🗡️Chapter 05🗡️

I made a decision in the space of half a second.

"I need a pack," I said. The lie came out easy, which probably should have worried me. "I'm a werewolf. No pack, no territory. I'd heard of Alpha Drakan.. his reputation travels. I thought.." I let the sentence hang deliberately, like someone embarrassed by their own hope. "I thought maybe there'd be a place here."

I couldn't exactly tell them the truth. Oh hello, yes, my parents were murdered last night, someone connected to your dead Alpha did it, and I came here to find out who and make them deeply regret it. That conversation ended with me face down in the dirt before I found a single answer.

So. A packless wolf looking for a home. Simple. Believable. Completely false.

The three of them exchanged glances, that silent communication that wolves in established packs do so naturally it looks like telepathy. Something passed between them. A decision.

The one in the centre looked back at me.

"Follow us," he said.

---

*Meanwhile — The Alpha's Chambers*

Third person POV

Inside his private quarters, the silence was trashed by the sound of heavy breathing and the frantic friction of skin hitting skin. A woman's voice broke into a jagged moan that filled the space.

"Yes... Alpha... right there," she choked out, her fingers digging into the dark fabric of the bed.

Damir didn't say a word. He didn't do the soft stuff, no kissing, no slow build-up, no foreplay. He just moved with a raw energy that was more about a physical itch than any kind of connection. He used the heat of the moment to drown out the noise in his head, his face a mask of pure, cold concentration.

When he was done, he pulled away immediately. The bed went quiet, save for her trying to catch her breath.

Damir headed straight for the bath chamber, the sound of the water cutting through the room like a blade. When he stepped back out, steam clinging to his broad, scarred shoulders, he found the woman, his sex mistress, Amira, scrambling to pull on her clothes. Her hands shook as she fumbled with her heels, her hair a bird's nest against her flushed skin.

"I'm....leaving, Alpha," she murmured, her eyes glued to the floor. She knew the rules. She didn't linger, and she damn sure didn't use his bath chamber.

"Amira." His voice stopped her dead. It was low, like a growl that hadn't quite broken the surface.

She froze, her heart thumping against her ribs.

"Take the suppressants. The same as always," Damir said, his tone flat and icy. He didn't even look at her as he poured himself a drink. "I'm not interested in a bastard child, and I'm definitely not interested in a family. Don't let me hear you 'forgot'."

Amira swallowed hard, a flicker of hurt crossing her face before she masked it with a submissive nod. "You don't have to worry, Alpha. I know my place. It won't happen."

Amira tried to slip out of the room with her head down and her shoes barely on, moving the way people move when they want to take up as little space as possible.

She nearly made it.

The door swung open before she could clear the threshold and Amira stumbled back a step, coming face to face with the woman on the other side. For a moment the two of them just stood there, Amira with her wrinkled dress and her guilty exit, and the other woman looking at her the way you look at something you found on the bottom of your shoe.

Seraphine.

She was beautiful in the way expensive things are beautiful, stunning, not a single detail left to chance. Her dark hair was pinned perfectly. Her clothes were perfectly chosen. Even the way she stood in the doorway was a performance, one hand resting on the frame, chin lifted, taking up exactly enough space to make a point without technically blocking anyone.

She looked at Amira.

Amira dropped her head in a low bow and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn't make it worse. She sidestepped and was gone, her footsteps quick and quiet down the corridor.

Seraphine watched her go.

Then she stepped into the room, closed the door behind her with a soft click, and turned to face Damir with her arms folded across her chest and an expression that had clearly rehearsed itself in a mirror.

Damir was at the cabinet. He hadn't looked up.

He was in the process of selecting a cigarette from the case beside the whiskey, which meant he had already decided this conversation wasn't worth his full attention.

"You could at least be discreet," Seraphine said. Her voice was silk over gravel, pretty on the surface and hard underneath. "The whole corridor knows what goes on in this room, Damir."

"Mm." He lit the cigarette. Took a long, slow drag.

