Chapter 15
POV: Riven
The first time I saw her, I understood exactly how men ruined themselves.
One look.
That was all it took.
One fucking look at Amara Vale stepping into my office beside the beta of Ironclaw Pack, and fourteen years of control nearly cracked apart beneath my skin.
I had expected an old man.
A bitter scholar with silver hair and decades of mining experience. Someone obsessed with rocks and extraction percentages and purification methods.
Not her.
Not a tiny wolf with wide green eyes and soft brown waves falling over her shoulders like something made to tempt weak men into sin.
And I had never been a weak man.
Not once in my life.
Control had been carved into me long before I became alpha.
Control over my wolf.
Control over my instincts.
Control over my body.
Especially my body.
Because the men of House Oak did not survive without discipline.
And cursed men survived even less.
The moment she stepped into my office, my wolf surged so violently inside me that I physically felt it beneath my ribs.
Mine.
The word slammed through my head with enough force to make my jaw lock.
Impossible.
Absolutely fucking impossible.
She was twenty-five.
Lyra had confirmed it later.
Twenty-five years old.
Which meant she had already lived through five moon balls after maturity.
Five chances for the bond to reveal itself.
Five years where fate should have dragged her toward whoever was meant for her.
Not me.
Never me.
I had gone through fourteen moon balls without finding a mate.
Fourteen years of watching younger wolves find theirs while I stood there empty-handed, cursed blood running through my veins like poison.
The Moon Curse of House Oak.
That was the real reason I never touched women.
Not discipline.
Not morality.
Not loyalty to some imaginary future mate.
Fear.
Pure fear.
The curse had followed every unmated alpha male born into our bloodline for centuries.
Touching was allowed.
Kissing was dangerous.
But sex?
Sex with the wrong woman meant death.
Not metaphorical death.
Real death.
The curse consumed unmated Oak alphas who tried to complete a mating bond with someone who wasn’t theirs. Their wolves turned feral from the inside out until the body gave up trying to survive it.
My father lasted three years after my mother died.
Three years after grief made him crawl into another woman’s bed searching for something to silence the loss.
I still remembered the screams.
I was seventeen.
After that, restraint stopped being a choice.
It became survival.
So no, I never touched unmated wolves.
Never allowed myself to want.
Never let myself imagine.
And then Amara Valen walked into my office smelling like lavender and warm vanilla and spring flowers after rain, and my entire body reacted like she had been crafted specifically to destroy me.
I hated her for it instantly.
Not truly.
But enough to turn cold.
Enough to build walls.
Because if I let myself feel what my wolf felt the second I looked at her, I was fucked.
Completely fucked.
So I became distant.
Sharp.
Controlled.
I told myself it would pass.
That she would stay in the labs where I barely saw her. That she would do her work, improve the mines, and leave.
Simple.
Except nothing about her was simple.
Not her mind.
Not her smile.
Not the way she looked at things.
Within one day she had improved extraction stabilization by nearly twelve percent.
Within two, she reorganized purification flow systems that my engineers had been struggling with for years.
Michael practically worshipped the ground she walked on by the end of the week.
And the worst part?
He was right.
She was brilliant.
Fucking terrifyingly brilliant.
I watched her explain silver filtration theory during dinner one night while Joseph sat there looking ready to hire her for every department in the pack.
She spoke with her hands when she got excited.
Her eyes lit up when talking about research.
And every time she smiled, something ugly and possessive twisted inside my chest.
Mine.
Again.
Again.
Again.
My wolf refused to shut up about her.
The closer we got to the moon ball, the worse it became.
Every instinct inside me turned restless.
Violent.
Hungry.
I started avoiding entire sections of the pack house if I caught her scent there first.
Didn’t help.
Nothing fucking helped.
Because she was everywhere.
At breakfast with Lyra.
At the labs with Michael.
In the mines wearing protective glasses that should not have looked attractive and somehow still did.
And then her heat started.
God.
That nearly broke me.
The first time I smelled it across the dining hall, I gripped the table so hard the wood cracked beneath my hand.
Sweet.
Burning.
Addictive.
My wolf went feral instantly.
Every survival instinct I had spent years building nearly collapsed in that moment.
I left dinner early and locked myself inside my office like a coward.
Lyra found me there thirty minutes later.
“You’re shaking,” she’d said quietly.
I was.
Because all I could think about was Amara somewhere in my pack suffering through her heat while every animal instinct inside me screamed to go to her.
To touch her.
To soothe her.
To bury myself so deep inside her scent I forgot my own name.
I nearly laughed at the insanity of it.
Instead, I asked Lyra for suppressants.
Strong ones.
She stared at me for a long moment before silently handing them over.
They didn’t work.
Nothing worked.
Not whiskey.
Not distance.
Not cold showers.
Not training until my knuckles split open.
And every single day Amara got worse.
I could smell the pain on her.
Could hear the strain in her breathing during dinners.
Could feel the way her wolf reacted every time I entered a room.
Then came the night she stumbled into the meeting room half delirious from heat.
I nearly lost my fucking mind.
One look at her flushed skin and glassy eyes and my wolf surged hard enough to blur my vision.
Everyone smelled it.
Everyone.
The tension.
The reaction.
The impossible pull between us.
I cleared the room before anyone could say something stupid.
And when she looked at me and whispered Lyra like I was the only thing her body recognized in that moment?
I knew I was already doomed.
Still, I kept trying to fight it.
Even after she slept curled against me.
Even after I woke up hard as stone with her soft body tangled around mine.
Even after hearing her moan from relief the first time I touched her.
I kept telling myself the same thing.
She isn’t your mate.
She cannot be your mate.
If you lose control, you die.
But every second around Amara made dying feel a little less terrifying.
The first time I made her come, something inside me shifted so violently that I felt it down to the marrow of my bones.
It was not lust.
Not only lust.
I knew lust. I had spent fifteen years strangling it into silence every time the moon balls came and went without a mate. I had learned how to lock every instinct inside iron chains and pretend it did not exist. I had learned how to survive restraint.
But this?
This felt sacred.
Dangerous.
Like the world itself had tilted under my feet.
The second my mouth touched her and she cried out against my sheets, it felt like something clicked into place inside me with a brutal, terrifying certainty. My wolf surged so hard inside my chest that it nearly stole my breath, and one thought kept screaming through my head over and over again.
She is not your mate.
She is not your mate.
You will die.
But none of it mattered when she was in pain.
Nothing mattered when she looked at me with tears in her eyes and pleaded for relief.
I could survive my own suffering.
I could survive wanting her.
I could survive destroying myself piece by piece.
But I could not survive watching Amara hurt.
That was the problem.
That was the fucking problem.
And the worst part was that she had no idea what she was doing to me.
When she woke up tangled in my arms the next morning, warm and soft against my chest, brushing herself against me in her sleep like she belonged there, I almost lost what little control I still had left.
She touched me.
Gods.
When her hand slid lower and she looked at me with sleepy green eyes full of trust and desire, I actually considered it.
Death.