Theron Blackmoor woke up naked on the floor of a room that wasn't his.
The cold of the stone against his back. The wrong ceiling. The bed half a meter away with someone sleeping in it, wrapped in blankets, dark hair spread across the pillow. Slow, steady breathing. She hadn't woken up.
Get out of here before she opens her eyes. His wolf told him.
He stood without making a sound. He looked at her for a second. One second too many. Then he left, closing the door carefully.
In the hallway, walking naked toward his room, he cursed the beast, Morwenna, his dead father, and the moon goddess.
Eight years with the curse. Eight years since the sorceress drove that sentence into his blood as revenge for the massacre his father ordered against her coven. Theron was twenty-four when it happened. He didn't participate. He didn't know until after. But Morwenna didn't care about justice. She cared about pain.
Every night, the beast took control. Theron ceased to exist. He remembered nothing between dusk and dawn. He chained himself at first. Then the beast started breaking the chains. They reinforced them and it was useless—it broke them again.
And since he learned that a Volkov was coming—the bloodline that, according to the council's warlock, could break the curse through the Red Moon—the beast became uncontrollable. More restless. More intense. It no longer destroyed. It searched. It went out every night in the same direction, as if it could sense something Theron couldn't.
Now he knew who it had been searching for. And the beast slept on her floor like a damn lapdog.
He got in the shower and let the hot water pound his back.
Eight years of destruction and an omega with a bad attitude shows up and the beast turns into a puppy. If it weren't my life, it'd be funny.
Irina woke up with a drool mark on her cheek and the hazy memory of yellow eyes.
She sat up in bed. She looked at the floor beside her.
Empty. The beast wasn't there.
Did I dream it?
She got down and checked. There, on the stone, deep scratches from enormous claws. And black hair, thick, that didn't belong to any animal she knew.
She didn't dream it.
"Great," she muttered. "A creature the size of a horse gets into my room, licks my face, lies down to sleep, and disappears before dawn. My life is a horror novel with unsolicited romance."
She got dressed and went out to the hallway. She found Ezra in the dining hall.
"What was that thing that came into my room last night?" she said without greeting him.
Ezra looked at her. His face tensed.
"It got in?"
"Don't play dumb, Ezra. You told me to close the door. I closed it. And something opened it anyway. Big, black, yellow eyes. What is it?"
"You should talk to the king about that."
"The king doesn't talk to me. The king tells me to shut up. So I'm asking you."
Ezra looked around.
"I can't give you that answer. It's not my place. But it didn't hurt you, did it?"
"No."
"Then trust that for now."
"Trust that a monster breaks into my room and doesn't eat me? Sorry if my standard of peace of mind is a little higher."
"Talk to the king. Insist."
Irina went down to the kitchen for a glass of water. She wasn't hungry, but she needed to move, to do something, to stop turning over the image of yellow eyes staring at her from her bedroom floor.
The kitchen was enormous, industrial, with steel refrigerators and shelving that reached the ceiling. Two cooks were preparing lunch without paying her any attention. A back door led to a loading yard where a supply truck was parked with its doors open. The workers unloading it had gone into the pantry carrying boxes.
The truck was alone. Engine off, keys in the ignition, doors open.
Her heart leaped.
Don't think about it. If you think about it, you won't do it.
She walked toward the back door as if it were the most normal thing in the world. She stepped out into the yard. Nobody looked at her. She climbed into the back of the truck and squeezed in between the boxes that hadn't been unloaded yet. She wedged herself into a tight gap between bags of flour and crates of canned goods.
She waited. Her hands were shaking. Her heart was beating so hard she was sure they could hear it from the kitchen.
Voices outside. The workers came back to the yard. They closed the rear doors.
They moved.
I did it. Damn it, I did it. I'm getting out of here. I'm going to—
The truck drove for ten minutes along a mountain road before braking at the perimeter checkpoint. Irina heard voices. The guards checking the cargo. The rear door opened.
A guard moved two boxes. Sunlight hit her face.
"What the hell—?"
"Shit," Irina said.
They brought her back to the castle in the same truck, escorted by two guards who looked at her as if they didn't know whether to laugh or worry.
Theron was waiting for her at the entrance with his arms crossed and an expression that would have frozen a volcano.
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