive of angry hornets.I sat on the edge of the bed, my fingers digging into the thick fur. My skin felt too tight, humming with a residual static that made every hair on my arms stand on end. Every time the wind howled outside the narrow slit of a window, the vibration in the floor changed pitch, a physical reminder that our bodies were now part of the building’s infrastructure.Darius stood by the window, his back to me. He had stripped off his torn shirt, and the amber light from the hall traced the hard, agonizingly familiar lines of his shoulders. He looked like a sta

CHAPTER 136IRIS’S POVThe Sanctuary felt like it was holding its breath. The heavy, oppressive silence of the mountain was only broken by the rhythmic, shallow breathing of my brother and the distant, metallic drip of water somewhere in the stone bowels of the monastery. Darius was by the heavy oak door, a shadow among shadows, his body coiled with a tension that made the very air around him feel electric. Silas had retreated to the upper gallery, likely satisfied with the "data" he had gathered from our desperate collision by the hearth.He thought he had us. He thought the physical pull between Darius and me was a leash he could tug whenever he needed to stabilize his dying legacy. But Silas was a man of grand gestures; he missed the small, quiet shifts in the ledger.I knelt beside Ethan’s chair, my knees clicking on the cold stone. My body was still humming, a deep, erotic ache lingering in my core from Darius’s touch, but I pushed it down. I needed to be an accountant now. I nee

IRIS’S POVThe cabin at the top of the mountain definitely wasn’t "cozy," despite what the brochures probably claimed. It was really just a very fancy prison wrapped in cedar and expensive glass, sitting so high up that the air felt thin and mean, like it was personally offended by our existence. And the smell was the absolute worst part. That fake lily scent was everywhere, thick and chemical as it coated my tongue like I’d just swallowed a bottle of cheap perfume mixed with bug spray. It made my head feel fuzzy and my skin hum with a restless, electric heat that I just couldn't shake off, no matter how hard I tried.I sat on the low leather couch and squeezed my thighs tight together, trying my best to look like a normal human being while every single nerve ending in my body was screaming. Every time Darius shifted next to me, the rough wool of his pants brushed against my dress and sent a sharp jolt straight through me that made my toes curl inside my boots. Silas was standing at t

IRIS’S POVThe grandfather clock didn’t just chime; it tolled like a heavy iron hammer hitting my ribcage, driving nails into whatever was left of the Calder name while the deep clangs bounced off the polished concrete and crawled up my legs until they settled in my gut next to the sick, floral nausea of that godawful lily fog.Silas stood over the stone table like a discount cult leader with the Charter spread open in front of him like a butcher’s slab, the silver pens glinting in the firelight not as tools for writing, but as surgical instruments ready to carve us up for his collection.“The hour of the Union,” he murmured, his voice thick with a creepy kind of reverence and greed that made my skin crawl. “Step forward, Iris. Bring the anchor.”I stood up even though my legs felt like heavy lead pipes, reaching for Ethan’s hand only to find it ice-cold and limp—like holding a corpse that hadn’t figured out it was dead yet—and as I pulled him toward the table, his eyes cleared for ha