Danae’s POV
I nodded, already fumbling for clothes, wincing at the soreness between my thighs.
“Don’t get smug about it.
I just never got around to it before.”
Caspian crossed the room toward me.
Gloriously, unapologetically naked.
His proximity made my freshly-dressed body ache to be unclothed again, and I hated how immediately, how helplessly it responded to him.
“You think this is a good thing?” His voice had dropped to somewhere dangerous.
I tensed.
Forced myself not to stare.
“What else would it be?”
A cold laugh.
“Naive.” He reached for his phone, muscles moving easily beneath golden skin.
“Give me your account information.”
I stared.
“What?”
“Your account.
For the transfer.” Impatient.
Not meeting my eyes.
“For the transaction.”
The confusion fell away.
What replaced it was hot and immediate and humiliating.
“Are you joking?” My voice shook.
“You think I need money?” The memory of his hands—careful, then not—made this exchange cut in a way I hadn’t expected.
“It’s part of the arrangement,” he explained calmly, stepping into his boxers.
“You provide a service, I pay a fee.
It’s equitable.”
I felt sick.
Actual bile at the back of my throat.
“I’m not a prostitute!
I don’t want your money!”
His brow furrowed.
Genuine confusion.
“Then what do you want?
Status?
A connection to the Ashmoon?
If you’re trying to position yourself through me—”
“I don’t want anything!” I cut him off, furious tears stinging my eyes.
“Last night was a mistake.
A stupid decision I’ll regret for the rest of my life.” The words hurt coming out, and worse because they weren’t entirely true.
Caspian’s wolf surfaced.
His eyes flashed gold as he stalked toward me, his body radiating heat and displeasure in equal measure.
“You approached me knowing exactly who I am, and you’re Bryneholm’s woman.
That doesn’t read like coincidence.”
“Ex.
And do you think the world revolves around you?
Some people just need one night to forget how much it hurts!”
My chest heaved, bringing it dangerously close to his.
“Then why me?” Low.
Crowding my space until my back hit the wall.
“Of all the people in that bar, why choose the Ashmoon heir?”
His scent surrounded me—musk and warmth and last night—making it genuinely hard to think clearly.
“I don’t know.” A whisper.
My resistance crumbling at the edges.
“When I saw your eyes, I just—knew it had to be you.” My free hand betrayed me entirely, settling against his chest, feeling his heartbeat racing under my palm.
“Now let me go.”
He studied me with those eyes—nostrils flaring, like he was reading something in the air between us.
“What did you feel when we touched?”
I pulled back with effort and gathered the shredded remains of my dignity.
“Nothing but regret.” It tasted like a lie.
“The moment that door closes, you and I never met.”
I walked out.
Behind me, I could feel him still standing there—and I could feel my own body pulling taut against the leaving, like a thread stretched to its limit, reluctant to snap.
Caspian’s POV
She was gone.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my wolf clawing at the underside of my skin, furious and wanting.
“A fucking virgin.” I slammed my fist into the mattress hard enough to crack the frame beneath it.
“Goddamn it.”
Last night at the Moonlight Lounge came rushing back in images: the moment her scent had hit me across that crowded room—honey, rain, something uniquely female that had made my wolf snap to full attention.
For the first time in years, my control had nearly shattered in public.
My gums had ached.
Fangs trying to descend.
My vision sharpening as the wolf shoved forward, recognizing something it had never encountered before.
Mine.
The word surfaced with absolute certainty, carrying its own conviction.
When she’d approached me—those gray-green eyes pulling me in like gravity—it had taken everything I had not to bend her over the nearest surface and claim her on the spot.
And now I knew why the pull had been that strong.
Untouched.
Pure.
Perfect for mating.
“Fuck.” I paced the room.
My wolf was enraged—we’d had our mate beneath us, around us, and I’d let her walk away.
Worse than that.
I’d tried to pay her.
Tried to reduce what should have been sacred to a transaction.
The look on her face when I offered money.
That cut deeper than I wanted to admit.
I picked up my phone and called Garrick, fighting to keep my voice level.
“I need you to run a background on a human female.
Last night at the Moonlight Lounge.” A pause on the line.
“No.
Not a bedmate.” My jaw locked.
“Someone who may be connected to Bryneholm.”
But even as I said it, I knew.
The way she’d gripped me—the way her scent had shifted during our time together, becoming richer, subtly marked by me even without a bite—told me everything my wolf had already decided.
She wasn’t Bryneholm’s discarded human.
She wasn’t a plant or a coincidence or a transaction.
She was mine.
My mate.
I stepped into the shower and stood under the spray, determined to wash her scent away before I did something irreversible—like track her down and drag her back.
But her essence seemed embedded beneath my skin, below the surface where water could reach.
I pressed my forehead against the cool tile and let the memory of her move through me.
So tight I’d nearly lost control.
The gasp she’d made.
The way her inexperienced body had learned fast, matching me, those delicate fingers leaving marks that hadn’t healed—a sign in itself that couldn’t be ignored.
Past mistakes surfaced, unwelcome—women who had seen him as a means to an end.
One had photographed him in compromising positions, used the images as leverage for months before he’d finally bought her silence.
Another had lied about her age, then threatened statutory charges until a seven-figure settlement made her disappear.
Both of them had played the long game.
Both had wanted something: money, power, a foothold in the Ashmoon’s world.
This girl had walked away.
Refused payment.
The hurt in her eyes when I’d offered it had been real, and it had lodged somewhere in my chest that no amount of hot water was going to reach.
“Fuck,” I muttered, watching my family ring catch the light beneath the spray.
My vision flashed gold.
The tile cracked under my fist.
“I’ll find you, little doe,” I said to the empty shower, the wolf bleeding into my voice.
“Whatever your purpose—you will be punished for provoking me.”