Chapter 3

Elara POV

His hand gripped the brass doorknob, the metal groaning slightly under his immense strength.

"Alpha, wait," I called out.

My voice was a soft tremor, perfectly pitched for a frightened Omega, but the words I chose were sharp and deliberate. Kaelen paused, his broad back stiffening, but he didn't turn around.

"If you walk out that door tonight, the Pack will know," I said, keeping my gaze fixed on the floorboards. "They will smell the Rejection on me by morning. The servants will whisper, and the Elders will doubt the strength of this alliance."

He slowly turned his head, his ice-blue eyes narrowing as they locked onto me. He hadn't expected this. He had braced himself for tears, not a calculated political assessment.

"With Rogues testing the northern borders, the Blackwood Pack cannot afford a Luna who is publicly discarded on her wedding night," I continued, letting my shoulders slump to maintain my submissive posture. "It will breed instability. For the dignity and safety of the Pack... please stay."

Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. I could see the gears turning in his mind, his Alpha instincts warring with the cursed blood that demanded isolation. He searched my face for any hidden ambition, but I offered him nothing but the hollow duty of a pawn.

"Fine," Kaelen finally gritted out, his jaw tight. He released the doorknob and stepped back into the room. "But the bed is large. My side. Your side. Do not cross the middle."

"Thank you, Alpha," I murmured.

He moved toward the center of the room, his movements rigid as he began to shrug off his heavy suit jacket. Seeing an opportunity to test the absolute limits of his boundaries, I stepped forward, reaching out with the dutiful grace expected of a traditional Luna.

"Allow me, Alpha," I said softly.

I didn't even make contact. The moment my hand entered his personal space, the air in the room instantly crystallized. A feral, chest-rattling growl ripped from his throat, vibrating violently against my ribs.

"Don't," he snarled, his voice dropping to a lethal, beastly octave that commanded absolute obedience. "Touch."

I immediately shrank back, bowing my head deeply. "Forgive me."

He snatched the jacket off his own shoulders and threw it over a chair, his chest heaving. The sheer panic beneath his anger confirmed my suspicions. His aversion wasn't just disgust; it was a desperate, cursed survival instinct. I had found his absolute limit.

Hours later, the massive king-sized bed felt like a frozen battlefield. I lay on the extreme edge, the suffocating scent of Siberian cedar and winter frost keeping me painfully awake until sheer exhaustion finally dragged me under.

But sleep offered no mercy.

The familiar nightmares came-the deafening crash of thunder, the freezing rain, the night my mother died. The cold seeped into my bones, hollowing me out, leaving me shivering in the dark void of my memories.

In the depths of my unconscious state, my survival instincts took over. I needed warmth. I drifted across the mattress, drawn blindly to the only source of heat in the freezing room. A radiating, intoxicating furnace.

I sighed, my face pressing into something solid and burning hot. My arm draped over a thick, muscular chest, my fingers curling into the fabric of his sleepwear. As my breath fanned across his skin, releasing a heavy, unsuppressed wave of my wild hyacinth scent, the massive body beneath me instantly turned to stone.

A sharp, ragged intake of breath pierced the silence, followed by a violent shudder that felt like a predator desperately fighting its own chains.