Jack
The air in my home is wrong.
I feel it the moment I step from the silent elevator into the east wing. A change in the current. A foreign thread woven into the sterile tapestry of my life. It is not the cloying sweetness of Livia’s perfume or the dry dust of the household staff.
It is something else.
Something like old paper and ink and the subtle, clean scent of rain on pavement. It’s human.
Her scent.
My wolf stirs. A great, restless beast pacing the confines of my soul. It lifts its head, tasting the air, a low rumble starting in its chest. The urge to follow the scent, to track it to its source, is a physical pull. A hook in my gut.
I ignore it.
I walk to the bar, my steps measured on the polished concrete floor of my private study. The room is a cage of glass, overlooking a thousand acres of black forest that knows me as its king. This is my sanctuary. My fortress. And she has breached its walls without taking a single step into this wing.
The crystal tumbler is heavy in my hand. The amber liquid inside sloshes as I pour it. The wolf snarls, impatient. It wants to see her. It wants to know why the air has changed. It wants to understand the girl who quieted Nyx with a look.
A fluke. It was a fluke.
I repeat the words in my head, a mantra against the rising tide of instinct. The girl is a necessity. A piece of corporate and political strategy. The Rourdan Corporation requires a stable public image to appease human boards and governments. A wife provides that. It is a shield. A five year inconvenience to protect a lifetime of sovereignty.
She is a means to an end. Nothing more.
But the wolf does not understand business contracts. It only understands the scent invading its territory. It only remembers the way my most lethal protector went silent and soft at a single glance from this small, fragile human.
The memory of another woman surfaces, unbidden and sharp as shattered glass. Ravenna. My first fated mate. Her scent had once filled my home, a heady mix of night blooming jasmine and wild ambition. I had trusted that scent. I had trusted the bond that sang between us, a sacred song I believed was unbreakable.
She broke it. She broke me.
Her smile, her touch, her whispers of devotion. All of it a lie, a beautiful poison hiding a conspiracy with my enemies. The memory is a phantom pain, a scar across my soul that has never faded.
I learned my lesson. The mate bond is a flaw in our design. A weakness to be exploited. A vulnerability I will never allow myself again.
My desk monitor chimes. A secure video link. Alistair Sterling’s severe face appears on the screen.
“She’s arrived,” he says, without preamble. His voice is a dispassionate report of facts.
“I am aware,” I say, my voice low. “I can smell her from here.”
Alistair does not react to this. He knows what I am. He is one of the few humans who does. “Mrs. Davenport has briefed her on the protocols. She seems… compliant.”
“She is desperate. Desperation ensures compliance.” I take a sip of the liquor. It burns, a welcome sensation. “Any complications?”
A flicker of hesitation in his eyes. “Lady Livia made an appearance. She was… herself.”
“Predictable,” I clip out. Livia and her endless posturing. She sees herself as the rightful queen of this kingdom, a position she tries to secure through ambition and intimidation. A pathetic display. “Did the girl break?”
“No,” Alistair says, and I detect a note of surprise in his voice. “She did not.”
Interesting. I expected tears. Perhaps the librarian has a spine after all.
“One other thing,” Alistair adds, his gaze steady. “The incident in the penthouse. With Nyx.”
“A statistical anomaly,” I say, the words sharp and final. A dismissal. A lie.
“Of course,” he says, but he does not look convinced. “The contracts are filed. The media strategy is in place. As far as the world is concerned, you are a newly married man.”
“See that it stays that way.” I sever the connection, plunging the room back into silence.
A newly married man. The phrase is a mockery.
My wolf continues its restless pacing. Settle, I command it. She is nothing to us.
But it fights me. It is drawn to her. A compass needle swinging towards a magnetic, unknown north. The primal part of me, the beast I have spent my life mastering, is inexplicably intrigued by the human girl I have locked in my gilded cage.
It infuriates me.
On instinct, I tap a command into the tablet on my desk. A security feed flickers to life. A view of her suite. My suite, technically. The one designated for the Lady of the house. A role that has been vacant for a very long time.
There she is. Juniper Vance.
She stands before the wall of glass, a small, dark silhouette against the moonlit forest. She is not exploring the room, not indulging in the lavish prison I have built for her. She is just standing there, perfectly still, looking out at the darkness.
As if she can feel my eyes on her, she wraps her arms around herself. A gesture of self comfort. A gesture of a woman who is utterly alone.
She is a complication I must endure. A problem I have purchased to solve another. I must keep her at a distance. I must maintain the cold, sterile space between us that the contract demands.
But I cannot shake the memory of Nyx whining at her feet. I cannot erase the flicker of unreadable power I saw in her eyes for a fraction of a second.
And I cannot ignore the fact that for the first time in years, some part of this empty, silent house feels… alive.
I shut off the monitor, cutting off the image. I finish the drink in a single swallow, the burn grounding me.
Control. That is all that matters. I am the Alpha King. I am in control of my home, my life, my wolf.
This changes nothing.
But as I stand in the silence of my wing, I can still smell the rain on the wind. And my wolf, for the first time in a decade, is quiet. Not sleeping. Just watching. Waiting.
