Chapter 34
ALEXANDER
She was open beneath him, flushed and glistening. Her dark eyes were glassy with heat, her mouth trembling with the echoes of his name.
The moonlight had long since vanished, leaving the room in velvety black. The air itself felt thick and spent, saturated with their mingled scents.
She must be exhausted. Still, she took him—every single inch. Each thrust dragged a broken sound from her throat. When he drove deeper, she clenched tighter around him, like her body was learning him. Wanting more. Needing more.
He couldn’t think, could barely breathe. He was supposed to be measured. In control. He’d schooled himself too long to be undone like this. But something about the way she looked up at him—lips parting, her body helplessly splayed beneath his—ripped through every last thread of his restraint.
He growled as he rocked into her again. Her breath caught. Her fingers scrabbled over his back, then slid down to brace his hips as if she could hold him there.
“JingYi,” he rasped, voice shredded. He didn’t even know what he was begging for.
Her scent was everywhere. She was drenched in arousal, her Heat rising in sharp waves that made his blood feel too thick, his thoughts too sluggish. He dropped his head, mouth brushing over her throat, then over the gentle swell of one breast, the frantic beat of her heart.
His weight pressed her deeper into the furs, his hands curling under her knees to push them farther apart. Her body folded, completely pinned.
Mine.
The word thundered through him like a war drum. He was panting now. Sweating. The furs damp beneath them, her skin hot and silken under his hands. He watched the way her breasts moved with each punishing thrust, the way her eyes fluttered when he struck the deepest part of her, again, again.
Again.
She wouldn’t know how close he was to breaking open, spilling everything he couldn’t speak—longing, guilt, the unbearable need. Nothing to do with her caste or this damn treaty and everything to do with her.
He buried his face against her neck, breathing her in like salvation, like sin. His thrusts grew erratic, chasing his own release. Every snap of his hips was a declaration he couldn’t voice. The sound of her moans was the only anchor he had left, and even that was slipping.
He was going to come. And gods help him, he wanted to do it buried as deep inside her as he could go. Fill her. Mark her. Ruin her for anyone else.
She was still trembling under him, her breath ragged, body fluttering from the last release he’d wrung from her. But when he began to ease out again, her hips lifted in a silent plea.
“More,” she whispered, broken and soft.
The last vestiges of his control, the lordly facade he wore, shattered.
What remained was pure Alpha instinct—raw, territorial, and desperate.
With a curse, he gathered her into his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist. Her breasts were against his chest, head falling back, luscious raven hair spilling along her spine.
He sat back on his haunches and guided himself back inside her.
She cried out, thighs bracketing his waist as he filled her again. The angle was deeper this time, and he gritted his teeth as her walls clamped down around him.
“Fates,” he groaned. “Gods, JingYi—”
He felt her clench to the sound of her name, her hands grasping at his shoulders, his hair, anything she could reach.
He moved, slow at first. Powerful, grinding thrusts that drove her body upward with each stroke.
Then faster, driven by the wild rhythm of her Heat, by the way she squirmed and gasped and sobbed against his throat.
Her head barely reached his chin when he held her like this, legs dangling from his arms, toes brushing the furs.
She folded into him like she was made for it. For him.
Her walls fluttered around him again—climax building, relentless. And the primal urge to sink his teeth into her neck, to claim and bond her forever, surged.
He couldn’t. Not like this. Not while her mind swam in Heat. If he did, it wouldn’t be a bond—it would be a theft.
He fought the urge, a guttural groan of denial vibrating against her skin. Instead, his teeth found the muscle of her shoulder, clamping down in a fierce, possessive bite that was a claiming of the moment, not the soul.
“Alexander—!” she cried, voice cracking.
That broken sound of his name on her lips nearly undid him.
Don’t break her. Don’t break her.
He was the one breaking.
His hips stuttered as her walls clamped down again, a helpless sob catching in her throat, trembling and flushed and utterly ruined against him.
He couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop drinking her in—the way her head tipped back, throat arched.
The way she moaned his name like it cost her everything to say it.
Mine.
It burned behind his eyes, carved itself into every breath.
Mine.
Her fingers curled into his hair, pulling him closer. He pressed in, hips grinding as her body milked him—hungry, insistent, pleading—and with a final, ragged thrust, he came.
A guttural sound tore from his chest as he emptied into her, hips jerking, muscles locked. Her legs stayed around him, and his arms caged her in, as if shielding her from the collapse still shaking through him.
His face buried in the curve of her neck, and for a long, broken moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He only breathed her in, heart pounding, body trembling with everything he hadn’t said.