"There is a mating ceremony in two days." She moved further into the room. "Two days. The elders, the other packs, everyone will be watching this household and everything that comes out of it." Her eyes cut to the rumpled bed and back to him with barely concealed distaste. "You should cut ties with your mistress. Whatever arrangement you have with that girl, end it. It's an embarrassment."

Damir finally turned.

He looked at her for a moment, the way he looked at things he found mildly interesting in the way a problem is interesting before it's solved, and then he crossed the space between them in three unhurried steps, stopped directly in front of her, and blew a long slow stream of smoke straight into her face.

Seraphine's composure cracked just slightly. Her eyes watered. She didn't step back, credit to her, she held her ground, but her perfectly arranged expression fractured at the edges.

"Don't," Damir said quietly, "tell me what to do."

His voice was completely even. No heat in it. No anger. Which somehow made it worse than if he'd shouted.

"I am going to be your Luna..."

"You are here," he said, cutting through her sentence like it wasn't worth finishing, "because a group of old men decided that a mating ceremony would be good for political stability and your family agreed before I was consulted." He took another drag, unhurried, eyes on her the whole time. "That is the beginning and the end of your relevance to my decisions, Seraphine. You don't manage my household. You don't manage my bed. You don't manage what I do or who I do it with." He tilted his head, just slightly. "Stay in your lane. It's a generous lane. Don't make me narrow it."

Seraphine's jaw was tight. Her arms were still folded but the knuckles had gone white.

She was smart enough not to push further. That was the thing about her, underneath all the performance and the ambition and the careful construction of herself, she was genuinely intelligent. She knew exactly where the line was.

She smiled instead.

It didn't reach her eyes and they both knew it.

"Of course, Alpha," she said sweetly. "My apologies for overstepping."

She turned, smoothed her dress once with both hands, and walked out.

The door closed behind her with the same soft click she'd entered with.

Damir stood where she'd left him, cigarette burning between his fingers, and looked at the closed door for a moment.

Then he looked at the window.

That scent again. Faint. Drifting.

Peach and something underneath it that his wolf refused to stop cataloguing.

He took one last drag, stubbed the cigarette out on the edge of the cabinet, and picked up his glass.

Two days until a mating ceremony he hadn't agreed to.

There was a knock at the door.

Damir didn't answer.

The door opened anyway.

Only one person in Vordheim had the particular nerve to push through a door that hadn't been answered.

Rowen Ashford. Beta of Vordheim.

He was three years older than Damir and the only person in vordheim who didn't treat the Alpha like a ticking time bomb. They had spent more evenings than either of them could count with a bottle between them and nothing that needed to be said.

That didn't mean Rowen forgot himself.

He stepped fully into the room, the scent of steam and sex still hanging in the air.

He dipped his head in a bow.

"Alpha."

He straightened and clasped his hands behind his back.

Damir didn't turn around. He stared out at the jagged skyline of the kingdom, a glass of dark whiskey gripped in his hand.

"We have a situation." rowen said.

"A girl showed up at the perimeter an hour ago. Alone. No pack markings, no escort, nothing." A pause. "She's a wolf." Another pause."She came in asking for the former alpha, by name. By title."

Damir's eyes didn't move from the window.

"And then," Rowen continued, his voice carefully even, "the moment Bren told her the former alpha was dead, her entire story changed. Suddenly she's just a packless wolf looking for somewhere to belong. Heard about Vordheim, thought she'd try her luck." He let that sit in the air for a moment. "It's not certain if she's a spy or not, she was searched and a blade was found on her."

Damir was quiet for a moment. Outside the window Vordheim moved through its normal routine, His pack now. His problem now.

He looked at Rowen.

"Where is she now?" Damir asked.

"The west. Locked. Bren's on the door."

Damir set his glass down.

Rowe watched him do it.

"So." Rowe tilted his head. "What do we do with her?"

Damir was quiet for a second. A kind of quiet that meant he was already three steps ahead and deciding how much of it to share.

"I want to see her," he said.

Rowe raised an eyebrow. Just slightly. "See her."

"Is there an echo in here?"

"No, Alpha." The corner of Rowe's mouth moved. "No echo."

Damir picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and headed for the door.