Layla
The heavy doors of the royal wing crashed shut behind them with violence that cracked the stone silence, the sound echoing like a threat through the hushed corridors.
Belstram didn't pause. He didn't speak a single word. He simply carried her through the torchlit corridor, a relentless force of nature,her body clenched in his arms.
The black cloak snugly wrapped around her body, her thighs still burned and ached from the brutal, overwhelming fucking she had went through, her skin still fevered from the unforgiving press of his body.
He reeked of power, sex, hot and raw from the claiming. Of blood, dried on his hands. Of a fury so potent it radiated from him like physical heat, barely held in check. The scent clung to her too. A second skin that couldn't be shed.
He was dressed in leather pants he had changed into in his lair, his previous ones destroyed through his shifts. bare chest.
They reached the massive ironwood doors at the end of the corridor, carved with beasts that snarled and leapt like they might tear free of the grain and join his hunt.
Their chambers.
His grip eased. Slightly. Just enough to shove the doors wide with a force that made them thunder against the wall and walk through the threshold of his private world.
He laid her gently on the bed, then walked to the quartz bath. Soon the sound of water filling the tub could be heard. She watched as he measured in scents that wafted in the steam, filling the air with their scents. He turned to face her then, golden eyes still molten, still reflecting the feral heat of the ruins, the wildness she had met and answered.
His prowled back, hands cupping her face—not roughly now, but with a possessive tenderness, as if he didn't trust the world outside, didn't trust anyone, not to steal her away from him again.
His thumbs brushed the raw, tender places on her neck where he had marked her. Where his teeth had branded her. He unwrapped her from the cloak, sliding her slowly into the warm scented water.
"Stay," he said, his voice low and guttural, a command that resonated with the force of the ancient place.
"Rest. Heal. Wait for me here."
Her lips parted to argue—to fight, because that was who she was, the defiance etched into her bones, into the fresh marks on her throat—but his mouth was already on hers, cutting off the protest.
Hot. Possessive. Final. A kiss that sealed his command, that branded her all over again.
A kiss that was both promise and warning: You are mine. Do not leave me.
And then he turned, a whirlwind of dark fury, and was gone. The heavy ironwood doors thundering shut behind him, severing the connection, leaving her alone in the echoing silence.
She closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth of the water with the Wolf-King's mark, still burning at her throat like a brand no one could ever steal, like a truth she could never escape.
Belstram
The war room stank of dust and old parchment, of stale air and cold strategy.
And he hated it for the first time.
Every suffocating inch of it.
Not for what it was; a place of maps and war scripts and ironwood carved with the ancient victories of his kind, with the bloody history of the throne—but for what it wasn't.
It wasn't her.
Not the sound of her ragged breath, so recently mingled with his. Not the sight of her slender throat flushed from his marks. Not the stubborn fire laced beneath her exhaustion, beneath her fire.
He walked in, smelling like war and carrion.
The generals froze the moment they caught his scent.
The air went still.
They rose, a sea of stiff-backed, sharp-eyed men in polished steel and dark velvet, but none met his gaze for long.
They knew. They sensed it—the violence rippling beneath his skin like a tide rising too fast, threatening to drown us all.
"Out." His voice was a low growl, stripped of courtesy or patience. One word. Absolute.
They scrambled for the door. Cloaks flaring like startled wings. Boots hitting against stone as they retreated, clearing the space in seconds, as if fleeing a plague.
Good.
He didn't need witnesses for what came next. He paced once, twice. The fury inside him hadn't calmed. Not even close, the wolf in him demanded blood, and it wouldn't settle for anything less. It was a living thing, clawing at his insides.
They had tried to kill her, tried to steal her from him before they had a chance at anything.
Before she even had the chance to be the queen she was meant to be. Before he had fully sealed her into the terrifying, beautiful shape of his world.
They had dared to touch her. Dared to draw her blood.
And he would raze the goddamned world stone by stone before he let them do it again. He slammed his hand flat on the table, the impact rattling the bone carvings, shaking the foundations of the room. Hard. The echo rang out like a death knell for unseen enemies.
"Summon the Spymaster," he uttered to the empty air. To the ancient power that listened in this place.
Because the air was always listening. The walls had ears made of cold stone and dark magic.
They shifted, unseen. A ripple in the corner of his vision.
And then he was there—Ribel, silent as ghosts, sharp as moonlight off a dagger, a creature of the hidden paths.
Long black coat. Hood low, obscuring his face. Knives glinting at his belt like silver smiles promising pain.
"My king," he murmured, his voice soft, amused, the sound unnerving in the charged air.
He bared his teeth at him, a purely instinctual reaction, all wolf, no man. "They came for her."
He tilted his head, owl-like, the movement deliberate, assessing.
Ribel's smile sharpened in the darkness. Became something predatory, acknowledging the brutal truth of his words. "Ah."
"Names. Bloodlines. Secrets," he snarled, slamming his fist on the table again. "I want them dragged from the filth where they hide and held up naked to the light. Every single one." His voice dropped, colder now, deadlier.
"Then I want their heads. Every single one."
His bow was low. Smooth. Deadly in its absolute obedience.
"As you command."
And then he was gone, slipping back into the shadows from which he came.
Just like that.
Like smoke vanishing into night, leaving only the scent of his magic; smoke and iron, and the promise of death.
He stayed, staring down at the table, the marks he had gouged into the surface already darkening like fresh bruises.
This wasn't politics anymore. It had transcended the petty games of the court.
This wasn't war, not yet, not in the traditional sense.
This was a hunt.
And he would not stop until their blood ran slick across his claws and the whole goddamn realm knew one unshakable, terrifying truth: The queen was his. Marked. Claimed. Protected.
He would gut the world for her.