Chapter 34 #2
“Tomorrow,” he murmured against her temple, “I won’t be able to hold back.
The blood moon strips away control. Sharpens instinct until there’s nothing left but the hunt.
” His hands slid lower, tracing her hips, her thighs, the tender skin behind her knees.
“I need to know you now. While I can still be gentle.”
“Are you afraid you’ll hurt me?”
“I’m afraid of nothing.” The lie vibrated through the bond, obvious and immediate. He sighed, a sound that seemed too soft for such a dangerous creature. “I’m terrified of everything. Of you. Of what happens if something goes wrong. Of the court watching, waiting for me to fail.”
The admission cracked something open in her chest.
She turned in his arms, water sloshing against the pool’s edge, and faced him properly. Cyan eyes met hers, and for once, he wasn’t hiding. The Alpha King, the predator, the male who ruled through violence and will—he looked almost young in the Lux Tear light. Almost vulnerable.
“What scares you most?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His claws found her waist again, steadying her against the current of the water, against the current of his own uncertainty.
“That you’ll realize what I am.” His voice dropped to something raw. “That the moon will show you the beast under the king, and you’ll finally understand that you’re bound to a monster.”
Elsa reached up, cupping his face between her palms. The fur was soft against her skin, the bones beneath sharp and alien and somehow exactly what she wanted to hold.
“I’ve seen the monster.” She held his gaze. “I watched you tear through Vask’s guards. I felt your fury through the bond when you thought I was in danger. I know exactly what you’re capable of.” Her thumbs traced the ridge of his cheekbones. “And I’m still here.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. Something hungry and hopeful and desperately careful.
“Still here,” he repeated, like the words were a foreign language he was learning to speak.
“Still here.” She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his—soft, brief, a promise rather than a demand. “Now finish washing me. I believe you mentioned something about knowing me well enough to find me in the dark.”
The sound he made was half growl, half laugh.
He finished with the same methodical attention he’d started with—every inch of skin, every hidden place, every part of her body that had been her own and was now somehow his as well.
By the time he lifted her from the water, wrapped her in warmed furs, and carried her to his bed, she felt known in a way that should have been terrifying.
It wasn’t. It was anchor and harbor and the first true safety she’d felt since her ship fell out of the sky.
The fire had burned low by the time they settled into the furs.
Sylas had built it up when they returned from the bath, feeding logs into the hearth until flames crackled high and warmth pushed back the winter cold seeping through stone walls.
Now they lay tangled together—his body curved around hers, protective and possessive, her back pressed to his chest while firelight painted shadows across the room.
Neither of them spoke. The bond hummed between them, full of things too complicated for words. Elsa watched sparks spiral up toward the ceiling and let her mind drift.
“What do you miss?”
His voice came quiet, almost hesitant. Like the question had been building for a while and he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.
She thought about lying. Thought about giving him something simple and harmless—sunlight, maybe, or the taste of coffee. But the firelight and his warmth and the weight of tomorrow made honesty feel necessary.
“Stars that make sense.” The words came out hoarse.
“I spent my whole life learning to read the sky. Finding patterns, charting courses, knowing exactly where I was in relation to everything else in the universe.” She paused.
“Here, I look up and nothing is familiar. The constellations are wrong. The moon is wrong. Every instinct I developed tells me I’m lost.”
His arm tightened around her waist.
“What else?”
“My grandmother’s voice.” The grief surprised her, rising sudden and sharp.
“She raised me. Taught me the old stories, the Earth ones, about heroes and monsters and girls in red cloaks walking into dangerous woods.” Her laugh came out cracked.
“She’d have something to say about all this.
Something wise and slightly sarcastic and exactly what I needed to hear. ”
“Is she—”
“Gone. Years ago.” Elsa stared into the dying flames. “But I still hear her sometimes. In my head. When things get hard enough that I don’t know what to do.”
Sylas pressed his face to her hair, breathing deep. “What would she say about tomorrow?”
The question deserved consideration. Elsa closed her eyes, summoned the memory of a weathered face and sharp eyes and hands that had always known exactly when to hold on and when to let go.
“She’d say that sometimes the wolf isn’t the villain. That sometimes the girl in the red cloak knows exactly where she’s going.” A smile tugged at her lips. “And that running doesn’t mean running away. Sometimes it means running toward.”
His breath stuttered against her neck.
“Your grandmother sounds wise.”
