– Vuk Kael Lasković

I was watching three naked omegas grind against each other on my bed when the scent hit me.

For three hundred and fifty years nothing has made my cock twitch. I have taken every hole offered, broken every body that begged, and still woke up cold. Tonight was supposed to be the same mindless ritual: bare tits bouncing, slick dripping on black silk, moans rehearsed to perfection. I had one hand around a traitor's throat and the other wrapped around a glass of infernal wine, already planning which omega I'd knot first and which one I'd let bleed out after.

Then it punched through the walls like divine violence.

Lunar blood.

Pure.

Untouched.

Mine.

The crystal glass slipped from my fingers and shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Wine bled across the marble like fresh slaughter.

Every wolf in the room froze. The traitor at my feet pissed himself, hot urine soaking my boots. The omegas stopped mid-moan, thighs trembling, eyes wide with animal fear.

I stood slowly.

My cock thickened so fast the seams of my trousers ripped. Fangs punched through my gums, long and vicious, slicing my lip open. Blood-my own immortal blood-hit my tongue, copper and hellfire, and still it wasn't enough to drown her.

Lunar blood.

Virgin.

Mine.

The omega closest to me-some pretty redhead who'd been riding another girl's face a heartbeat ago-reached for my thigh, desperate little fingers trying to drag me back into the mindless fuck I'd been planning five seconds ago.

I backhanded her without looking.

She flew off the bed, spine cracking against the stone floor with a wet snap. A broken whimper, then silence. Blood pooled beneath her cheek, thick and perfect.

I didn't care.

My wolf was screaming so loud the iron chains bolted to the walls rattled like church bells in an earthquake. The torches guttered. Shadows bled across the ceiling like living things.

I snatched the black robe from the chair. Didn't bother tying it. It hung open, framing the obscene bulge straining against my stomach, the thick line of my cock already leaking through the ruined fabric. Shirtless, barefoot, veins glowing faint gold beneath the skin-Lucifer's flaming brand burning hotter than it had in centuries.

I stepped over the traitor's sobbing body and into the corridor.

The scent was everywhere and nowhere. It curled through the hallways like smoke, taunted me, then vanished the second I turned a corner. I followed it like a mad dog, claws shredding the silk wallpaper, carving deep gouges into solid marble. Statues toppled as I passed. A priceless tapestry ripped in half under my grip.

"Who the fuck is this?" I snarled to the empty air, voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.

A maid rounded the corner carrying fresh linens. She took one look at me-eyes glowing molten gold, fangs dripping, cock jutting like a weapon-and dropped everything. The sheets fluttered to the floor like surrender flags.

She opened her mouth to scream.

I grabbed her by the throat, slammed her against the wall hard enough to spiderweb the stone.

"Where is she?" I roared, voice shaking the torches in their sconces.

She choked, eyes rolling white, legs kicking uselessly.

I squeezed until her neck snapped like dry kindling and let the body fall. It hit the ground with a dull, wet thud.

Still no scent.

It was gone again.

I punched the wall. Marble exploded into dust. My knuckles split, healed, split again.

Eryx-my beta-came running, boots skidding across the blood-slick floor when he saw the corpse.

"Alpha-"

"Touch me and I rip your arm off," I snarled, claws flexing, dripping.

He froze three feet away, hands raised, throat bared in submission.

"The Hunt begins in an hour, my lord," he said carefully. "The new stock is ready. The council is waiting."

The Hunt.

Normally I lived for it: naked prey released into the snow, arrows whistling, claws raking flesh, screams echoing for miles beneath the frozen moon. I'd fuck the survivors on the blood-soaked ground while the rest watched and wished they were next.

Tonight the thought made bile rise in my throat.

But the scent was gone, and I needed to kill something before I tore my own fortress apart brick by brick.

"Move," I growled.

We walked to the arena in silence.

The high seats were already filled-old wolves in silver masks, sipping infernal wine like this was theater. Torches hissed. The air stank of fear, gunpowder, and fresh blood.

