The world had narrowed to a single, unbearable point of contact.
Soren’s body pressed Nyra into the furs, his chest against hers, his hips slotted between her thighs. The towel was gone. She knew it was gone. She could feel exactly where it wasn’t, and the knowledge sent a heat rushing through her.
This close, she could see everything she’d never let herself look at before.
His shoulders were broader than she’d realized, carved with muscle that shifted like tectonic plates beneath his skin. And the tattoo how had she never noticed the tattoo? It spilled across half his upper back, climbing the column of his neck and pouring down his left arm in a cascade of black ink and intricate lines. Wolves. A full pack of them, mid-hunt, their bodies twisting through a forest of shadow and moonlight. The largest wolf sat at the base of his throat, jaws open in a silent howl, its eyes rendered so perfectly that she could almost hear it calling to her.
It was beautiful.
He was beautiful.
She hated how beautiful he was.
Soren’s voice cut through the silence like a blade. "Thorne."
His tone was different. Not cold. Not mocking. Something else entirely something rough around the edges, like gravel worn smooth by water.
Nyra couldn’t answer. Her brain had stopped functioning somewhere around the moment the towel had fallen.
He shifted, preparing to push himself up, and the movement brought his other hand into her awareness the hand that wasn’t braced beside her head. The hand that was resting squarely on her chest.
On her bindings.
Panic detonated behind her ribs. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down.
Soren froze. His eyes, half-gold now with his wolf swimming close to the surface, flickered with confusion. "What are you doing?"
"Don’t—" Her voice cracked. She sounded breathless. Terrified. Completely unlike a prince. "Don’t stand up."
"Why?"
"Because you—" She swallowed hard. "Your towel. It’s... you’re not..."
Understanding dawned in his expression. Slowly. Deliberately. His lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smirk and wasn’t quite a smile—something cocky and knowing and infuriatingly attractive.
"What’s the matter, little prince?" He settled his weight back onto her, and she felt every inch of it. "Aren’t you interested in seeing it? We’re both men here. I don’t have anything you don’t have." His head tilted. "Unless, of course, that’s not true."
Nyra’s mouth opened. Closed. No words came.
"Is that it?" Soren’s voice dropped lower, rougher, a rumble she felt in her own chest. "Are you afraid you’ll see something unfamiliar? Something you don’t possess yourself? Because if we’re both males—" He leaned closer, his breath ghosting across her lips. "—then you should have no problem with any of this."
Inside his skull, his wolf was screaming.
Take her. Take her now. She’s right there can’t you feel her? Can’t you smell how wet she is? Take her, claim her, make her ours
Soren’s cock throbbed where it pressed against the seam of her trousers. Hard. Pulsing. His wolf was howling, clawing at the inside of his skin, demanding satisfaction. Her scent that strange, wrong, right scent that he’d never been able to identify was flooding his senses, and beneath it was something new. Something warm and musky and utterly feminine.
She was wet. He could smell it. Could feel the heat of her through the thin fabric separating them.
Now, his wolf demanded. Right now.
Soren didn’t move.
Nyra’s face had gone crimson. Her eyes were everywhere the ceiling, the walls, his shoulder, anything to avoid looking at what she could still feel pressed hard between her thighs. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps.
Then she shoved him.
He let her. Let her push him off and scramble to her feet, as she put some distance between them, and spin around so her back was to him. But not before he saw her eyes drop. Just for a fraction of a second. Just long enough to take in the size of him before she turned away so fast she nearly tripped over the fur throw.
She stood there, back rigid, shoulders tight, hands clenched at her sides.
Soren smirked. He took his time retrieving the towel, wrapping it around his waist with deliberate slowness.
"Leave the room," he said. "I’ll meet you on the training floor in five minutes."
She fled. Nearly hit her head on the doorframe in her haste. The door slammed behind her, and Soren was alone.
He shook his head slowly, the smirk still playing at the corner of his mouth. "Clumsy," he murmured. "So very clumsy. I’ll enjoy watching how long you can keep this secret up."
You should have taken her.
His wolf’s voice echoed through his skull, frustrated and hungry.
"It’s too soon." Soren crossed to his wardrobe and pulled out training trousers, a loose shirt. "She’s not ready. And I want to see how long she thinks she can fool me. Let her believe she’s still hidden. Let her squirm."
I don’t care about games. I want her. I want to mate her. I want—
"Why?"
His wolf went silent.
