POV: Soraya
The dungeon air feels heavier that night.
“Kaelen?” I whisper.
No answer. Footsteps echo down the corridor—hard. Purposeful. Fear surges through me.
Two guards appear from the bend, torches in hand, faces half-lit and sneering.
“Well, well,” the one with the keys drawls. “Looks like it’s time for the beast’s favorite season.”
My heart begins to pound. “What are you doing?” I demand.
The key guard stops in front of Kaelen’s cell, peering in. “Orders from above,” he says with false cheer. “Lord Kharad wants to see what happens when you put hot blood and hotter blood in close quarters.”
Ice floods my veins.
“No,” I say. “No. Leave me where I am.”
“Can’t do that.” He steps over to my door, selecting a key from the ring. “Our lord was very clear. Girl goes in with the beast. We lock the door.”
My breath comes too fast. I grab the bars tighter.
The lock clicks and my cell door swings open with a shriek of hinges.
The baton guard grabs my arm, fingers bruising. “Walk,” he orders.
He drags me across the corridor. My bare feet slap the cold stone. The heat radiating from Kaelen’s cell hits me like a physical force—it’s like stepping close to a forge, the air thick and shimmering.
The key guard opens Kaelen’s door.
“Inside,” he says, shoving me forward.
I stumble, catching myself just before I hit the ground. I whirl around, reaching for the door, but they’re faster. The guards yank it shut and turn the key with relish.
Then they turn and leave, torches bobbing away, footsteps receding until all that’s left is the echo of my heartbeat and the sound of chains straining.
The cell feels smaller now. And hotter.
Kaelen is in the corner, hunched, fists clenched so tight the chains between them are rigid. His breathing is rough, ragged. Every inhale sounds like a growl dragged backward.
“Kaelen,” I say softly. “Hey. Look at me.”
His head jerks. He does.
And for a moment, I forget how to breathe.
His eyes are molten gold now, the pupils blown wide. Sweat slicks his skin, making every line of muscle stand out. Veins pulse along his forearms where the chains bite.
His wolf is closer to the surface than I’ve ever seen—in the way his shoulders hunch, in the way his teeth bare under the edge of the mask, in the way his gaze latches onto me like I am the only thing in the room worth seeing.
I take a step toward the opposite wall, pressing my spine against it, fingers splayed. The stone is cooler here, but the air itself feels thick with something alive, hungry.
His gaze drops, dragging along the length of me—my heaving chest, the salt-stained dress clinging to my legs, the pulse jumping in my throat.
I feel exposed, even though I’m more covered than I have been since the ceremony. His stare feels like hands, like heat.
He yanks against the chains so hard the iron rings in the wall creak. Then he lashes forward.
One moment, he’s across the cell. Next, he’s in front of me.
His hands slam into the wall on either side of my head, chains biting into the stone. He cages me in without actually touching me, his body a breath away, heat pouring off him like a furnace.
I gasp.
“Kaelen—”
He leans in, inhaling sharply at my neck. The sound he makes is somewhere between a snarl and a groan.
I could push him away. And I should.
Fear is tangled with something else now—something hot and confusing, something that coils low in my belly and makes my pulse stutter.
He presses me fully against him. His body shakes with the effort of not simply throwing me down.
“Kaelen,” I breathe.
Tell me to stop, he says. It’s almost a plea.
I open my mouth but the word won’t come.
His restraint snaps. The kiss hits me like the desert wind.
He tears the mask away with a brutal jerk, metal clattering to the floor, and his mouth crashes onto mine. It’s not gentle. It’s not careful. It’s fire and teeth and need, all the things he tried to hold back bursting free.
I gasp into him. He takes the sound like an invitation, deepening the kiss, one hand gripping my hip, dragging me against him.
The chains bite into his skin with every movement, but he doesn’t seem to feel it.
Heat floods me, washing over the horror, the grief, the fear. For a moment, there is only this—this desperate, consuming contact, this wild tangle of lips and breath and broken edges.
His hands roam, rough and trembling, mapping my body like he needs to commit it to memory before the world ends. My own slide up his shoulders, into his hair, anchoring myself as much as him.
It’s madness. It’s wrong. It’s inevitable.
His mouth leaves mine to drag along my jaw, my throat, teeth grazing just enough to register as promise. My knees weaken. He catches me easily, hitching me up so my legs wrap around his waist, every line of us pressed together.
The world narrows to heat and sensation.
A low, guttural sound rumbles from deep in his chest when I tug at his hair. His eyes burn when he drags them up to meet mine again.
Mine, some wild part of him thinks, and I feel it like a brand across my mind.
I should push away and I don’t. Instead, I cling tighter.
Somewhere between the frantic touches and the way his voice breaks on my name, the world blurs at the edges.
Everything goes white.
***
When I surface again, the air is cooler.
The heat radiating off him has dimmed, no longer a roaring inferno but a heavy warmth. My dress is rumpled, twisted around my legs. My hair sticks to the back of my neck. My lips feel swollen.
I’m on the floor, half-curled against him, his arms wrapped around me as if he tried to shield me even from his own aftermath.
For a few long seconds, I can’t move. Then reality slams back in.
What we did. What he warned me about. What this means in a fortress where breeding is a strategy, not a sacred act.
I jerk back, heart racing.
Kaelen’s eyes snap open. For a heartbeat, they’re still wolf-bright. Then they clear, horror flooding in.
“Shit,” he rasps, voice hoarse. “Soraya.”
He looks at me like I’m something precious he dropped from a great height.
“You warned me,” I remind him weakly. “You tried.”
He stares at the floor. “Trying doesn’t erase what happened.”
There is a tightness in his jaw I haven’t seen before. Not anger at me. At himself.
“I can choose what I do,” he counters. “And I am not letting him keep you here as breeding stock. Not after this. Not after…” He trails off, jaw flexing.
I watch him, chest tight. “What are you saying?”
He meets my eyes fully now. Some of the wildness is gone, replaced by a cold, clear resolve.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he says. “Alive. Away from him. Away from this fortress. Away from me, if that’s what you want.”
My breath catches. “You’re chained. Collared. Locked in his deepest dungeon. How do you plan to break all that because of one girl he tossed you as a prize?”
His mouth twists. “It’s not because of one girl.”
I search his face, trying to find a lie. I don’t.
“That sounds like a promise,” I say.
“It is.” His gaze hardens. “I don’t break those. Not anymore.”
Despite everything—my mother’s death, my father’s betrayal, the dungeon, the rut—I feel a small, fragile something uncurl in my chest.
Hope. It’s foolish. It’s dangerous. But it’s there.