Below, the cages opened with a screech of rusted iron.

Twenty naked bodies spilled out onto the white snow-new slaves, the ones who hadn't sold tonight. They ran blind, screaming, slipping on ice, leaving bloody footprints.

I raised the crossbow without feeling it.

Bolt after bolt.

Bodies dropped. Blood steamed in the cold, painting the snow crimson. One girl tried to crawl back toward the cages; I put a bolt through the back of her skull. Another threw herself at my boots, sobbing, offering her body.

I kicked her away so hard her ribs caved in with a wet crunch. She lay gasping, pink foam on her lips.

Still nothing calmed the beast.

I was hard, aching, furious-knot throbbing with every heartbeat.

Then it hit me again, stronger this time.

Lunar blood, terror, and slick so sweet it made my mouth water.

She was here.

My head snapped toward the holding pens on the far side of the arena-the private cages reserved for the "special" purchases. Ten-million-gold toys.

A masked lord in silver stood there, coat open, laughing with his pack of sycophants. Expensive cologne and arrogance rolled off him in waves.

And draped over his arm, trembling in nothing but chains and his too-big coat...

Her.

The girl from the scent.

Silver-veined skin. White-gold hair spilling from the hood. Eyes wide with terror and something worse-recognition.

She was tiny against him, drowning in his coat, collar around her throat like she was already broken.

The masked bastard leaned down, whispered something filthy in her ear. She flinched, tried to pull away.

He dared touch what was mine.

I dropped the crossbow. It clattered to the stone.

The entire arena went silent. Even the dying stopped screaming.

I stepped off the platform.

Snow crunched beneath my bare feet as I walked straight across the killing field-past the corpses, past the blood, robe flapping open, cock jutting proud and leaking, knot visible to every wolf in the stands.

Every single one of them dropped to their knees. Heads bowed. Throats bared.

The masked lord finally noticed.

His smirk faltered.

I stopped one foot away.

The girl's scent flooded me-moonlight and terror and slick-and my vision tunneled until only she existed.

I looked at the hand he still had on her arm.

Then I looked at him.

"Take your hand off my mate," I said, voice soft as a lover's, sharp as a blade.

I smiled, slow and terrible.

"Or I'll wear it as a fucking necklace."

𝐌𝐚𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧 La𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭

I used to think love was gentle.

My mother warned me a hundred times.

"Silas Vane is a wolf with ambition in his teeth, Maureen. He will smile while he eats your heart."

I laughed. Fought her. Screamed that she didn't understand love, that she was cruel for trying to tear me from the only boy who ever made me feel safe.

The last time we argued, she was eight months heavy with my little brother, hand pressed to her belly, tears in her eyes.

"One day," she whispered, "you will remember this moment and hate yourself for not listening."

I stormed out.

Three weeks later she was dead.

Silas's hands around my throat. His mother's cold laugh. Celeste's golden hair tangled in his fist while they planned to sell my family's land the same night they sold my corpse.

I never got to tell her she was right.

I never got to say sorry.

Now I'm curled on a velvet chaise in a stranger's mansion, wearing nothing but a man's coat and a collar that burns every time I breathe too deep, and all I can hear is her voice.

You should have listened, little star.

The masked lord-Lord Cassian, he told the auctioneer-snaps his fingers at the maids.

"Clean her. Feed her. Dress her in something pretty and breakable." His smile is all teeth. "She'll be my Hunt toy this year."

The maids bow so low their foreheads touch the marble.

I want to scream. I want to claw his eyes out. But my body is shaking too hard, and the collar is laced with wolfsbane; every time I try to summon my wolf, agony shoots down my spine.

Two women drag me through perfumed corridors into a bathing chamber of black marble and gold veins. They strip the coat away like it never belonged to me. Cold air hits every bruise, every lash mark, every inch of skin that still remembers the whip.

Hot water pours over me. Rough sponges scrub until I bleed again. They don't speak. They don't have to. Their eyes say it all: another toy, another year, another corpse for the snow.

