LOGINThe evening was getting late. One by one, Giselle's friends started to leave the location of her birthday party. It wasn't just Giselle who decided to stay at the hotel, which boasted the most luxurious and expensive facilities in the city.
"Giselle, we have to say goodbye now. My parents have come to pick me up," said a girl who happened to be one of Giselle's close friends.
Giselle, already drunk from consuming a lot of alcohol, could only smile and nod. Her awareness was on the verge of fading, and she had even stumbled a few times if it weren't for her friends' support.
"Y- yes! OUCH! Okay! Be- careful! Bye!" Giselle stammered, even bumping into a friend next to her.
"You should go back to your room, Giselle. You know Alpha is waiting for you there," said one of Giselle's friends, who had just left with her friend who said goodbye to Giselle.
Giselle simply nodded, "Don't worry! He'll definitely stay up until late at night!" she exclaimed with a sometimes high-pitched and smiling tone.
Finally, Giselle's friends who had just said their goodbyes went home, as did her other friends who started to leave. Now, only Giselle, Reverie, Tiffany, Aiden, and Leonardo remained, as they had chosen to stay at the hotel where Giselle was celebrating her birthday.
As the party time had come to an end, and the clock showed 2 in the morning, the music stopped. The DJ, who had been playing various catchy rhythms to make everyone dance, ended his performance.
"Giselle, thank you for inviting me today. If you need me for another party, just let me know," said Kaiser, the DJ.
Giselle giggled and smiled, clearly in a state of altered consciousness. Tiffany, Leonardo's girlfriend, who was known for her immunity to alcohol and was even nicknamed the "queen of alcohol," represented Giselle in responding.
"Alright, thank you so much, Kaiser. You're the best!" Tiffany exclaimed.
Kaiser smiled at Tiffany's compliment and finally said his goodbyes, leaving the hotel. Now, in the hotel's ballroom, there were only four teenagers left, who had just experienced the freedom to consume alcohol and party late into the night.
The hotel staff assigned to clean up the area finally appeared and began tidying up the mess caused by Giselle and her friends. They worked diligently without commenting on the situation.
Tiffany turned her gaze towards Giselle, who was now sitting in a semi-conscious state. She approached Giselle and knelt in front of her.
"Giselle, come on, let me take you to your room," Tiffany said, intending to help Giselle stand up.
But Giselle quickly brushed off Tiffany's hand and got up. "I can make it to my room by myself. You go back with Leonardo, Aiden, and Reverie. They must be tired," Giselle said.
"No, I'll escort you," Tiffany insisted, and finally, Giselle allowed Tiffany to help her.
Leonardo, who was half conscious, was nudged by Tiffany to wake up, and he in turn woke up Aiden and Reverie, who were dozing off. The four of them exited the ballroom after expressing their thanks to the hotel staff.
Once inside the elevator, Aiden leaned against the mirror inside the lift, Leonardo stood behind Tiffany, who was supporting Giselle, and Reverie stood in front of the elevator door.
Just as the elevator started moving upward, Reverie's body suddenly moved, indicating that something was about to come out of her stomach.
"Hoeekkkk!"
Reverie immediately vomited the contents of her stomach, which were filled with alcohol, making the elevator floor dirty. Aiden, who had been leaning against the mirror while drunk, suddenly snapped to attention.
"Oh my, Reverie!" Tiffany exclaimed loudly.
Reverie turned around, revealing her clothes covered in her own vomit. Tiffany, upon seeing it, felt disgusted because she would have to share a room with the woman.
"Couldn't you have held it until we got to the bathroom?!" Tiffany yelled.
Tiffany quickly took tissues out of her bag and wiped away the remaining dirty and repulsive vomit from Reverie's mouth. However, Reverie remained silent, even though she knew she was being scolded by Tiffany.
"Oh my, everything's a mess now," Leonardo sighed.
Giselle, who had been left behind by Tiffany, finally woke up and saw Reverie covered in her own vomit, which also made the elevator floor dirty.
"Ask the hotel staff to clean it up," Aiden suggested, who was equally tired but trying to hold back his own vomit because of the pungent smell of Reverie's vomit that was piercing his nose until he had to close his own nostrils.
"It looks like Reverie needs your help more than me, Tiffany. Just take her to the room; you're sharing a room, right?" Giselle asked, her awareness temporarily returning due to the commotion caused by Reverie.
