Page 21

Lexa

Slowly, I opened the door with the calm of a woman who’d spent the morning doing absolutely nothing wrong.

I was fully dressed—dark green tunic laced at the collar, thick leggings tucked into soft boots, hair pulled into a loose braid.

The fire in the hearth crackled behind me.

Servants moved about the room quietly, laying out breakfast, folding linens, smoothing out the now-fresh bed I hadn’t even touched.

I hadn't sent those images because I did any of it. I sent them because I could. Because I knew what I was to him now. Knew the bond between us was frayed and cursed and real. And if I couldn’t cut it—I would choke him with it.

Andros stood in the doorway like a god made of fury, dressed in black from throat to boots, eyes so dark I swore they absorbed the light. His jaw clenched once, twice, and every breath he took looked like it cost him.

“Out,” he said, voice sharp enough to flay bone.

The servants froze.

“Now.”

They didn’t wait for a second command. Plates clinked as they scrambled to leave, skirts swishing, boots echoing against stone. One nearly tripped in her haste to bow. The door clicked shut behind them with the soft finality of a blade slipping into a sheath.

I didn’t move. I crossed my arms. Lifted my chin.

“You look disappointed,” I said, voice calm, almost mocking. “What? Were you hoping to find me on your bed with my fingers between my thighs?”

His dark blue eyes sparked like lightning behind stormclouds, cold fire, charged and lethal.

“You sent those images,” he said slowly, each word vibrating with contained violence, “into my mind. During a diplomatic meeting. While I was discussing trade routes. While I was surrounded by wolves who’d gut each other for a glance at weakness.”

I shrugged. “And?”

“You tried to use the bond to break me.”

“No.” I smiled, sweet and wicked. “I used it to remind you who started this.”

In the span of a breath, he crossed the room and grabbed me.

One hand around my throat. Not tight, not choking, but enough to feel. To make me aware of just how much power sat beneath that controlled facade.

“You want to play this game?” he growled, pushing me back until my spine hit the stone. “You think you can send me illusions of your soaked cunt and pretty moans and then pretend like none of it mattered?”

“I didn’t touch myself,” I whispered, smiling wider, letting the words twist the knife. “But you thought I did. You saw every moment. Felt every breath. And that was enough to undo you.”

His hand tightened slightly, and I gasped—still not afraid. Not begging. I wanted him to burn. To unravel like I had. I wanted him furious.And gods, was he.

“You think there won’t be consequences for that?” he hissed, voice a promise carved in stone.

I knew I’d gone too far the second he smiled. Not a soft smile. Not a cruel one.

That razor-edged, Alpha smile, the kind that told you you'd just played a game against something older, darker, and far more dangerous than you realized.

“You want to play?” he said, low and sharp, stepping in close. The hand at my throat slipped down, dragged across my collarbone, slow and deliberate, his fingers brushing the curve of my breast just enough to make me shiver despite myself. “Then let’s play.”

I braced for the grip, the force, the bruising dominance he carried like a weapon. But it didn’t come from his hands. It came from the bond.

One snap, like a whip cracking in my mind and I felt it. A tug, hard and hot, right behind my sternum.

Andros.

I gasped, not from pain but from the rush of it, the way it tore straight through my walls. The bond surged with his will, commanding, absolute. And gods, I felt it like chains wrapping around my ribs, around my wrists, around my will. He was in my head.And he wasn’t being gentle.

“Take off your clothes,” he said, but the words didn’t pass his lips. They sank into my skin like ash and steel, his voice wrapping around the bond like a leash pulling taut.

“No,” I breathed, defiant, but my fingers twitched at my sides. I clenched them tight. Another pull.

“I want you bare, Lexa. Just like in those filthy little fantasies you sent me. But now you’ll do it in front of me. For me.”

My hands moved before I could stop them, traitorous, trembling. I gritted my teeth. “This isn’t fair.”