They towel me dry, oil my skin until it gleams, then dress me in a slip of white silk that ends mid-thigh and clings to every curve. No underwear. No shoes. Just the collar and a thin silver chain clipped to it like a leash.

When they're finished, I look like a virgin sacrifice.

I feel like one.

Lord Cassian is waiting in the doorway, mask gone now. He's handsome in the way a blade is handsome-sharp, cold, eager to cut. His eyes rake over me and he licks his lips.

"Perfect," he murmurs. "The Hunt begins at moonrise tomorrow. Until then, you're mine to play with."

He steps closer, fingers brushing the crescent scar at my throat-the one my mother kissed every night and told me never to let anyone see.

"Such pretty marks," he whispers. "I wonder how many more I'll leave before Vuk tears you apart."

My stomach drops.

He bought me because of it.

I try to step back, but the chain jerks me forward. His hand slides under the silk, cups me between my legs like he already owns what's there. I'm humiliatingly wet-terror and wolfsbane and something darker I refuse to name.

"Good girl," he croons. "Save that for the forest. I want you dripping when I chase you."

He leans in, breath hot against my ear.

"And when I catch you-and I will catch you-I'm going to fuck you raw in the snow while the Devil Alpha watches. Then I'll hand you over gift-wrapped. He'll never forget who broke you first."

I spit in his face.

The slap that follows splits my lip. Blood fills my mouth.

He laughs, delighted, and wipes the spit away with his thumb before forcing it between my lips.

"Save that fire, Bitch. You'll need it."

He turns to leave, tossing over his shoulder, "Lock her in the red room. No food. No water. Let her hunger make her sweet."

The maids drag me away.

The red room is exactly what it sounds like: crimson walls, crimson sheets, chains bolted to the headboard and floor. They lock the chain to a ring in the ceiling so I have to stand, arms stretched high, toes barely touching the ground.

The door slams.

Silence.

I hang from the ceiling by the silver chain, arms wrenched high, toes barely brushing the floor. The white silk slip clings to me like a second skin, soaked with sweat and blood from my split lip. Every breath tugs the collar tighter against my throat.

Hours pass. Or minutes. Time is slippery when you're waiting to be hunted.

My legs give out. The chain holds me up. My shoulders burn. My head lolls forward.

Eventually the exhaustion wins.

I fall into sleep the way you fall into a grave.

And the nightmares come for me.

My father's throat torn open, eyes staring at nothing.

My mother curled around her swollen belly, blood pooling beneath her.

Silas laughing, golden hair shining while he drives the knife in again and again.

The crowd screaming "Witch! Witch! Witch!" as the wolfsbane whip eats my back raw.

I jerk awake with a scream that rips my throat.

"Ahhh!"

Tears pour down my face, hot and useless. My body shakes so hard the chain rattles overhead.

I hate myself.

I hate that I'm still alive while they're dead.

I hate that I ever loved him.

The door opens.

"It's time, slave."

Two guards unclip the chain. My arms drop like dead things. They drag me down crimson corridors, past mirrors that show a girl I don't recognise: hollow cheeks, silver eyes too big, collar like a brand of shame.

Lord Cassian waits in the entrance hall, dressed in black hunting leathers, silver mask hanging at his belt. He grins when he sees me limp and shaking.

"On your knees, toy."

I don't move fast enough. His hand cracks across my face, then slides down to slap my ass so hard the sound echoes.

"That's for later," he says, licking his lips. "I like my prey marked."

He clips a longer leash to my collar and yanks me outside into the freezing night.

A sleek black carriage waits, pulled by six white wolves the size of horses. He shoves me inside, climbs in after, and we ride through snow and moonlight until the fortress rises ahead of us like a mountain carved from obsidian and nightmares.

The Northern Dominion.

The Alpha Devil's house.

The second the gates open, something inside me fractures.

His scent slams into me-wildfire, midnight snow, raw power. It floods my lungs, sinks into my blood, pools hot and shameful between my thighs. My wolf-drugged silent for weeks-stirs with a violent jerk that makes me gasp out loud.

