“The fuck do you mean, submit to you?” Kristen growled heatedly, his fingers digging so deeply into the fabric of his jeans that the seams threatened to snap.
The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
Not counting the glaring, utterly humiliating fact that he had never bottomed before, he had never…
actually done anything.
He was a complete virgin to everything—every touch, every kiss, every single milestone that his peers talked about with easy casualness.
He had spent his entire life focusing on his survival, hiding his freakish golden eyes, and learning how to step into the massive, suffocating shoes of a Pack Alpha.
The mere thought of being forced into a loveless marriage was already fracturing his carefully constructed sanity into jagged pieces.
But now?
Now this arrogant, bloodsucking lunatic had the audacity to demand his submission?
“I’d rather die,” Kristen spat out through clenched teeth, his posture stiffening as his inner wolf slammed against the walls of his mind, screaming for blood.
Julian Vance merely raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow from where he sat.
The psychopath had brazenly stolen the Pack Alpha’s executive desk chair the absolute second after announcing they were going to discuss the contract.
He didn’t just sit in it; he reclined with an infuriatingly lazy grace, crossing his long legs casually right on top of a stack of highly sensitive, confidential ironbound pack documents.
The sheer disrespect of it made the air in the room turn razor-sharp.
Kristen’s mother stood by, her jaw locked so tightly that a muscle jumped beneath her dark skin.
Her expression was a mask of rigid, stony neutrality, though Kristen heavily suspected that behind those cold eyes, she was inwardly tearing the vampire to shreds a dozen times over.
If he had known this was how the meeting would go—if he had known his pride would be stripped away layer by layer before his own family—he would have begged them to leave them alone in the office.
A suffocating heat crept up his neck, a furious blush burning his cheeks as he cast a tense, desperate side-glance at his parents.
“And I’d rather kill you than negotiate that clause, my dear Alpha,” Julian retorted smoothly.
His voice was like velvet wrapped around steel, carrying a chilling undercurrent that made the hair on Kristen’s arms stand up.
He made a slow, patronizing sweep of the office with his crimson gaze, treating the high-ranking wolves like minor inconveniences in his grand schedule.
“The Vance Clan prides itself on its absolute dominance and unyielding superiority.
The mere fact that I am stooping so low as to marry a dirty little mutt like you is a profound honor.
You should be thanking me on your knees, not barking like a stray.”
“I am not submitting to you,” Kristen hissed, his control snapping entirely.
His eyes flashed a brilliant, blinding gold, the raw power of his unique lineage bleeding into the room as the ambient temperature plummeted.
“Then there is nothing left to discuss.
I would truly hate to force a beast to do something against its nature…” Julian said, his lips curling into a bright, blindingly beautiful, and utterly terrifying smile.
“So I think I’ll just slaughter your family instead.”
Before Kristen’s brain could even register the threat, before a single warning growl could escape his throat, the world turned into a chaotic blur.
The air pressure in the room shifted violently, a micro-sonic boom echoing in the enclosed space.
Kristen blinked, and the space in front of him was empty.
A choked, desperate gasp shattered the silence from the doorway.
Kristen whipped his head around, his eyes widening in pure horror.
Julian was suddenly standing across the room, his hand wrapped around Scarlet’s throat.
He had lifted her completely off her feet, her boots dangling inches above the hardwood floor.
“Scar!” Kristen roared, taking a step forward.
Their mother instantly rounded on the vampire, her protective maternal instincts completely overriding her strategic restraint.
Her eyes flared a vicious, animalistic crimson, and a series of deep, guttural growls tore continuously from her chest as she prepared to lung.
The shadows in the office seemed to twist, responsive to her Alpha rage.
Julian vanished from the doorway.
In the absolute blink of an eye, the vampire materialized on the opposite side of the room, right next to the executive desk.
His left hand remained locked around a gasping Scarlet, while his right hand shot out like lightning, clamping ruthlessly around Richard’s neck.
Both Scarlet and Richard were turning a dangerous, sickening shade of dark red, their hands clawing frantically at the vampire’s pale, unyielding wrists.
Julian hadn’t even broken a sweat.
His posture remained perfectly relaxed, as if he were simply holding two bags of groceries rather than two high-ranking supernatural beings.
Their mother froze dead in her tracks, her boots skidding against the floor.
The furious red tint instantly drained from her eyes, replaced by a hollow, terrifying blankness as she stared at Julian with sudden, desperate caution.
She slowly raised both hands in a gesture of total surrender, a rare, heart-wrenching flicker of raw fear and deep anxiety piercing through her usually unbreakable facade.
Her mouth opened and closed, but the words died in her throat.
She clearly had no idea what to say, her maternal authority shattered as her eyes kept flickering helplessly between the pained, suffocating faces of her husband and daughter.
Kristen stood entirely paralyzed in the center of the rug, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He kept blinking, his mind struggling to process the sheer, impossible speed at which Julian had moved.
It wasn’t just fast; it was supernatural.
It defied everything Kristen had ever been taught about vampire physics.
A cold, heavy wave of genuine dread gripped his chest, sinking into his bones.
This was exactly what his mother had meant when she warned him that he might be the only one to survive a war with the Vance Clan.
