Lahat ng Kabanata ng Moaning For The Enemy: Her Sister's Betrothed Alpha : Kabanata 141 - Kabanata 150

IRIS’S POVThe fluorescent lights of the hospital hallway were a brutal, clinical white that felt like they were trying to bleach the very memory of the mountain from my skin, and they were such a far cry from the flickering orange embers and the suffocating smoke we had just escaped. I sat on a hard plastic chair that smelled of industrial lemon cleaner and dried sweat, staring down at my hands where a smudge of soot was still trapped under my fingernails like a permanent stain from the hell we’d left behind. Every time I let my eyes drift shut for even a second, I felt that terrifying, phantom sensation of the drop—that weightless, heart-stopping second of pure air before the net finally caught us and saved us from the jagged rocks below.Darius was leaning against a buzzing vending machine ten feet away, his silhouette looking like a dark, jagged crack against the sterile white tiles of the hallway. He had flatly refused to put on a hospital gown, choosing instead to stay in his ch

IRIS’S POVThe sub-basement of 422 Wall Street didn’t smell like high-tech machinery or the sharp scent of ozone you’d expect from a billion-dollar empire. Instead, it smelled like damp earth, expensive cigars, and a century of secrets that had finally rotted right through the floorboards. It was the kind of heavy, suffocating air that felt like it was coating your lungs in velvet and dust with every single breath you took.As I slid the silver key into the heavy, iron-bound door, there wasn’t a satisfying digital hum or a high-tech beep. There was only the low, agonizing groan of rusted hinges that sounded like a scream echoing through the dark. I stepped into the room, my flashlight beam cutting through a layer of dust so thick it looked like grey fur covering everything in sight."This is it?" Darius muttered, stepping in behind me. I could feel the heat radiating off his body, a constant, heavy presence that always seemed to pull at my senses. He looked around the cramped, circula

DARIUS’S POVThe book kept flipping, the heavy vellum pages rustling like dry, dead leaves caught in a winter storm. The sound was deafening in the white chamber, a frantic snap-snap-snap that made the hair on my arms stand up and stay there. Venus watched the blurring paper with a look of calm, hungry satisfaction, as if every single second was unfolding exactly the way she had planned for three hundred years. To her, we weren't people; we were just the latest set of numbers to be crunched in her eternal ledger.I tightened my grip on Iris’s hand until our bones practically ground together. Her palm felt like ice against mine, a startling contrast to the rising heat in the room, but she didn’t pull away. Not even an inch. She kept her chin tilted up at that defiant, stubborn angle, staring directly at the giant woman who wore her own face like a cruel, oversized mirror from a nightmare.Venus took another slow, heavy step closer, her sheer mass blocking out the blue light of the tank

IRIS’S POVThe brass lighter spun through the stagnant air, a tiny, glittering arc of defiance. Time didn't just crawl; it stretched thin and snapped like a dry violin string. The small orange flame caught the flickering blue light from the industrial tanks, flashing once like a miniature sun in the heart of that white, sterile hell. I saw Venus’s massive, pale hand shoot out—a blur of silver and gold—but for all her ancient power, she was a fraction of a second too slow. The lighter hit the edge of the nearest tank with a soft, sickeningly casual clink of metal on glass.For one single heartbeat, the room was paralyzed in a vacuum of silence.Then, the flame found the aerosol. The air in the chamber was saturated with that cloying, chemical lily mist, and it ignited with a sound like a physical blow—a bright, violent whoosh that sucked the oxygen right out of my lungs. Blue flames, eerily beautiful and terrifyingly hot, raced across the white ceramic tiles in jagged lightning bolts. T

IRIS’S POVThe safe house wasn’t actually a house at all. It was a massive, converted industrial loft tucked away in a corner of DUMBO that smelled like bitter turpentine, expensive floor wax, and the kind of unwashed ambition that only exists in New York. The space was huge and hollow, with exposed brick that looked like it had seen a century of secrets. Outside, the rain was absolutely hammering against the reinforced glass windows, turning the lights of the Manhattan skyline into a jagged, grey watercolor that bled into the East River.I stood in the center of the hardwood floor, my skin still stinging and red from the blistering heat of the sub-basement. My lungs felt like they’d been scrubbed raw with steel wool, every breath carrying a faint, ghostly hint of those burnt lilies. I was shaking, but it wasn't from the cold rain soaking my silk dress. It was the sheer electric charge still buzzing under my skin.Kai—or Darius, the man who was a Wolfe to the boardroom but something m