Astrid’s POV
Since Selene left Bloodmoon, I’d had Draven all to myself. Thank the Goddess no one had caught me and Draven for what we did to Zane in the library that day.
He’d been the library’s cleaner, and we killed him like he was nothing.
I wanted to feel remorse. My own life had been spared, but I’d locked up completely. I didn’t know I could be that desperate, that wicked. I had never killed before, but the day I took the gun and shot Zane, I felt it ... a blow to my chest, like something had cracked open inside me. It haunted me for three days straight. I couldn’t shake it. It sat on my chest like a weight that refused to lift.
Draven and I couldn’t afford to get caught. The stakes were too high, and it was a risk neither of us was willing to take.
Under Bloodmoon’s constitution, if you slept with another person’s mate and got caught, you were both executed. No trial, no mercy. Just death.
So we framed Selene. I wanted to kill her outright, but Zane ... before we killed him ... had stopped me. He’d said it would be too easy to trace back to us. Better to frame her instead. After I hit her over the head and she went unconscious, we smeared Zane’s blood on her clothes and pressed the gun into her hands. It would look like she’d fainted from shock after what she’d "done."
Draven handled the cameras himself. He went and pulled the footage from the one facing us directly ... the one that must have caught everything. We erased it all and left just enough: Selene, unconscious, gun in hand. We blurred the timeline until it made sense, until it told the story we needed it to tell.
Everything went smoothly. My parents’ favorite daughter had become a cold-blooded murderer in the eyes of the pack, and no one ever knew it wasn’t her.
We filled every loophole. Every single one ... except regret. Except fear.
Living with Mom and Dad after Selene left had been strange. They’d started paying attention to me in a way I didn’t understand.
Damn. "Have you heard anything from Selene since she left?" Dad asked me one evening, Mom sitting right there beside him.
"No, I haven’t. She must be having a good time out there," I said.
It was like Selene had blocked me. I couldn’t even see her timeline anymore, couldn’t tell if she was online or not.
"Leave her be. She got what she deserved. Stupid she-wolf," Mom said, contempt dripping from every word.
My parents didn’t care about Selene. Neither did I, if I was honest. But I sometimes wondered what could make my father ... a man who shared her blood ... hate her so much.
I didn’t miss her. I hated her, passionately. Part of me had wished she’d been executed the day of her trial. But she was still alive, and I was the one left carrying the weight of what I’d done to my own half-sister.
I was my parents’ favorite daughter. I was also a murderer. A framer. A betrayer.
I’d betrayed my sister. And I’d betrayed my mate too. Yes ... I had a mate. We fucked around a few times, but Draven was better. Draven was so much better.
I was still technically in a relationship with my mate, Raven. He didn’t know about my promiscuity, so as far as he was concerned, we were fine. He worked in the telecom industry, overseeing communications across the entire territories. Always busy. Always somewhere else. And I had needs ... needs he never seemed available to meet. I felt it constantly, that ache, that hunger, and he was never there to answer it.
Draven filled that gap.
He’d come by one afternoon to see Selene ... his betrothed mate, as it were. Selene, of course, wasn’t home. The bitch was at the library, like always. Reading, studying, drowning herself in books. Didn’t it ever end with her? I tried calling her to come see her mate, but her number wasn’t reachable. She always kept her phone on Do Not Disturb. Silly girl.
"She’s not around," I told Draven when I opened the door.
"Oh, okay. I’m Draven, by the way. Tell her I stopped by." He turned to leave.
But it was raining hard, and I couldn’t just let him walk off and get drenched.
"Would you like to stay and have some coffee? It’s pouring out there," I said, the offer wrapped in something softer than hospitality.
He looked at me, hesitated, then said, "Alright. Thank you." He stepped inside and sat down to wait.
My parents weren’t home either. It was just me, alone in the house, with a gorgeous man who claimed to belong to my sister ... but was about to belong to me instead, if only for an hour.
After his coffee, the rain still hadn’t let up. I wasn’t a whore, but I couldn’t resist him. I decided to shoot my shot.
He was sitting there all proper, all modest, like he didn’t know what kind of energy he was giving off.
"This rain doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon. Make yourself at home ... drop your bag, take off your shoes," I said, letting my voice dip low and slow.
He did exactly as I said. Good boy. I felt a small, private thrill of victory.
I moved closer and sat beside him. "I have to say, you’re a really handsome wolf."
He looked at me, smiled. "Thank you," he said quietly.
We talked for a while ... names, favorites, small things that meant nothing and everything. He smiled a lot. I laughed more than I needed to. We got so deep into it that we barely noticed when the rain actually stopped. Or maybe we noticed and ignored it, because by then it was obvious where this was going. He wanted me as much as I wanted him.
"You know where this is heading, right?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" His voice had gone strange, his neck already tight with tension. He was there. So was I.
"We’re not children," I said, and before he could answer, I kissed him ... sharp and sudden, gone before he could process it.
"What was that?" he asked, but his face was already saying he wanted more.
I didn’t answer. I kissed him again, slower this time, deeper, and he kissed me back like he’d been waiting for permission. His mouth moved against mine, and God, he was good at this. I’d always had a weakness for the quiet ones ... the gentle-looking guys who only came alive once you gave them a reason to.
I pulled his jacket off. He finished the job himself. All of this happened right there on my living room couch, and somehow, miraculously, no one walked in on us.
I dragged his boxers down, looked him in the eye to make sure he was still with me, and his eyes told me everything I needed to know. I took him into my mouth, slow at first, then deeper, until he was thrusting up to meet me.
Fuck, it felt good.
Before long my own dress was on the floor too, and he helped me out of my bra. His mouth found my breasts, sucking, biting just enough to make me gasp ... exactly the way I liked it.
He lay back and I rode him, his moans rough and low, mine louder because there was no one left to hear us. It had been a long time since I’d been touched like that, and he gave it to me in full.
I rode him until his moans changed pitch, until I could tell he was close, and I pulled off and finished him with my mouth instead. He came fast, and it tasted sweet, almost like protein.
I smiled, satisfied. He laughed, and we collapsed against each other, both of us breathing like we’d just fallen from somewhere high.
Damn. That had been good.
"You fuck good," he said.
"You handled me just fine," I told him, smiling.
He gathered his things and got dressed. I did the same. He was leaving, and I never even got his number ... but I knew, somehow, that we’d see each other again. He’d come back looking for Selene eventually.
"She won’t be around tomorrow either," I said as he stepped out my door.
He looked back, smiled, and kept walking.
And that was how it started ... the affair between me and my sister’s mate.
They say infidelity is sweet. I didn’t know that firsthand until that night.
Now Draven and I saw each other in secret. But secrets don’t keep forever. Sooner or later, the pack would push for me and Raven to marry. And when that day came, what was I supposed to do then?