Looking at the effortless cruelty radiating off Julian right now, Kristen realized a bitter, terrifying truth: it wasn’t even guaranteed that he could win a fight against this prince alone, let alone save his people from the rest of the coven.
They were outmatched.
Completely and utterly outmatched.
“The clock is ticking, my lovely Alpha,” Julian purred, a bloodthirsty, predatory gleam dancing merrily in his crimson eyes.
He looked completely at home in the center of their panic.
“I have all the time in the world, but I’m not entirely sure dear, fragile Richy and sweet little Scar do.”
He tightened his grip slightly, a sickening crunching sound echoing from the cartilage in their necks.
Scarlet let out a weak, pathetic whimper, her fingers losing their strength against his iron sleeve.
Julian tilted his head, offering Kristen an innocent, mocking smile that made him look like a dark angel.
“You have a very simple choice, sweet mutt.
You agree to every single term in this contract, or they die right here on your mother’s expensive rug.
It sounds perfectly fair to me, doesn’t it?”
Kristen glanced at his mother.
She was trembling, her hands still raised in the air, her eyes wide and unfocused with mounting horror as her husband and daughter’s faces began turning a suffocating, bruised purple.
She was a Pack Alpha, a leader who had protected hundreds of refugees, but right now, she was just a terrified wife and mother watching her family get snuffed out by a monster.
Kristen felt something inside him break.
His pride, his ego, his dreams of a beautiful mate chosen by the Moon Goddess—all of it dissolved into nothingness, burned away by the desperate need to keep his family breathing.
He swallowed the bitter, metallic lump of pride resting in his throat.
He took one deep, grounding breath, locked his golden eyes onto Julian’s mocking red ones, and exhaled.
“I’ll do it.
Stop..
I’ll do it.”
“Delightful!” Julian chirped, his voice instantly snapping back into that bright, cheerful register.
Without a single shred of care or gentleness, he callously released his grip. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
He didn’t lower them; he simply let go, letting Richard and Scarlet collapse hard onto the hardwood floor like broken dolls.
Both of them slumped over completely unconscious, gasping raggedly for oxygen as their bodies tried to recover from the trauma.
Rachel immediately broke her submissive stance, letting out a panicked, breathless sob as she rushed frantically across the room.
She dropped to her knees beside them, her hands shaking violently as she checked their pulses, murmuring frantic, terrified apologies over their unmoving bodies.
Julian didn’t even look back at them.
He paid the suffering wolves absolutely no mind, adjusting the cuffs of his silk shirt with casual precision.
Then, he turned his gaze back to Kristen.
Slowly, deliberately, he began sauntering across the office, his footsteps making absolutely no sound against the wood.
He stopped a mere inch away from Kristen’s chest.
The air between them grew thick, saturated with the scent of ozone and old blood.
For the second time that night, the vampire leaned down, his frame casting a long, dark shadow over Kristen’s body.
His crimson eyes smoldering with a hot, dangerous, and confusingly intense heat as they raked slowly down Kristen’s frame, inspecting him like a prize horse he had just successfully bought at an auction.
Julian slowly licked his lips, his gaze anchoring on Kristen’s trembling mouth.
“I must say,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, seductive baritone that vibrated right through Kristen’s chest.
“I’m not into mutts, but I must admit I’m a bit eager to see you submitting to me, Alpha.”
“Fuck off, Vance,” Kristen hissed back, his voice shaking with a volatile mixture of rage and adrenaline.
He refused to step back, forcing his legs to remain locked in place despite every instinct screaming at him to flee or tear the man’s throat out.
Julian let out a dark, thoroughly amused laugh, the sound rich and echoing in the quiet office.
“Oh, you are going to keep me entertained just fine, my fierce little bride,” he chuckled.
Before Kristen could flinch away, Julian reached up, using two fingers to condescendingly pat Kristen on the top of his head, exactly like someone praising a well-behaved dog.
Kristen’s inner wolf lost its mind.
He aggressively bared his elongated fangs, a vicious, feral growl ripping from his throat as he snapped his jaws near Julian’s fingers.
“How cute,” Julian cooed, completely unfazed by the threat of violence.
He took a fluid step backward, melting toward the open doorway with effortless grace.
He paused at the threshold, offering Kristen a sharp, infuriating parting wink.
“Well, I will be back tomorrow evening to collect my lovely bride.
Make sure you are waiting for me in a pretty dress, my dear Alpha.”
With another sudden, dizzying blur, he vanished.
The heavy oak office door slammed shut a full second after he had already disappeared, the force of the wind rattling the frames and causing a picture on the wall to drop to the floor, shattering the glass.
Kristen stood completely alone in the center of the rug, his chest heaving as the suffocating, alpha-predator tension finally bled out of the room.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the sound of his mother’s quiet, ragged weeping as she held his father’s head in her lap.
Kristen stared at the closed door, his flared golden eyes slowly fading back to their normal muted shade.
His hands were still trembling, his ears burning from where the vampire’s breath had brushed against them.
He had just sold his life, his body, and his future to a monster.
He closed his eyes, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
Fuck my life.
Today was hectic (｡ŏ﹏ŏ)
Can’t wait for Vance to yearnnnn