"Yes. But our floor is on the 15th, and yours is on the 16th, right?" Tiffany asked.
"Only one floor difference. I'll go straight to my room. You should head to your room as well," Giselle replied.
Tiffany nodded, and when they reached the 12th floor, Tiffany quickly pressed the button for the 15th floor so they wouldn't miss it, as they had initially wanted to escort Giselle first.
TING!
Finally, the elevator door opened, and Tiffany quickly took Reverie out of the elevator while avoiding the dirty area of the floor. Leonardo and Aiden also exited. But before the elevator door closed, Aiden turned and locked eyes with Giselle.
Giselle and Aiden's gazes met, and Giselle raised an eyebrow in confusion, not understanding the meaning of Aiden's smile.
"Enjoy your beautiful night with Mr. Vexeon, Giselle! You can thank me later!" Aiden exclaimed just as the elevator door slowly closed.
Giselle furrowed her brow, muttering, "What's that supposed to mean?"
As the elevator door closed, Giselle looked down and saw the remnants of Reverie's vomit. She covered her nose to avoid the nauseating smell.
Unconsciously, Giselle waved her hand repeatedly, even flipping her long black hair away from her neck. She continued to feel uncomfortable, even after she left the elevator.
Her head was pounding, and it seemed like her consciousness was drifting again due to the effects of the alcohol she had consumed.
"I need to get to my room quickly," Giselle muttered in the midst of dizziness, nausea, heat, and drunkenness.
Giselle turned right after exiting the elevator and stopped in front of a room labeled 1606. Her hand reached out to press the doorbell, but before she could do so, Giselle suddenly realized something, that the room's door was not completely closed.
"Did Vexeon do this on purpose so I can enter right away?" Giselle murmured.
Giselle then entered the dark room, which was only dimly lit by the light from the window, which was not covered by curtains. She quickly closed the door behind her.
Giselle felt increasingly uneasy as she caught a whiff of the strong masculine scent emanating from the bed. Though faint, Giselle was sure that a man was sleeping there.
"Ungh! Why do I feel so hot like this?!" Giselle murmured and finally began to undress slowly, taking off everything as if the room's cold temperature couldn't cool the heat in her body.
Giselle walked toward the bed wearing only her underwear. She knew that this was akin to surrendering her virginity to Vexeon before marriage. But Giselle's mind was in turmoil.
Moreover, now she saw a bare back exposed, facing her. Naughty thoughts started to enter Giselle's mind. Although she had never done it before, Giselle understood what would happen if a man and a woman were alone in a dark room.
"I- I feel like doing it now," Giselle said to herself and finally gathered the courage to approach the bed and climb onto it.
With her instinct, Giselle immediately straddled the bare-chested man she believed to be Vexeon, causing the man to squirm.
"Can we do it now? I'm already 18," she said, then leaned down and passionately kissed the man's lips.
The thick lips she had always longed to kiss were finally within her reach. The man beneath her began to respond to Giselle's actions. It was evident in the way his hands gently touched Giselle's waist, sending shivers of both excitement and pleasure down her spine.