Everything he still didn’t know how to say.
JingYi’s Heat lasted two days before it finally broke on the second night.
He stayed with her through it all, answering every shuddering reach, every half-conscious plea, until he no longer knew where one crest ended and the next began.
It felt like madness—if madness could feel this right.
Each time she stirred beneath him, fevered and slick with need, he was already there, unable to stay away.
He tried to slow them, to be gentle. To remember there was a body beneath the fever.
When the worst of the Heat eased for a heartbeat, he coaxed water between her lips and fed her fruits and cured meats from the trays left outside his door three times a day, as if routine could anchor them in something resembling normalcy.
When the final wave broke, she arched beneath him, breath stuttering, fingers digging into his back as if she could keep him there by force. He followed with a hoarse groan against her throat, pressing in as far as he could, holding her as if the world might split open if he let go.
At last, she went still.
The storm of scent ebbed. The fever loosened its grip.
Her breathing evened, her pulse steadied beneath his lips.
The flush on her skin no longer burned with Heat, and her limbs had gone loose and heavy.
He gathered her close, one arm cradling her head, the other locked low around her hips to keep her pressed along him.
There, Alexander lay a long while, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders, the way her breath puffed softly against his neck. Eventually, as the air cooled, he shifted carefully so she lay curled on her side, and he could fetch a blanket from the edge of the bed.
That was when he saw them.
The flicker of moonlight had broken through the shutters, washing soft silver over her back. What he’d at first thought were shadows of the bare branches outside—
—were not.
Jagged lines. Some pale silver, nearly lost against her skin. Others, more recent, subtly raised. Whip scars, dozens of them. Some long, branching in parallel. Others short, crossed over each other like punishment layered on punishment.
His throat locked. Shame and fury rose at the living history carved into her flesh. Not a battlefield scar or a mark of war. It was cruelty—systematic, controlled, inflicted by someone who knew exactly how much pain a body could take before breaking.
His hand hovered over her back but didn’t dare touch, eyes tracing her skin from her nape down to her feet. Not even her soles were spared, bearing a mark burned into her flesh.
Gods, what had she endured?
The proof was etched there, as if she were nothing more than a canvas for someone else’s wrath. Her every defence made terrible, perfect sense.
Her stillness when voices rose. Conditioned.
The lowered eyes. A learned reflex.
The careful steps hiding her limp—the gait of someone who knew pain could come from any direction.
Each precise word, chosen by someone who knew the price of a lash.
Alexander’s jaw clenched. He gathered her again, shielding that ruined back with his chest, his arms curling tighter than before, as if he could blot out the memory of whatever hands had done this.
Later, he washed her gently, then himself. Still, she didn’t stir. At some point, he must’ve dozed off with her tucked in his arms, until a sharp knock jolted him upright, far too brisk for this hour.
The second knock was louder, not the kind one could sleep through. He swore under his breath and eased out of the bed, tucking the blanket over JingYi’s bare shoulders. Her brow furrowed, lips parting in soft protest, but she didn’t wake.
Alexander closed the curtains around the Nest, pulled on his tunic and breeches in three fast, angry movements, and crossed the chamber.
He eased the door open. “What in Solthar’s name—?”
Conrad stood there, flushed, breathless. “I wouldn’t disturb you unless it was urgent, my lord. Especially when you’re with your Omega.”
Alexander’s jaw clenched. “This better not be about patrol rotations again.”
The boy’s words rushed out. “Wulfbane’s limyerite cave collapsed.”
He froze.
“One of the night guards heard the rumbling before it went down,” Conrad continued. “He sent a rider. The tunnel’s partially buried. Two men inside doing repairs on the support beams are trapped.”
A cold sweat prickled across Alexander’s neck. His heart hammered against his ribs. He dragged a hand through his damp hair, fingers twisting into the strands. Wordless, he turned and strode back into his room to finish dressing.
The air in the chamber still carried the scent of heat and sweat, of her.
Inside the nest, JingYi lay nestled into the furs they’d tangled in for two nights, her back rising and falling in steady rhythm.
Her hair was half-spilled across the pillow, her lips slightly parted in the heaviness of dreamless sleep.
For a long moment, he stood paralyzed, torn between the warm, sleeping woman who smelled of his protection and her own peace, and the brutal fact of the cave. The part of him that had just become hers screamed to stay. The Wulfbane in him was already walking out the door.
Still, it took longer than it should have to tear his gaze away.
At the writing desk, he picked up a quill and dragged it across parchment with clipped precision.
Once finished, he folded the letter, set it beside her pillow, and gave her a final glance.