Caleb's hands shook as he pressed the alcohol-soaked gauze to Luna's brow. The study's Tiffany lamp cast fractured light over her face—amber eyes too steady, lips parted in challenge rather than pain.
"Third warning," he growled, the words ash-dry. "Still think you can domesticate the beast, Mrs. Thorn?"
She tilted her chin, blood trickling past the bandage's edge. "Beasts don't apologize. You did."
The admission hung between them, raw as the whiskey they'd shared hours earlier. Caleb's knuckles whitened around the first-aid scissors. He'd seen men cower from far lesser wounds, but Luna Carter stared through the storm in his veins like it was Sunday brunch.
Her arms slid around his waist, jasmine and burnt sugar engulfing his senses. "Stay," she murmured against his sternum. "The dark's lonelier alone."
He stiffened—a reflex honed through boardroom ambushes and midnight assassination attempts. But her warmth seeped through Egyptian cotton, unraveling the barbed wire around his ribs.
"Careful," he warned, voice cracking. "I bite."
Luna's teeth found his collarbone before the sentence died. The pain was clean, bright—a lightning strike to his fogged mind. They tumbled onto the Chesterfield, her laughter muffled against his throat.
"Even?" she breathed, victory glinting behind the veil.
Caleb's palm cradled her nape, thumb tracing the scar's ragged edge. "Never."
Moonlight bled through leaded windows as their breathing synced—hers steady, his still ragged at the edges. The grandfather clock tolled three when her phone shattered the truce.
"Luna?" Richard Carter's voice crackled through the speaker. "Wang's withdrawing funding. Fix this. Black Diamond Bar. Eight tomorrow."
Margaret's shrill addendum pierced the static: "Wear the red dress. Men prefer—"
Luna killed the call mid-sentence. Caleb felt her pulse stutter against his palm—not fear, but the coiled stillness of a predator assessing prey.
"Don't go," he said into her hair.
She turned, lips grazing his jaw. "Come with me. Let them see the monster they've wed."
—
The Black Diamond Bar reeked of cigars and regret. Wang leered from his VIP booth, sweat staining his Armani collar. "Knew you'd crawl back, curse-bride. Now, let's discuss terms—"
Luna's stiletto met his groin under the table. The financier's wheeze harmonized with ice clinking in Caleb's bourbon.
"Terms," she purred, sliding a contract across whiskey rings. "Sign. Or my husband shares those brothel receipts with your wife."
Wang's jowls quivered. "You wouldn't—"
Caleb's smile flashed blade-sharp. "We'll start with the tabloids. Page Six adores redemption arcs."
The pen scratched like a death rattle.
—
Thorn Manor's east wing lay silent save for their footsteps. Luna paused at the bedroom threshold, veil discarded hours earlier. The scar gleamed mother-of-pearl in the hallway sconce light.
"Still time to run," Caleb murmured, fingers brushing the nape of her neck.
She backed him against the doorframe, palms flat on his chest. "You first."
Dawn found them entangled in Egyptian linen—Caleb's arm slung over her waist, her cheek pressed to the bullet scar over his heart. The nightmares didn't come. Neither did the dawn patrol of sleeping pills.
When Luna stirred, his grip tightened. "Stay."
Not a command. A plea.
She traced the tattoo spanning his ribs—a thorned vine swallowing old knife wounds. "Why insomnia?"
His laugh vibrated against her palm. "Secrets fester in the dark."
"So do allies."
The confession spilled like tipped ink—boardroom coups, a mother's overdose, the engineered "illness" that culled false friends. Luna matched him scar for scar—the fall she didn't cause, the grandmother who'd traded her pearls for penicillin.
—
Margaret's screams greeted the repo men at noon. Luna watched from Caleb's town car, clinic blueprints spread across her lap.
"Happy?" he asked, interlacing their fingers.
She kissed his knuckles, lips lingering on the crescent-moon scar she'd gifted him. "It's a start."
The engine purred toward Sweet Haven Patisserie. Jenkins stood sentry at the remodeled storefront, gold-leaf cakes displayed beside Luna's herbal tinctures.
"For the clinic," Caleb said, pressing keys into her palm. "Your grandmother's recipes deserve a proper lab."
Luna's laugh sparked sunlight through stained glass. "Bribing me, Mr. Thorn?"
"Investing," he corrected, stealing a strawberry from her cake.
The first reporters found them there—heiress and phantom heir, scars gleaming, fingers sticky with shared frosting. Front pages hailed them as Highland City's twisted fairy tale.
