The luxury sedan glided silently down the unpaved forest road, leaving the borders of the Ironbound pack territory behind.
Through the tinted glass of the rear window, Julian Vance watched Kristen walking back toward his isolated cabin.
The wolf’s broad shoulders were rigid, his posture radiating a furious, burning hatred that Julian could practically taste in the air.
Julian leaned back against the leather seat, a slow, cold smirk spreading across his face.
Fascinating.
Utterly fascinating.
His coven elders thought he was playing an unnecessarily dangerous game.
For weeks, the senior vampires of the Vance Clan had been whispering behind his father’s back, furious that they weren’t simply wiping out the local werewolves or taking the Alpha’s daughter as a blood slave to be drained dry within the month.
To the ancient council, wolves were nothing more than glorified beasts—a messy, outdated species that had evolved out of their magical traits while the vampires had conquered the sun, mastered the dark, and grown into something far more lethal.
They didn’t see what Julian saw.
They didn’t understand the intricacies of the long game.
Julian hadn’t crashed that pack meeting because he was impatient.
He had crashed it because he needed to strip Kristen of his security blanket.
He needed to lay the terms of the contract bare in front of the entire pack, ensuring that every single wolf in that room knew their future leader belonged to a vampire prince.
Breaking a werewolf Alpha’s pride required an audience; it required the silent, crushing weight of their own pack’s judgment.
Hearing the words submissive little bride echo over the crowd had dealt a psychological blow far more effective than any physical strike.
To truly shatter an Alpha, you had to pull them out of their sanctuary and expose their vulnerabilities where they felt most secure.
The communal hall was supposed to be Kristen’s fortress, the place where his authority was absolute.
By marching down that center aisle and rendering his strongest warrior useless with a single, effortless kick, Julian hadn’t just dominated Kristen—he had dismantled the pack’s faith in their own strength.
They were forced to watch their future leader bow his head, not out of cowardice, but out of the devastating realization that resistance meant complete annihilation.
More importantly, Julian had been tracking Kristen for over a month.
When the Ironbound Alphas had initially offered a marriage alliance to protect their dwindling resources, they had hidden the existence of their golden-eyed son.
They had tried to offer Scarlet, hoping to keep their rare anomaly safely hidden away in the deep shadows of the forest.
But Julian’s informants in the city had caught wind of a wolf who didn’t fit the genetic mold—a wolf who could consciously speak to his inner beast and whose eyes burned with the ancient, forgotten power of the Moon Oracles.
The moment Julian discovered Kristen existed, the terms of the treaty changed completely.
He didn’t want a blood slave.
He didn’t want a fragile girl whose spirit would break after a week in the coven’s dungeons.
He wanted the crown jewel of the Ironbound pack.
He wanted the one creature capable of bridging the massive evolutionary gap that had divided their species for centuries.
The “letter” he had unleashed near their borders last night had been a calculated test.
Julian had watched from the tree canopy as Kristen sprinted through the dark, pushing his paws to the absolute limit to shepherd his friends safely across the iron gates. This chapter was taken from NovelPing without permission.
Kristen hadn’t run away like a coward; he had fought the terror head-on.
He was strong, fiercely protective, and completely pure.
Vampires were ancient creatures, defined by centuries of political manipulation, cold calculations, and dead emotions.
To find a being filled with such raw, unadulterated passion was intoxicating.
Kristen ran with a fire that Julian hadn’t felt in his own veins for over a hundred years.
Watching the young wolf command his peers, putting his own life on the line to act as a shield, had cemented Julian’s obsession.
When Julian had pushed his way into the Pack Alpha’s office last night, his predator instincts had practically roared.
Standing close to Kristen, the scent of the young wolf had hit him like a physical wave—pine wood, and an intense, untamed heat that made Julian’s dead heart stutter.
Sitting in that office, Julian knew he would never allow another creature to possess that golden-eyed wolf.
The submission clause in the contract hadn’t been his father’s idea.
It had been Julian’s.
He knew exactly how proud werewolf Alphas were.
Forcing Kristen into a submissive role was a deliberate power move to ensure the Vance Clan elders accepted the union.
If Julian brought home a dominant, feral wolf who refused to bow, the coven would have slaughtered Kristen in his sleep.
The senior council was paranoid, terrified of a wolf uprising.
