Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Seth
I wake to warmth pressed against my chest and the scent of her filling my lungs.
For a moment, I’m disoriented—caught between sleep and consciousness, unsure where I am or what happened. Suddenly, awareness crashes over me like ice water.
Selene.
She’s curled against me, naked, her auburn hair spilled across my arm.
The mate bond hums contentedly between us, stronger than it’s ever been, wrapping around my ribs like steel bands.
My mark sits dark and possessive on her neck, still tender, and when I shift slightly, I feel the ache of her bite on my shoulder.
What the hell did we do?
My wolf preens with satisfaction, completely unconcerned with the chaos we’ve created. But my mind races, trying to piece together how we went from her attempting to reject me to…this.
The kiss. That desperate, consuming kiss that tasted like salvation and damnation all at once. And then, everything after. The way she clawed at me, the sounds she made, how her body responded to mine like we were built to fit together.
My cock stirs at the memory, but I force the thought away, trying to focus.
Something about last night felt wrong. Not the claiming itself, but everything leading up to it.
The way my skin had burned, the fever that had taken over my mind until all I could think about was getting inside her, marking her, making her mine.
In her sleep, Selene shifts, her arm sliding around my waist and tightening like she’s afraid I’ll vanish. The gesture is so trusting, so vulnerable, that something in my chest cracks open.
Without thinking, I run my fingers through her hair, brushing the silky strands back from her face. She’s beautiful like this—peaceful, unguarded, without the walls she has built between us over the past two weeks. The mate bond sings at the contact, and my wolf rumbles with contentment.
She’s ours now. Finally ours.
But the satisfaction feels tainted by confusion. My body was on fire from the moment I tasted that wine. Even before I touched her, I’d been able to smell her arousal, thick and intoxicating in the air. It wasn’t natural—the intensity of it, the way neither of us could think straight.
My eyes drift to the bottle sitting on her bedside table.
Zane’s wine. The wine she said they were supposed to drink together.
Cold dread trickles down my spine. If the wine had been drugged—and every instinct I have screams that it was—then it hadn’t been meant for me. It had been intended for the two of them. Selene and Zane, sharing the bottle, alone in her quarters.
What had he been planning?
I carefully extract myself from Selene’s embrace, ignoring her soft sound of protest as I slip from the bed. She rolls into the warm spot I’ve left behind, curling around my pillow, and I have to tear my eyes away so I don’t climb back in beside her.
I grab the wine bottle and bring it to my nose, inhaling deeply. Nothing. Just expensive wine, perfectly aged, exactly what you’d expect from someone like Zane Radrick. But my intuition insists that something is wrong. Whatever was in this bottle wasn’t accidental—it was deliberate.
The thought makes my wolf snarl with rage. What would have happened if I hadn’t been here? If I hadn’t found her sleepwalking? If I hadn’t drunk from this bottle myself?
I need answers. But first, I need to clean up.
My shower is quick, the hot water doing little to clear my head. When I return to the bedroom, towel wrapped around my waist, Selene is still sleeping peacefully. The sight of her—tangled in sheets that smell like us, my mark exposed on her throat—sends a fierce wave of possession through me.
Mine.
She was always meant to be mine, even when I was too stubborn and too stupid to accept it.
I grab a clean cloth, dampen it with warm water, and return to the bed.
Gently, carefully, I clean her—washing away the evidence of what we did.
She stirs slightly, making a small sound, but doesn’t wake.
My hands move with surprising tenderness, wiping between her thighs, where I can still see traces of my release, then along her hips and across her stomach.
As I work, satisfaction blooms warm in my chest despite the situation. She is marked, claimed, bound to me in the most permanent way possible. Every reservation I had, every doubt about her strength or worthiness, feels distant and foolish now.
A grin tugs at my lips as I study my mark on her neck. She’s going to be furious when she wakes up. Absolutely livid. But the thing is, she marked me first. In the heat of the moment, her wolf had surged forward and sunk her teeth into my shoulder, claiming me first, before I claimed her back.
So really, this is her fault.
The logic is flawed and I know it, but I don’t care. The satisfaction of seeing my mark on her, of knowing she can never escape me now, drowns out any guilt I may feel about the circumstances.
I lean down and press a gentle, reverent kiss to her forehead. She sighs in her sleep, her face relaxing further into the pillow.