He stepped back, folding his arms, watching like a king waiting for his sacrifice to finish bleeding.

“This is retribution,” he said coldly. “You gave me images. I want the reality.”

The tunic slipped off my shoulders. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I dropped it.

One piece at a time, boots, leggings, shift, until the cold air kissed every inch of me and my body remembered every lie I’d used to torture him. My skin burned with shame and heat and something far worse: want .

He didn’t touch me. Not yet. He just circled, slow, letting the bond twist tighter, coil deeper inside me. My nipples pebbled, my thighs clenched, but still I stood. Not proud. Not victorious. Exposed.

“You play dirty,” I whispered. “You’re in my head. Get out of there!”

He stepped behind me, close enough to feel his breath brush my shoulder.

“So were you,” he murmured. “Difference is, I play to win.” The bond pulsed. I shuddered. “Now sit on the bed and show me what I felt through that bond. ”

I sat.

The mattress dipped beneath my weight, the fire behind me cracking low and steady like it too waited for what came next.

My thighs trembled as I pulled them up onto the bed, folding beneath me.

Every inch of my skin felt raw, hypersensitive—not from the cold, not from fear—but from the bond snapping tight like reins around my neck.

He didn’t touch me.

He stood there, just a few feet away, his arms folded over that broad chest, his jaw set in stone. His eyes—gods, those eyes—they didn’t just look at me. They held me there, bared and humiliated and exposed under his will.

“Go on,” Andros said, and though his lips barely moved, his voice thundered down the bond, curling low in my belly, violent and possessive.

“ Show me what you showed me before. Exactly the way you imagined it. Every moan. Every stroke. Every lie you built to drive me mad. But this time… you’ll mean it. ”

I wanted to scream. To snarl and claw and throw something at his face. But my body—my traitorous, starving body—moved.

Hands sliding between my knees, I parted them slowly, my thighs burning under his gaze, my breath coming faster as I laid myself out exactly how I’d made him see me.

“Good,” he said, voice tight. “You remember.”

The bond pulsed—his satisfaction rolling over me like heat—and gods, it made my skin ache. My fingers hovered at my stomach. I hesitated.

“Now.”

The command dropped into me like a brand. I gasped, one hand sliding lower, the other fisting the sheets beside me.

“Fuck you,” I whispered, shame thick in my throat, but the bond pulled again and I moved, slow and shaking.

Andros stepped closer, his voice curling dark and low across the thread between us. “You started this. You sent me every filthy image, every tremble of need. And now you’ll feel what it’s like to be watched. Really watched.”

My breath hitched as my fingers found slick heat between my thighs. The bond lit up like a storm, his hunger crashing into me, his fury, his claim.But worse than all of that, his need.He needed to see this. Needed to own it.

“You want control?” I gasped. “Is that it? You want to dominate every inch of me until I forget I ever belonged to myself?”

He stepped in then, slowly, deliberately, kneeling on the edge of the bed like a beast closing in on prey.

“No,” Andros said. “I want you to understand what you tied yourself to. What you tried to play with. The bond isn’t a toy, Lexa. And I’m not your fucking puppet.”

He leaned over me, hand wrapping around my wrist guiding me. Slower. Deeper.

I should have stopped. Should have ripped the bond apart with whatever strength I had left, clawed through it with sheer rage, with fear, with hate.But I didn’t.I let him guide me.

Wrist wrapped in his palm, his voice like smoke wrapping around my throat, I moved under his command, under his watch. My fingers worked slowly, achingly—his rhythm, not mine. Every breath felt like submission. And still—he didn’t touch me.Not really.

Andros knelt at the foot of the bed like a shadow carved from stone, his hand firm over my wrist, forcing me to feel exactly what I had shown him. The image I had sent to rattle him—now made real.

I gasped as the first ripple of pleasure tore through me, shame curling hot in my chest. I wasn’t pretending now. I felt it.

He leaned closer, his mouth at my ear, breath scalding as his other hand slid behind my head, fisting in my hair, holding me there—exposed, raw, breaking.