Luna framed the headlines in the clinic's lobby. Caleb hung his favorite above their bed—the paparazzi shot of her kneeing a paparazzo, veil flaring like a war banner.
They never discussed the nightmares' retreat. Didn't need to.
Some curses, it turned out, made better shields than scars.
The dial tone buzzed like a trapped wasp in Luna's ear. She stared at the phone, its polished surface reflecting the jagged crack in her composure. Orphan, she repeated silently, tasting the word's bitter edges. Not just motherless now—fatherless by choice. The clinic's ledger pages fluttered in her mind, each inked zero a tombstone for familial pretense.
Caleb's arm tightened around her, his heartbeat a war drum beneath her cheek. She focused on the rhythm—alive, alive, alive—until the sting of betrayal dulled to numbness. When sleep took her, it wasn't the restless limbo of country nights, but a velvet void where shadows wore his scent of sandalwood and gunmetal.
—
Dawn painted the study in feverish gold. Caleb woke to cold sheets and the lingering musk of jasmine. His hand clenched empty air, panic souring his throat.
"Sir!" Grayson materialized, bearing coffee that reeked of false cheer. "Mrs. Thorn departed at six. Insisted you needed rest." The butler's pause hung like a noose. "You slept through the night."
Caleb's fingers found the bite mark—a crescent moon etched above his collarbone. Her brand. Proof the void hadn't swallowed him whole. "Where?"
"Out, sir. She mentioned… errands."
The lie curdled between them. Caleb dressed with feral precision, his Brioni shirt stretching taut over shoulders still thrumming with the memory of her weight.
—
Black Diamond Bar's neon sign bled into twilight. Inside, smoke coiled around Xander Huo's smirk as he sloshed Macallan into a tumbler. "Look what the corpse dragged in! Where's your ball and chain, Thorn?"
Jaden Gu adjusted his Carrera glasses, the movement sharp as a scalpel. "Luna Carter. Resourceful choice." His gaze flicked to the VIP booth. "Though her current company lacks… finesse."
Caleb followed the indictment.
Luna sat framed in whiskey-amber light, her veil discarded. Wang's porcine fingers crept toward her wrist, Rolex glinting with ill-gotten gains. Caleb's vision hazed red—not the jagged static of episodes past, but a honed blade of rage.
"Mine," he growled, the word tearing from some primal depth.
—
Wang's jowls quivered as Caleb's shadow engulfed the booth. "N-now Thorn, let's discuss this like—"
The crunch of metacarpals under his signet ring sang sweeter than Stradivarius. Luna's gasp warmed the shell of his ear. "Caleb, I had it handled—"
"Handled?" He crowded her against tufted leather, breathing her in—gunpowder and vanilla, fear and fury. "That cockroach's breath alone warrants a war crime."
Xander's laugh boomed through the sudden silence. "Attaboy! Let's string him up by his—"
"Enough." Jaden's pen tapped a contracts manager's cadence on the table. "Mr. Wang was just leaving. Permanently."
The financier fled, trailing the stench of voided bowels.
—
Luna's nails bit crescent moons into Caleb's palm all the way home. Thorn Manor's gates loomed, their iron spikes dripping with wisteria that smelled of graveyards and bridal bouquets.
He backed her into the study's hearth, flames dancing in her dilated pupils. "Why?"
Her laugh sparked like flint. "You monopolize the white knight act." She peeled back his collar, tongue tracing the bite mark's ridge. "Had to balance the scales."
The confession detonated—lips on lips, teeth on jaw, her back meeting Persian rug as the fire roared approval. Somewhere between undone buttons and the clock's indifferent toll, Caleb learned her skin carried scars he hadn't mapped: a bullet's kiss on her ribcage, a burn like a starfish below her knee.
"Bandit's daughter," she slurred against his throat. "Grandma's still wanted in three provinces."
He nipped the pulse rabbiting in her wrist. "My turn to bite back."
—
Grayson found them at dawn—Caleb's shirt draped over Luna like a battle standard, their limbs a tangled ode to survival. The butler retreated, but not before noting his employer's face: unguarded, unhaunted, alive.
In the ashes, a phone buzzed—Wang's signed funding transfer, the clinic's future secured. Luna watched the fire consume the screen's glow.
"Happy?" Caleb's breath stirred the hair at her nape.
She twisted, capturing his mouth in a kiss that tasted of embers and absolution. "It's a start."
Outside, the wolves sang.