“Sleep, little wolf,” I murmur against her skin. “You’re going to need your strength for when you wake up and try to kill me.”
Still grinning notwithstanding my concerns, I pull the blanket up around her properly, tucking it under her chin. The protective gesture feels natural, right, like I’ve been doing this kind of thing for years instead of minutes.
Finally, I grab my clothes, dressing quickly. I need to get this wine bottle analyzed, need to understand what Zane had really intended. Because whatever game he’s playing with Selene, I just became an obstacle he didn’t plan for.
And I’m not going anywhere.
I take one last look at her sleeping form before I slip out the door, the mate bond stretching but holding strong between us. My wolf settles, content now that our mate is safely claimed and protected.
Now I just need to figure out what the hell Zane Radrick was planning—and how to keep Selene safe from whatever comes next.
I find Astra in her herb garden, kneeling in the dirt with her hands buried in soil.
She’s humming softly to herself, completely absorbed in transplanting seedlings from one pot to another.
The morning sun catches in her dark hair, and for a moment, she looks so peaceful that I almost don’t want to disturb her.
Almost.
“Astra.”
She looks up, her face brightening with a smile that falters the moment she sees my expression. “Seth? Is everything okay?”
I hold out the wine bottle. “Can you check this for me?”
Her eyebrows raise as she brushes dirt from her hands, standing slowly. “Sure…” She draws the word out, studying my face with growing concern. “Check it for what, exactly?”
“Just check it. Please.”
Something in my voice—the urgency, the tension I can’t quite hide—makes her expression shift from curious to worried. She nods and takes the bottle from my outstretched hand. “Alright. Let me bring it to the lab.”
I follow her across the garden path and into the small building Lucian had constructed for her.
The lab is organized chaos—shelves lined with jars and bottles, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, various apparatuses I don’t understand scattered across the worktables.
The scent of earth and growing things fills the air.
Astra turns around to set the bottle on the table and nearly collides with me. I’m standing too close, I know, but I can’t seem to make myself step back. I need answers. Now.
Her eyes widen as she catches my scent, and I watch recognition dawn on her face. Her hand comes up, one finger pointing at me accusingly, her voice unsteady. “Why do your and Selene’s scents smell so…intermingled?”
Heat crawls up my neck. “It’s a long story.”
“It can’t be that long.” Her eyes narrow, and I can practically see her mind working through possibilities. “You smell like you’ve been—” She stops, her gaze sharpening. “Seth.”
I run my fingers through my hair, the nervous gesture making me feel like a boy caught stealing sweets. “It kind of is a long story.”
“Selene’s being courted by Zane,” Astra says slowly, her voice taking on an edge. “What are you doing with her?”
The question makes my wolf bristle, possessive fury surging hot in my chest. “Selene is my fated mate.”
The wine bottle slips from Astra’s fingers. I lunge forward and catch it before it can shatter on the stone floor, straightening to find her staring at me with her mouth hanging open.
“What?” The Queen is clearly shocked by this news. “How is that—Since when?”
“Since I met her.” The admission tastes like failure in my mouth. “But I was kind of a dick to her about it.”
“Kind of?” Astra’s voice rises with indignation.
I wince. “Okay, a huge dick. A massive, unforgivable—Look, the point is, after she rescued Zane, things got super complicated.”
Astra crosses her arms, her expression demanding answers. “Explain. Now.”
So, I do. I tell her everything—how the mate bond had burned between Selene and me from the first moment, how I’d pushed her away because of my own stupid prejudices about strength and worthiness.
How after she saved Zane’s life, she suddenly claimed she couldn’t feel our bond anymore.
How Zane had swooped in with his own claims of being her fated mate.
“And you believed that?” Astra interrupts, her tone sharp with incredulity.
“Selene felt nothing for me—I could see it, sense it. The bond was completely one-sided, on my end. It made the whole thing plausible.” I set the wine bottle carefully on the table.
“It felt like the bond had simply vanished on her end. And I couldn’t understand why Zane would lie.
He had no reason to, and I—” I pause, shame burning in my throat.
“I practically pushed her into his arms, Astra. After everything I’d said to her, everything I’d done, she was happy with him.
Happier than I’d ever seen her. Smiling, laughing. He gave her everything I refused to.”