“You don’t get to play the whore in my thoughts and the saint in my bed,” he growled, lips brushing my skin but not kissing. “You want to make me lose control? Then fucking feel what it’s like when I take it.”

The bond surged, and my body reacted—traitor, betrayer, wolf—my wolf who now whimpered in quiet agony beneath my skin, awakened and bound, no longer silenced by runes or fear.

She wanted him .Desperately.

And gods, she wanted me to want him too.

I tried to twist away, to suppress the moan building at the base of my throat, but his hand found its place—fingers wrapped around my neck, firm but not cruel.

Just enough. A silent command: stay . There was no magic to shield me this time, no runes humming beneath my skin, no shadows to hide behind. Just the bond. Just him.

“I hate you,” I gasped, barely more than a breath.

His mouth ghosted along my jaw, his voice a low, wrecked growl. “Say it louder. Say it while you finger yourself for me. Say it while you fucking come.”

The bond pulsed—hot, alive, watching—and my body moved without permission, without thought. My hand slipped lower, fingers sliding through slick heat as I arched against the overwhelming pressure between us. I hated him—I did—but the need, the ache, was louder than the hate now.

“Andros—” His name tore from my mouth in a broken moan as my fingers circled again, deeper, harder.

He didn’t stop me. He watched. Every sound I made, every twitch of my hips, every ragged breath—I felt him through the bond, drinking it in.

“Good girl,” he whispered, and that was all it took.

I shattered.

My back arched, a strangled cry escaping as I came hard, convulsing under the weight of everything I had denied myself—pleasure, surrender, the terrifying echo of being seen. His name fell from my lips again and again, a litany of everything I couldn't say.

“ Andros… Andros… gods— ”

Every nerve felt like it had been dragged across flame. Every breath was broken, shallow. Like I had drowned in him—and only now clawed my way back to the surface, raw and exposed.

The wave crested, crashed, and left me soaked in its aftermath. Humiliated. Exposed. I lay there, limp against the sheets, the air cold on my damp skin, my chest rising and falling like I’d been hunted and caught, even though he hadn’t even fucked me.

I opened my eyes.

And he was still there. Still watching me. His chest rose and fell with ragged control, the shadows of the fire flickering across his jaw like war paint, and for a moment, I thought maybe—just maybe—he would come to me. Touch me. Kiss me. Finish what I had started.

But instead, he tilted his head and gave me that slow, cruel smile—the one that meant he had already won.

“Well,” he said, his voice a blade dipped in honey. “Wasn’t that a sweet little performance.”

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Shame sank deep beneath my skin, colder than fire, raw and blooming like frostbite.

He stepped back—slow, silent, in complete control—his dark blue eyes trailing over me like glacial water, like a tide that had already claimed and reshaped me.

The sheets clung low around my hips, my legs still open, body bare and trembling, marked by everything I swore I’d never let him take… and he didn’t just see it—he owned it.

“You remember what you said to me, Lexa?” His voice slid through the bond like silk over a blade, slow, deliberate, cruelly satisfied, as I lay there, trembling and raw, every nerve still echoing with the aftermath of what he’d made me do.

“ Animals clawing each other in the dirt, pretending their urges are holy… ” He chuckled low, dark. “Funny how sacred it felt when you came whispering my name like it was a gods-damned prayer.”

Yes —I remembered. His study. That fight. The moment I’d spat those words at him, defiant and furious, when he demanded I apologize to that simpering omega.

“And next time…” He paused at the door, hand resting on the frame, his back to me but his voice cutting like a blade drawn across skin. “Think very carefully before you use the bond to bait the beast. You might find out just how much it likes to bite.”

The door shut behind him. And I was alone.

Naked. Exposed.

Every breath scraped against the silence like punishment, and I pulled the sheets over myself—not for warmth, but to cover the sting of what I’d allowed.

No, what I had invited.