Cassian notices. His grip tightens on the leash.

"Behave," he hisses. "Or I'll fuck you right here in front of the entire court before the Hunt even begins."

The carriage stops. Guards drag me out into a massive open arena ringed with torches and high seats full of masked nobles. Below, the snow is already stained red. Bodies lie scattered like broken dolls.

The Hunt has already started.

Cassian parades me along the front row like a prize, letting lords and ladies touch my hair, my arms, my face. Some pinch. Some lick. I bite my tongue until it bleeds to keep from screaming.

Then the air changes.

The temperature drops so fast my breath clouds.

Every torch flares higher.

A ripple of fear runs through the entire arena. Masked nobles drop their eyes. Guards fall to one knee.

Heavy footsteps.

I don't want to look. I have to look.

He steps into the torchlight.

Seven feet of pure ruin. Black robe hanging open, chest scarred and glowing faintly with Lucifer's mark. Golden eyes burning like fallen stars. Fangs visible even from here. And the bulge straining against his trousers is obscene, impossible, terrifying.

Vuk Kael Lasković.

The Alpha Devil.

He raises a crossbow and fires, once, twice, three times. Bodies drop silently in the snow.

Then he stops.

His head turns slowly.

Our eyes lock.

The world falls away.

My wolf surges forward so hard I stumble, leash jerking taut in Cassian's hand. Electricity explodes under my skin-every nerve ending screaming one word.

Mate.

Mate.

MATE.

I can't breathe. I can't think. I'm drowning in wildfire and moonlight and the sudden, violent certainty that I was born to burn in this male's arms.

Cassian snarls, yanking me closer. "What the fuck are you-"

Vuk moves.

One moment he's thirty feet away. The next he's right in front of us, snow swirling around his boots like he summoned the storm itself.

He doesn't look at Cassian.

He looks only at me.

Golden eyes flare brighter, pupils blown wide with rage and hunger.

His voice is soft. Deadly.

"Take your hand off my mate."

A pause.

"Or I'll wear it as a fucking necklace."

Cassian's grip falters.

Before anyone can blink, Vuk's hand shoots out, closes around the leash, and rips it from Cassian's fingers like it's tissue paper. The collar snaps open and falls to the snow.

Then I'm in his arms.

One iron arm under my knees, the other crushing me to his chest. His skin is burning hot against my frozen body. His scent floods me until I'm dizzy, drunk, aching.

I should fight.

I should scream.

Instead my traitorous hands fist in his open robe and I bury my face against his throat, breathing him in like air after drowning.

The bond snaps tight between us-violent, irreversible, alive.

He growls, low and wrecked, lips brushing my ear.

"Mine."

And for the first time since they killed my family, I'm not afraid.

I'm home.

Vuk Kael Laskovic

Mine.

The word is a war drum in my skull.

I carry her through the fortress like I'm carrying the moon itself, and every wolf between me and my chambers drops to their knees so fast their spines crack. Good. Let them break. I will break the fucking world if one more person breathes the same air as her before I've buried myself inside her and made sure she'll never smell like anyone else again.

The doors to my private wing explode off their hinges the second my shoulder touches them. Wood splinters. Iron screams. I don't slow down.

I kick the bedroom door shut behind us; the impact rattles the walls hard enough to shatter a mirror. I don't care. Nothing exists except the tiny, shaking female in my arms and the scent of lunar blood and slick that is currently rewriting every law of my existence.

I set her on her feet only long enough to rip the remnants of that bastard's coat off her body. Silk tears like tissue. The collar Cassian dared put on her snaps between my fingers; I crush the silver into dust and let it fall.

She stands naked, trembling, silver eyes huge, lips bleeding where he split them.

I drop to my knees.

Not submission. Worship.

I drag my nose up the inside of her thigh, inhaling so deep my lungs burn. Her scent is everywhere: terror, grief, slick, moonlight, mine. My fangs ache. My cock is so hard the head is purple, leaking a steady stream down my thigh like I'm a boy again.