The Lycan council called Damien in on a Thursday.He had been expecting it for weeks, the way you expect weather you can see building on the horizon long before it arrives. He told Giselle at breakfast, calmly, the way he told her most things."They want a formal account of the situation," he said. "My relationship to you, the incidents involving Tyson's people, the information-sharing arrangement with Vexeon. All of it.""Are you in trouble?""Not exactly." He folded his napkin with the precise habit of a man who needed his hands to be doing something when he was choosing words carefully. "My council has certain expectations about how the Lycan King conducts himself. Taking in a werewolf woman and subsequently cooperating with a werewolf Alpha King falls somewhat outside the usual parameters.""How upset are they?""Concerned," he said. "Several of them are genuinely concerned about the border implications and the message it sends to the southern packs. Others are concerned about the
Layla found her in the library the next morning, which had become one of Giselle's regular places in the way that spaces become yours gradually, through repeated occupation rather than formal claim."He didn't sleep," Layla said, setting a tray down on the reading table with the decisive quality of someone delivering evidence. "He was in his study until four. I know because I checked.""He works too much," Giselle said."He has always worked too much," Layla agreed, settling into the chair across from her with the ease of someone who had long since decided that the formal boundaries between staff and household didn't apply to her in private. "But it's gotten worse lately. He's managing too many things at once — the hearing, the border agreements, the southern packs watching and asking questions, and—" She paused, with the deliberate precision of someone who has decided to say a thing they've been weighing. "And you.""I'm not his responsibility to manage.""No," Layla said. "That's ra
The night it happened, there was no warning. No weight to the air, no particular restlessness. Just a normal Tuesday, late, the house quiet in its usual way, Giselle's light still on in her room where she had fallen asleep over her textbook again.She woke to voices — not loud, not alarmed, but the low, deliberate voices of people working quickly and trying not to draw attention to the fact. She lay still for a moment, listening, and then recognized Damien's voice among them, speaking in the clipped way he had when something needed to happen immediately.She got up.The hallway outside her room was empty. The voices were coming from downstairs, from the direction of the front entrance. She went down the stairs carefully, not turning on lights, and found three of Damien's men in the entrance hall with Damien at the center of them, looking at something one of them held — a folded note, she realized, and a small object she couldn't make out from the doorway."What happened?" she asked.D
Tyson received his formal hearing notice on a Wednesday.He sat at his kitchen table and read it twice, looking for the exact shape of what they had on him — coercion of a witness, interference with a person under pack protection, circumstantial connection to the campus incident through the holding company. They didn't have enough for the campus abduction. Not directly. But the coercion charge through Reverie was solid, and Tyson was experienced enough with pack legal proceedings to know that solid was usually enough.Marcus was gone. Three hired men had scattered. Reverie had turned. Aiden had already cooperated with the council. Tiffany had cooperated more reluctantly but completely.He had, Tyson reflected, built something very intricate and watched it disassemble itself piece by piece, each part that was supposed to protect him becoming instead a thread that led back to him.He thought about his brother, who had warned him once that the difference between a long game and a losing
Damien left for Vexeon's territory on Monday morning without telling Giselle until he was already at the door."You're going now?" She looked up from the kitchen table where she had her lecture notes spread out, coffee going cold beside them."The letter from Reverie warrants a conversation rather than a message." He adjusted his jacket in the way he did when he was bracing for something he'd rather not do but had decided was necessary. "I shouldn't be more than a few hours.""Do you want me to come?""No." The answer was immediate, then he softened it. "If Tyson has anyone watching Vexeon's territory, having you there complicates things. Right now you're safest here.""I'm always safest here," she said, which came out with a slight edge she hadn't fully intended. "That's the arrangement, isn't it. You go out and deal with things, I stay here and wait."Damien looked at her. "Is that a complaint?"She thought about it. "I don't know yet. Maybe.""Then tell me when you've decided." He
Giselle's mother came on a Sunday, without calling ahead.Giselle was in the kitchen with Layla, learning to make something with cardamom that she had no practical need for but was finding unexpectedly calming — the measuring, the stirring, the simple reliability of ingredients that did what they were supposed to do — when one of Damien's staff appeared in the doorway and said there was a woman at the gate who would not give her name but had asked, very quietly, if her daughter was home.Giselle went still with her hands still dusted with flour."Go," Layla said, without ceremony, already reaching over to turn the stove off.Mia Primrose stood at the iron gate in the grey wool coat she always wore when she was nervous and wanted to look steadier than she felt, twisting the strap of her bag in slow, unconscious circles. She looked smaller than Giselle remembered, or maybe Giselle had grown into herself in ways that changed the scale of things around her. The shadows under her mother's
Giselle savored the warmth of the morning sunlight streaming through her window as she woke up, the events of her birthday party still lingering in her mind. With a yawn, she stepped out of her room, the familiar creak of the door serving as a gentle reminder of another day.Downstairs, the aroma o
Meanwhile, on other side…The sleek, two door luxury car glided smoothly through the open wrought iron gates of the expansive estate, its polished black exterior glistening under the afternoon sun. The car's powerful engine purred softly as it maneuvered gracefully along the cobblestone driveway, f
The next morning…Giselle slowly began to stir from her slumber. She blinked her eyes, trying to clear the haze of sleep that clung to her mind. As she shifted in bed, her senses started to return, and that's when she noticed something unusual. She was completely naked, and her memory of the previo
In the modern era, several people started to enjoy various technological advancements. Traditions and cultures slowly disappeared due to the numerous technological changes that continued to invade the progress of time.The impact of time's development is not limited to human beings only; it extends







