Lilia’s POV
What was happening?
My mind went utterly blank.
Kael’s hand tightened at the back of my neck, pinning me before I could twist away.
“Don’t move.”
He said it against my lips, the words humming low across my mouth, leaving no room to argue.
Did I dare move?
I forced myself calm, telling myself over and over: don’t fight him.
This man was a killer who didn’t blink.
Don’t set him off.
Don’t set him off…
It was just a kiss.
That was all.
My life mattered more.
I wanted to weep.
Inside I was screaming, and my lips trembled hard enough for him to feel.
He noticed.
His tongue swept along the roof of my mouth, and the roughness of it arched my whole body like a live wire.
He’d expected the reaction,his other hand was already at my lower back, holding me in place.
I could taste the tobacco still on him, and something more bitter underneath.
He seemed satisfied with my obedience.
The tip of his tongue traced the shape of my lips, unhurried now, and that scent of his poured into my senses, heavy and demanding.
A screech of brakes,the car jolted to a stop.
The Beta in the front seat scratched his head, hesitant.
“Alpha. We’re here.”
Kael left my lips and glanced at him.
And in that half-second, I grabbed my chance, wrenched the door open with a clatter,
Before Kael could reach for me, I was out and scrambling through the snow, up, running for the gates, falling twice in ten steps.
I made it inside with my heart slamming.
Out of habit I glanced at the mirror.
The face looking back was absurd,paint layered on thick enough to frighten anyone on the street.
Fake lashes still stuck to my right cheek, lips red as if I’d been drinking blood.
Jace called me ugly.
He wasn’t exaggerating. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
So how desperate was this man, to kiss that face?
I peeled off the fake lashes and pinched my cheek, hard enough to sting.
Not a dream.
So Kael had waited for me on purpose.
Not to dig out who I was.
Not to silence me.
But to…
pursue me?
Pursue me.
As if.
I rubbed my eyes.
Eyeliner and glittering purple shadow came off on my fingertips.
And then, a second later, the car came back to me,the dim seat, the closed-in dark, I closed my eyes, but Kael’s ridiculously handsome face was still right there in my mind..
Kael’s POV
I barely felt the engine’s hum through the seat.
Lilia’s lips were soft and that unnameable scent of hers clung to them.
The instant the door slid open she shoved it aside and tumbled out.
I watched her stumble through the snow toward the gates, deep step after shallow step, and she never once looked back.
The gates closed behind her.
Through the window, my gaze stayed on that door a long time.
“Alpha.” It was Derek, one of my Betas, who finally couldn’t hold it in.
He kept his voice low and careful.
“Forgive me, but… didn’t you say if we found any witnesses in the forest, we deal with them on the spot?”
I didn’t answer.
Just looked at him, cold.
“Drive.”
Derek shut his mouth.
The cabin went quiet again,nothing but the engine’s low drone and the tires grinding snow.
“Fenrir.” The anger was in my voice before I could stop it.
“I never allowed you to take over my body like that.”
”Take over?
You make me sound like a bandit.
I merely…
went along with the moment.”
”You buried my consciousness completely.”
Fenrir never lost control like that outside a fight.
“You forgot what night it is.” His tone dropped.
The eve of a full moon.
A wolf’s agitation doubles,every werewolf knows that.
Normally I doubled my restraint too, locking myself down so deep he never found a crack.
But tonight, I had…
forgotten to guard the door.
“So you borrowed the moon and did as you pleased?”
”As I pleased?” Fenrir laughed low.
“I only did what you’ve never dared admit you wanted.”
”Nonsense.” The word came out, and even to me it sounded thin.
“You’re not innocent, Kael.” The wolf’s voice turned serious, the teasing gone.
“Blame the moon, blame me,but you know. If you had truly resisted, I could never have gotten near her. I know you best.”
I closed my eyes and didn’t argue.
Since Elena died, I hadn’t gone near a woman.
Maybe no one would believe I was capable of fear.
The night Elena died in my arms, I swore I would never live through that again.
Pack business was enough to fill every waking hour.
I kept it all pressed down, every want locked in the deepest corner of me,because each time I came close to someone, the first thing to surface was Elena and my mother lying in their blood.
They had died almost identically.
My mother’s eyes,the ones that used to smile at me,stared at nothing the last time they opened.
Don’t get close, and you can’t lose again.
That was my iron rule.
No exceptions.
Tonight the rule broke.
I had smelled Lilia’s scent.
That should not have happened.
If she were truly an Omega without a wolf, I should have smelled nothing,the wolfless carry no trace that another of our kind can catch.
But she did carry it.
Faint, only there when I was very close to her.
It made no sense.
Nothing about this woman was simple.
Some part of me hoped she was exactly what she claimed,a plain, wolfless Omega.
At least then she would only be a woman I happened to want.
This woman, and whatever slept inside her,I had to find out who she was.