"She’s a woman disguised as a man. She’s weak in combat. She cries by lakes and flinches at shadows." Soren pulled the shirt over his head. "Why are you so drawn to her? What makes her different from every other woman we’ve encountered?"
Silence.
"I’m asking you a question."
The silence stretched. Deepened. Became absolute.
Soren called again. Nothing. His wolf had retreated somewhere he couldn’t reach, taking its secrets with it.
"Damn it," he muttered. He finished dressing and strode toward the training floor.
Nyra was already there when he arrived. She’d started her warm-up routine without him push-ups, her form still imperfect but better than the first day. He stood in the shadows for a moment, watching her. The way she moved. The set of her jaw. The determination that burned in her eyes even when her arms shook with exhaustion.
She didn’t know he knew.
She didn’t know he was watching her with new eyes now, cataloguing every confirmation of what he’d already figured out the slightness of her frame, the way she held herself, the careful distance she kept from everyone.
She thought the secret was still hers.
He stepped into the light. "Your form is still sloppy. Adjust your hands. Shoulder-width apart. Now."
She flinched at his voice but corrected immediately. He circled her like a wolf circling prey.
"Better. Fifty more. And if I see you flagging, we start over."
They trained. Both of them professional. Both of them pretending the last ten minutes hadn’t happened.
Morning came too fast.
The day before the sparring match dawned gray and cold. Nyra sat in the lecture hall with her friends, their morning class just finished, the instructor’s voice still echoing in the emptying room.
She bent over her shoelace, struggling with a knot that had somehow become impossibly tight. Beside her, Finn was in the middle of a dramatic retelling.
"—and I swear, my paws just slipped! There I was, halfway up the wall, no rope, nothing but my claws and Ragnar’s voice screaming at me to move faster, and suddenly I’m dangling by one paw like a complete idiot—"
"Sounds about right," Marek said.
"I’m being serious! It was terrifying. I thought I was going to fall and break my neck. But did Ragnar care? No. He just said—"
The table shook.
A heavy hand slammed down on the wood, rattling their books and scattering Marek’s notes. Nyra looked up. Draven stood over their table, flanked by two of his usual cronies, his face split in a grin that promised nothing good.
"Well, well, well." Draven’s voice carried through the classroom. Conversations died as heads turned. "Look who it is. If it isn’t the popular Prince Thorne. The Ghost of the Weak himself."
He swept into an exaggerated bow, one arm folded dramatically across his chest, the other extended behind him. His cronies snickered. Several other students joined in.
"Greetings, Your Highness. What an honor to be in your presence. Truly. I’m not worthy."
"Draven." Nyra kept her voice steady. She finished tying her shoelace and stood. "We were just leaving. Come on, Finn."
She turned toward the door.
Draven’s leg shot out.
She didn’t see it in time. Her foot caught his ankle, her balance shattered, and the ground rushed up to meet her face with a crack that echoed through the room.
Pain exploded across her nose. White-hot. Blinding. She tasted copper.
"Thorne!" Finn was at her side instantly, Marek right behind him, hands pulling her up. Jasper’s sharp voice cut through the noise, saying something about her nose, about blood, but she couldn’t focus on the words.
Blood trickled down her lip. Dripped onto the stone floor.
"Oh no!" Draven’s voice was dripping with mock concern. He crouched down to her level, his grin widening. "I’m so terribly sorry, Your Highness. I didn’t see you down there. You were just—" He pinched his fingers together. "—too small to notice."
Laughter erupted across the classroom. Cruel. Cackling. A wall of sound that pressed in from all sides.
Finn stood up so fast his chair fell over. His hands were fists, his face flushed with fury. "You absolute piece of—"
"Corvin!"
Someone near the door shouted the name like a warning. The effect was instantaneous.
"Corvin Eldritch is coming—"
"—headed this way—"
"—right outside—"
By the time the door swung open, the laughter had died. Every student in the room had gone still, their faces a mixture of fear and anticipation.
Corvin Eldritch stepped through the doorway. His sharp eyes swept across the scene in a single, devastating arc: Nyra on the ground, blood dripping from her nose. Finn trembling with rage. Draven standing over them, his grin now frozen into something that looked more like terror.
Silence crashed down like a guillotine.
Corvin’s voice, when he spoke, was soft. Quiet. And infinitely more dangerous than any shout.
"What’s going on here?"
Nobody answered.
His gaze settled on Draven, who was already beginning to shake.
"I asked a question." Corvin stepped further into the room, Lucian and Orion appearing in the doorway behind him. "I expect an answer."