My knuckles grazed his hip bone. Then lower. My fingers brushed across the front of his sleep pants, and I felt him – hard and unmistakable – pressing against the fabric.
I yanked my hand back so fast I knocked the stack of clean clothes off the nightstand.
My face was on fire. My brain short-circuited between the specialist’s clinical instructions and the very real reality of a sleeping prince’s body reacting to my accidental touch.
This was what they wanted me to do. This was the whole point of why I was here.
I pulled the blanket up to his chest and stepped back.
Not today. Absolutely not today.
A knock on the door nearly launched me through the ceiling.
“Luna Princess?” A servant bowed. “You have a visitor.”
I smoothed my dress, wiped my face with the back of my hand, and walked to the receiving room, grateful for any excuse to leave this room and the warm, impossible body in it.
Calvin was leaning against the far wall.
My stomach plummeted. I spun on my heel.
“Lily. Wait.” His voice was soft, careful – the voice he used when he wanted something. “Please.”
I kept walking. But he was faster. Two long strides put him between me and the door, and he nodded to the servants in the hallway. “Give us a moment. Future Alpha business.”
They hesitated. They looked at me. They looked at Calvin. Then they bowed and withdrew.
He had authority here. His father was Alpha of Shadow Creek – one of the King’s thirteen pack leaders. Of course Calvin could clear a room. Of course he could make people leave. I’d been stupid not to expect this.
“What happened at Maren’s room-” He stepped closer, and his expression shifted to something soft and earnest and apologetic – the face I’d trusted for three years. “That wasn’t what it looked like.”
“It looked pretty clear.”
“She came onto me.” He ran a hand through his hair – a gesture I’d seen a thousand times, and it used to make my chest tighten with affection. Now it just made my skin crawl. “You know how Maren is. She’s been circling me for months, and I was weak. I’m sorry, Lily. I’m so sorry.”
He moved closer. His cologne reached me – cedar and something sharper underneath.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment you left. I came all this way because I need you to know – I still love you.”
He reached for my face. His fingertips brushed my cheek.
I slapped his hand away. Hard. The crack echoed off the stone walls. My palm stung.
“Don’t touch me.”
The softness drained from his face like water through a crack. His jaw tightened. His eyes went flat.
“You told Maren I was stupid,” I said. My voice was steady now, and that surprised me. “You told her I’d come back crippled. You laughed.”
“I was performing-“
“You planned it with my father. You sold me.”
He stared at me. The mask slid another inch, and underneath it was something I’d never seen before – not love, not even hurt. Calculation. The kind of look a man gives a chess piece that’s moved to the wrong square.
I turned for the door. His arm locked around my waist from behind, hard, fast. Something cold and damp pressed over my mouth and nose before I’d finished drawing breath. The room turned to water. My wolf screamed somewhere deep in my chest.
Calvin’s mouth was warm against my ear.
“You always did have to make everything difficult,” he said softly.
The drug turned my muscles to sand.
I sagged against Calvin’s chest, my arms hanging, my legs gone. He held me up with one arm around my waist and kept the cloth over my face until the room went soft around the edges.
When he finally pulled it away, I gasped. The ceiling tilted.
“W-what-” My tongue was thick, the words coming out slurred and wrong. “What are you doing?”
Calvin set me down in a chair and locked the door. The bolt slid home with a sharp click. Then he pulled his shirt over his head, tossed it on the floor, and turned to face me. He wasn’t rushing. He was smiling.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“They’ll know.” I gripped the armrests, my nails biting into the wood. “If you – if I’m not – they’ll examine me again. They’ll know.”
“And who dies when they find out?” Calvin crouched in front of me, tilting his head slowly, almost playfully. “The wolf-chosen surrogate, defiled by another man? That’s treason, Lillian. They’ll put you down like a sick animal.” He clicked his tongue. “And I’ll walk out the front door, because who’s going to believe a Gamma’s daughter over a future Alpha?”
My stomach lurched. The drug burned through my veins in hot, sick waves.
“You have Maren.” My voice cracked and I hated it. “You already got rid of me. Why?”
He stood. The smile was gone. What replaced it was something lean and raw and ugly – hunger with all the pretense stripped away.
“Because I can’t stand that I never had you.”
He said it simply. Like confessing a preference for salt over sugar.
“Three years, Lillian. Three years you were mine, and I never once got to taste what was mine. You’d kiss me and then pull away. You’d let me hold your hand and then tell me to wait.” He bent down until his face was inches from mine. His breath was hot. His pupils were dilated. “And now some ghost-wolf picks you out of a lineup and you think you’re something special? You think you’re a princess?”
He grabbed my chin. His fingers dug into the sides of my jaw.
“You’re not a princess.” His voice was a whisper, but it scraped. “You’re a tool. A breeding tool. My breeding tool.”
The drug was fogging my thoughts, drowning them in static and heat, but one cold thread cut through the haze.
If Calvin wanted my body, he’d had three years to push for it. He’d never tried. Not once. He’d been patient, strategic, careful – and then he sent me to the palace. He waited until I was the Prince’s chosen surrogate.
He didn’t want me.
He wanted what I could carry.
The fear didn’t leave. It just made room for something colder.
“You want your child on the throne.” The words scraped out of my throat raw. “You want to get me pregnant. Pass it off as the Prince’s heir.”
Calvin’s hand went still on my jaw. For a half-second, surprise crossed his face. Then it was gone, replaced by a look that was somehow worse – acknowledgment. He didn’t even bother denying it.
“You don’t need to understand the plan,” he said, straightening up. “You just need to hold still.”
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