The world narrowed down to the rhythmic thud of heavy boots against marble.
Aria couldn't breathe. The curtain she clutched in her hand felt like the only anchor preventing her from floating away into the delirious haze of her fever.
Alpha Damien stopped.
He was close enough now that she could feel the heat radiating off him, a furnace-like intensity that clashed violently with the cold sweat clinging to her skin. Up close, he was terrifying. A masterpiece of violence wrapped in a bespoke suit.
He towered over her, his silver eyes locking onto hers with a force that felt like a physical blow.
Then, the scent hit her.
It wasn't the musk or pine that every other wolf in the room exuded. It was sharp, elemental, and devastating. It smelled like a forest after a wildfire—charred wood and wet earth. Rain and Ash.
It flooded her senses, bypassing the blockers, bypassing her logic, and slamming straight into the primal part of her brain she didn't know she had.
Mate, the voice in her head whispered. Mine.
The headache behind her eyes shrieked, a white-hot spike of agony that made her knees buckle. She grabbed the velvet curtain tighter to stay upright.
Her parents, sensing the attention of the King, stepped forward. Her mother's face transformed instantly from disdain to a practiced, eager smile. Alpha Stone puffed out his chest, ready to offer his daughter like a prize heifer.
"Your Majesty," Stone boomed, bowing low. "We are honored—"
Damien didn't even look at him. His gaze remained fixed on Aria, traveling slowly from her flushed face down to her trembling hands, and back up to her eyes.
His nostrils flared again. He inhaled the scent of her, and for a split second, Aria saw his pupils blow wide, eclipsing the silver. A look of raw, starving hunger crossed his face.
Then, just as quickly, it vanished.
It was replaced by a sneer of such profound disgust that Aria physically recoiled.
"Is this a joke?" Damien's voice was low, but in the terrified silence of the hall, it carried like thunder.
Stone's smile faltered. "My King?"
"I asked for the bloodlines of Alphas," Damien spat, finally tearing his eyes away from Aria to glare at her father. "Not the sick. Not the weak."
He gestured vaguely at Aria, not deigning to look at her again. "She smells like a dying animal masked with cheap chemicals. Get her out of my sight before she infects the air."
The words landed like whip cracks.
A collective gasp rippled through the ballroom. Aria felt the blood drain from her face, leaving her cold and hollow.
Damien didn't wait for a response. He turned on his heel, his cape of darkness swirling around him, and strode toward the bar, leaving Aria standing in the wreckage of his rejection.
The humiliation was a living thing. It crawled over Aria's skin, hot and prickly.
"You useless girl," her mother hissed, her fingers digging into the soft flesh of Aria's upper arm. She leaned in close, her voice a venomous whisper. "You couldn't just stand there? You had to look like a frightened rabbit? You had to smell wrong?"
"I took the pills," Aria whispered, her vision blurring as tears of shame fought with the throbbing in her skull. "I did what you said."
"Clearly not enough," Stone growled, refusing to look at her. His face was a mask of fury. He was scanning the room, seeing the snickers, the pitying glances from rival packs. His reputation was bleeding out on the floor. "Go. Find a dark corner and stay there until we leave. Do not let anyone else see you."
Aria didn't need to be told twice.
She pulled her arm free and fled. She didn't run, she didn't have the energy but she walked as fast as her trembling legs would carry her, head down, eyes fixed on the floor.
She needed to get away from the lights. From the noise. From the smell of him.
But the smell was everywhere. Rain and Ash clung to her palate, a ghost flavor she couldn't spit out.
She found a heavy oak door at the end of a long corridor and pushed through it.
The silence was instant.
She was in a library. Or maybe a study. It was dark, lit only by the moonlight spilling through massive arched windows. Walls of books stretched up to the ceiling, smelling of dust and old parchment.
Aria leaned back against the heavy door, closing her eyes. She slid down until she hit the floor, burying her face in her knees.
The pain in her head was changing. The sharp stabbing had dulled into a heavy, rhythmic thrumming that matched her heartbeat. And beneath the pain, there was something else. A pulling sensation. Like a hook in her navel, tugging her...
Click.
The lock on the door turned.
Aria's head snapped up.
Damien stood there.
He had entered from a side door she hadn't seen, hidden in the shadows of the bookshelves. He wasn't wearing his jacket anymore. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms corded with muscle.
He didn't look like a King now. He looked like a predator who had cornered its prey.
"I thought I told you to get out of my sight," he said. His voice was rougher than before. darker.
Aria scrambled to her feet, pressing her back against the wood of the door. "I... I was hiding. Like you said."
"Hiding," he repeated. He took a step toward her. Then another.
He moved with a prowling grace, silent and lethal.
"You can't hide that smell," he murmured. "It's cloying. It's everywhere. It's crawling down my throat."
"I took the blockers," Aria stammered, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "I'm sorry. I'm sick. I'll leave."
"Sick?" Damien stopped inches from her.
He was too close. The scent of Rain and Ash hit her again, a tidal wave that nearly knocked her over.
But this time, it didn't hurt.
The moment he got close to her, the sledgehammer in her head vanished. The fever that had been burning her bones for days suddenly cooled, replaced by a different kind of heat. A magnetic, terrified yearning that pulled her toward him.
Damien seemed to feel it too.
He flinched, his jaw clenching tight. His silver eyes burned into hers, warring emotions flickering in their depths—hatred, confusion, and a lust so potent it terrified her.
"What are you?" he whispered. It wasn't a question; it was an accusation.
He slammed his hands against the door on either side of her head, caging her in.
Aria gasped, looking up at him. "I'm nobody. Just a defect."
"A defect," he tested the word, leaning down. His face was inches from hers. She could feel his breath on her lips—hot, smelling of whiskey and mint. "Then why does my wolf want to tear the world apart just to get a taste of you?"
He looked furious about it. He looked like he wanted to strangle her.
But he didn't.
Instead, he lowered his head further. His nose brushed against the sensitive skin of her neck, right where her pulse fluttered wildly.
Aria whimpered. A jolt of electricity shot down her spine, curling her toes. It was biological, undeniable. Her body, usually so frail and wrong, suddenly felt alive.
Damien groaned, a low rumble in his chest that vibrated against hers. He inhaled deeply, shuddering.
"Rain," she whispered, without thinking.
"Ash," he growled back against her skin.
His lips brushed her jawline. Rough. Demanding. He was going to kiss her. He was going to mark her. The inevitability of it hung heavy in the air, thick as smoke. Aria tilted her head back, baring her throat, surrendering to the pull that felt older than the mountains outside.
His mouth hovered over hers. She could see the flecks of gray in his silver eyes. She could see the conflict warring behind them—the King who demanded perfection versus the male who found it in the one place he shouldn't.
He closed his eyes, leaning in the last millimeter—
Then he froze.
His eyes snapped open. The silver hardened into steel.
He shoved himself away from her as if she had burned him.
Aria stumbled, hitting the door handle with a cry of pain. The loss of his proximity was an agony; the headache came rushing back, ten times worse than before, blinding her.
Damien stood in the center of the room, heaving breaths, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as if to scrub her taste away.
"Get out," he snarled.
"Damien..."
"Don't say my name," he roared, the sound shaking the books on the shelves. "You are a mistake. A failure of a wolf. You are nothing to me."
He looked at her with cold, imperious hate, rebuilding the walls he had almost let crumble.
"Go back to your kennel, little wolf," he said, his voice dripping with ice. "Before I decide to finish what I started."
Aria fumbled for the handle, blinded by tears and pain, and threw herself out into the corridor, running from the only thing that had ever made the pain stop.