By cementing Kristen as the submissive partner in the marriage, Julian was publicly claiming him as protected, untouchable property.
No one in the Vance Clan would dare touch a wolf that belonged directly to the prince’s bed.
It was a golden cage, yes, but it was the only way to keep the boy breathing.
And today, at the communal hall, Kristen had exceeded every single one of his expectations.
When that loud, reckless Alpha—Dalton—had charged down the aisle like a brainless brute, Julian had put him down with a single kick, not even bothering to remove his hands from his pockets.
He had expected Kristen to lose his mind, to shift into a giant beast and tear the hall apart in a fit of animalistic rage.
He had prepared himself to intercept a feral animal.
Instead, Kristen had done something that made the blood in Julian’s veins run scalding hot.
He had half-shifted.
Julian had read the ancient texts in his family’s private archives.
He knew that during the era of the Oracles, the highest-ranking wolves could control their transformations, manifesting lethal claws and fangs while retaining their human agility.
It was a trait that had been extinct for five hundred years.
Yet, right there in the middle of that dusty communal hall, Kristen had let the dark fur ripple across his jaw, his fangs elongating while maintaining his human stance.
The raw, suffocating pressure of Kristen’s half-wolf aura had been so intoxicating that Julian had barely been able to maintain his arrogant composure.
The ambient air in the hall had dropped, saturated with a primal energy that threatened to bring the weaker vampires in his guard to their knees.
He had wanted to press his face into that dark fur, to feel the heat of that golden-eyed dominance burning against his pale, cold skin.
It wasn’t just power; it was a divine right. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Kristen wasn’t just a leader by title—he was chosen by blood and history.
“I am doing this to save my pack, not because I belong to you,” Kristen had hissed, his claws dug into Julian’s silk lapels.
Julian chuckled quietly to himself, his fingers tracing the faint indentations Kristen’s claws had left on his suit jacket.
The memory of that gravelly, ruined voice sent a thrill through his mind.
Kristen thought he was a martyr, a tragic hero sacrificing his life for the greater good.
He didn’t understand the depth of the world he was walking into.
“Oh, my dear Alpha,” Julian murmured into the quiet space of the car, his red eyes glowing faintly in the dim interior.
“You think you are sacrificing yourself to save them.
You don’t realize that I am the only thing standing between your pack and total extinction.
My father would have burned your forest to ash and I would have had you regardless.”
Julian paused, “I guess, I am a bit too kind at times,” he murmured to himself.
The sedan finally broke through the tree line, emerging onto the sleek, modern highway that led directly toward the city’s elite diamond district.
The skyscrapers loomed in the distance, dark monuments of glass and steel where the Vance Clan ruled from the shadows of high society.
Here, away from the dirt and trees, Julian was a god.
And soon, Kristen would have to learn how to walk among gods without getting burned.
The layout of the mansion was already prepared.
Julian had personally selected the eastern wing, the rooms that caught the morning light—a luxury he knew a wolf would crave, even if it meant nothing to a creature of the night.
He had stripped the rooms of any silver, replacing the fixtures with gold and heavy velvet drapes to protect Kristen’s heightened senses from the harsh city glare.
Every detail had been calculated to keep the wolf comfortable, yet contained.
In a few hours, the sun would set entirely, painting the horizon in shades of bruised purple and crimson.
The luxury sedan would return to that isolated cabin in the woods, breaking through the iron gates to collect his stubborn, golden-eyed bride.
Julian settled back into the leather cushions, his mind already racing with anticipation.
He closed his eyes, visualizing the moment Kristen would step into the car, packed bags in hand, his pride wounded but his spirit unbroken.
Kristen was a proud Alpha, and a creature of pure, fiery passion.
He was a puzzle of contradictions—a dominant leader forced into submission, a protector who needed protection, a fierce warrior who would have to learn how to yield.
Breaking through that icy, defensive exterior, making those brilliant golden eyes bleed with a different kind of intensity in his bedroom, was going to be the most exquisite game Julian had ever played.
He would let Kristen fight, let him claw and snarl and protest.
It only made the inevitable submission taste that much sweeter.
And Julian always won.
Are you a good guy or a bad guy Julian!
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ Most of you were probably looking forward to Vance’s Pov and then he just turned out to be as crazy as usual ಠ益ಠ