"Fuck," I snarl against her skin. "You're going to kill me and I haven't even tasted you yet."

She makes a broken sound. Her hands fist in my hair, not pushing, not pulling, just holding on like I'm the only solid thing left in her world.

I can't wait.

I lift her again, carry her into the obsidian bathroom, and step straight into the pool-sized bath without bothering with taps. Hellfire flares from my palms; the water boils in seconds, steam rising like a storm.

I lower us both into it.

She gasps as the heat hits her welts, her bruises, the raw whip marks across her back. I growl so loud the surface ripples. Someone is going to die screaming for every mark on her skin, and I already know whose heart I'll be eating raw before dawn.

I wash her myself.

My hands (hands that have ended bloodlines) move over her like I'm handling something holy and breakable. I scrub Cassian's scent from her throat, her breasts, between her legs, until the only thing left is her and me and the bond that's currently setting my blood on fire.

She's shaking, whimpering, thighs trying to close even as slick pours over my fingers.

I can't stop touching her.

I can't stop smelling her.

I can't stop hearing that single word echoing in my skull like a death knell and a prayer.

Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.

I lift her out dripping, carry her back to the bedroom, and lay her on the black furs like I'm offering her to every dark god I've ever defied.

She stares up at me, silver eyes glowing, chest heaving.

I stand over her, robe long gone, cock jutting up against my stomach, knot already swelling at the base. My claws are fully extended. My fangs won't retract. Veins of liquid gold crawl under my skin like living fire.

I have never been this close to losing control in three and a half centuries.

I have never wanted anything the way I want to split her open and live inside her until the stars burn out.

"Look at me," I rasp.

She does.

I let her see everything: the monster, the devil, the male who will burn kingdoms to keep her.

Her thighs fall open on their own.

The growl that rips out of me is not wolf. It's not demon. It's something older, something that was born the first time the moon looked at hellfire and decided it wanted to burn.

I drop to my knees between her legs.

My hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise.

I lean down until my mouth hovers over her slick, swollen cunt, and I breathe her in like oxygen after centuries underwater.

"Three hundred and fifty years," I snarl against her, voice shredded. "I waited three hundred and fifty fucking years for this pussy, and some bastard thought he could hunt you first?"

I lick one long, filthy stripe from her entrance to her clit.

She screams, back arching off the furs.

I do it again. And again. And again.

Until she's sobbing my name, until her thighs are clamped around my head, until her slick is painted across my chin and dripping off my fangs.

Until the only word left in the universe is mine.

I rise over her, line my cock up, knot throbbing against her entrance, and meet her eyes.

"I'm going to ruin you, little moon."

The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. I'm shaking. Actually shaking. Three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old bones rattling because the tiny female beneath me is trembling harder than I am.

She should be screaming.

She should be clawing at my face, kicking, begging me to stop.

Instead her thighs fall open wider, slick glistening on swollen pink folds, and the scent of her fear-laced arousal slams into me so hard my vision whites out for a second.

Fuck.

I can taste her terror on my tongue, sharp and metallic beneath the honey of her slick. It's the most intoxicating thing I've ever swallowed. I want to drown in it.

Her chest heaves. Those perfect tits rise and fall in frantic little jerks. Silver eyes (moonlit, ancient, terrified) are locked on my face like she's staring at the end of the world.

Because she is.

She knows what I am.

She knows what's coming.

Her pulse is a trapped bird under the thin skin of her throat. I can see it fluttering. I can hear it. I can feel it in the bond that's currently carving my soul out with a dull blade and handing it to her on a silver platter.

I lean down slowly, deliberately, letting her feel every inch of the monster caging her in.

My cock drags up the inside of her thigh, leaving a wet trail of pre-cum and her own slick. The head nudges her entrance, thick and brutal, knot already so swollen it'll never fit without tearing her apart.

She whimpers.

A single, broken sound that spears straight through my chest and lodges behind my ribs forever.

I stop.

Because if I move now, I'll kill her.