“She was.” Elsa turned in his arms, facing him in the firelight. “Your turn. What scares the Alpha King of the Yzefrxyl?”
He didn’t deflect. Didn’t offer the non-answer she half expected. Instead, he met her gaze with the kind of raw honesty that felt like a wound.
“Becoming my father.” The words dropped like stones.
“He was Alpha before me. Strong. Brutal. Effective.” His jaw tightened.
“And mad. The throne consumed him by the end. The pressure. The isolation. The weight of a kingdom that demanded everything and forgave nothing.” His claws traced patterns on her hip.
“I killed him to take the crown. I don’t regret it—he would have destroyed our people if I’d let him continue.
But I see him sometimes. In the mirror. In my decisions.
In the moments when control slips and the beast takes over. ”
Elsa processed this. The casual brutality of it—killing his own father. The weight it must carry. The constant fear of following the same path.
“You’re not him.”
“Not yet.” His gaze burned into hers. “But the Blood Moon strips away everything civilized. Tomorrow night, I’ll be closer to what he was than what I pretend to be. And you’ll see it. All of it.”
“Good.”
He blinked. “Good?”
“I don’t want the version of you that pretends.” She lifted her hand, pressing it flat against his chest where his heart beat slow and steady. “I want this. The real thing. Even the parts that scare you.”
Silence stretched between them, heavy with implications. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the fortress, guards changed shifts and servants moved through corridors and a kingdom continued its careful dance of power and survival.
Here, in this room, there was only the two of them and the weight of what was coming.
“If tomorrow goes wrong—” he started.
“It won’t.”
“If it does.” He pushed forward, voice rough. “If challengers come for me during the hunt. If the court decides a human Luna is an insult to tradition. If something happens that separates us—”
“Then I find my way back to you.” The certainty in her own voice surprised her.
“I’m a navigator, Sylas. Getting lost and finding my way is literally what I do.
” Her hand slid up his chest, over the corded muscle of his neck, to cup his jaw.
“You can’t lose me. The bond won’t let you. I won’t let you.”
Something cracked in his expression. Something raw and wanting and desperately, terrifyingly hopeful.
“Little human.” The words came out broken. “You don’t know what you’re promising.”
“I know exactly what I’m promising.” She pulled him closer, until their foreheads touched, until they were sharing breath and heat and the trembling edge of something neither of them had words for.
“I’m promising you forever in a world where nothing is guaranteed.
I’m promising to run tomorrow because the ritual demands it, and to let you catch me because I want you to. I’m promising—”
He kissed her.
Not the brief press she’d given him in the bath.
This was consuming—his mouth claiming hers with a desperation that said he was trying to memorize this too, trying to hold onto something soft in a life that demanded constant hardness.
She opened for him, let him in, gave back as good as she got while the fire painted them in gold and orange and the deepening shadows of a winter night.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, he rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.
“Sleep.” The command was softer now. Rougher. “Tomorrow will demand everything we have.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight, I hold you.” His arms tightened, pulling her flush against his body. “Tonight, I remember what peace feels like.”
She settled into him, let his warmth and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat become her anchor. The bond pulsed between them—quieter now, calmer, full of things that didn’t need saying.
Sleep was pulling at the edges of her consciousness when his voice rumbled through the darkness.
“Elsa.”
“Mm?”
His hand found her chin, tilting her face up until she had to open her eyes, had to see the cyan gaze burning into hers with something fierce and final.
“Run hard tomorrow.” The words landed like vows. “Run fast. Use everything that navigator brain of yours can devise. Make me hunt. Make me work.” His claws grazed her cheek with terrifying gentleness. “Make me earn you.”
The promise coiled between them, heavy with implication. Tomorrow, she would flee through snow under a crimson sky. Tomorrow, he would track her like the predator he was, hunt her like prey, catch her like—
Like a mate worth claiming.
“I will,” she whispered. “And when you catch me?”
His smile was all teeth and hunger and a darkness that should have terrified her.
“When I catch you,” he said, “you become mine. Luna. Queen. The center of everything I build from this night forward.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead—fierce and tender and everything contradictory about this male she’d somehow fallen for. “Now sleep. Tomorrow, we run.”
She closed her eyes. Let the fire’s warmth and his arms and the steady pulse of their bond carry her down into dreams.
Tomorrow, the Blood Moon would rise.
Tomorrow, she would run.
And when he caught her—
She would let him.