I will literally fuck her to death and not be able to stop.

My claws dig into the furs on either side of her head, shredding them. My arms shake with the effort of holding still.

"Breathe," I snarl through fangs that won't retract.

She sucks in a ragged gasp. Tears spill from the corners of her eyes, carving silver tracks down her temples into her white-gold hair.

Good.

Cry for me, little moon.

Cry while I destroy you.

I drop my forehead to hers. My breath saws in and out, ragged and ruined.

"Look at me," I command again, softer this time.

She does.

And I let her see everything.

Every century of starvation.

Every corpse I left cooling because nothing ever filled the void.

Every time I woke up hard and furious and alone.

All of it, gone.

Because she exists.

Because she's here.

Because she's mine.

Her lips part on a sob.

"Vuk..." she whispers.

The first time anyone has said my name in three centuries without permission.

The first time anyone has said it like a prayer instead of a curse.

I lose the last thread of control.

I thrust.

One brutal, punishing stroke that buries me to the hilt inside the tightest, hottest heaven I've ever known.

She screams.

The sound rips through the room, high and shattered and perfect.

Her walls clamp down so hard my vision blacks out. Her nails rake bloody furrows down my back. Her legs lock around my waist like she'll die if I pull out.

I can't move.

I can't fucking move.

Because if I do, I'll come instantly, knot swelling, locking us together while I pump her so full she'll taste me in her throat for weeks.

I drop my weight onto my forearms, caging her completely, and bury my face in her neck.

Her scent is everywhere. Inside me. Under my skin. Rewriting my fucking DNA.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

I lick the crescent scar at her throat (Selene's mark) and feel her whole body jolt.

"Say it," I growl against her pulse. "Say who you belong to."

She's crying harder now, shaking her head, but her hips roll up to meet mine like she can't help it.

I pull out slow, torturously slow, until only the head is inside, then slam back in so hard the headboard cracks against the wall.

She screams again.

"Say it."

Another slow drag out. Another brutal thrust in.

Her back bows off the furs. Her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood.

"Yours," she sobs. "I'm yours, I'm yours, please-"

The word please undoes me.

I fuck her like the world is ending.

Hard. Deep. Relentless.

Every thrust punches a broken sound from her throat. Every drag back makes her chase my cock like she'll die without it. The wet slap of our bodies is obscene. The scent of sex and blood and slick is so thick I can taste it.

Her walls flutter around me, the first warning.

I snarl, fangs scraping her shoulder.

"Not yet."

I slow down, grinding deep, rolling my hips until she's keening, tears streaming, begging in broken little gasps.

Only when she's right on the edge, shaking apart beneath me, do I let myself go.

I slam in one final time.

My knot swells, locking us together.

I bite down on the soft spot between her neck and shoulder (hard, deep, permanent).

Blood floods my mouth. Lunar power explodes across my tongue like starlight and sin.

She comes with a scream that shatters something inside both of us.

Her cunt milks my cock in vicious pulses, dragging my own release out of me in thick, endless ropes. I roar against her skin, hips jerking, pumping her full until it leaks around my knot and soaks the furs beneath us.

I keep coming.

I can't stop.

I don't want to stop.

I collapse on top of her, careful not to crush her even while the beast inside me howls to keep her pinned forever.

She's crying quietly now, soft, overwhelmed sobs that make my chest ache in ways I didn't know it could.

I lick the bite closed, gentle, reverent.

Then I press my forehead to hers again.

"I'm sorry," I rasp, voice wrecked. "I'm sorry, little moon. I tried to be gentle. I swear I tried."

She laughs through her tears (a tiny, broken sound that spears straight through my heart).

"You weren't gentle," she whispers. "You were perfect."

I close my eyes.

Three hundred and fifty years.

And in one night, one tiny lunar girl rewrote every rule of my existence.

I'm never letting her go.

Not tonight.

Not tomorrow.

Not when the sun burns out and the gods themselves turn to dust.

She is mine.

And I am hers.

Forever.